[Nexus 6P General] AranelAlasse:
experiences so far

For anyone's info - in case if anyone cares - here are my experiences and reflections so far:

I was confused about the Java stuff. According to Android Studio's System Requirements, you need the java JDK - not just the JRE. I stuck with "Java Development Kit (JDK) 7" (even though 8 is available), since that's what it said to have.... [MENTION=4153349]Heisenberg[/MENTION], are either of those requirements (JDK and v7) necessary for us? or only if you're planning to really use Android Studio? Or can we get by with only the version 8 JRE? Maybe update the guide, if it truly does make a difference...)

I struggled a lot with the driver. ("adb devices" wasn't listing my serial number.) I went back and forth between two computers (my work desktop with windows 7 and my home laptop with a fresh reformat/reinstall of windows vista) and eventually got it working on both. In the end, (if I recall...) I think I unplugged phone, booted into bootloader, plugged it in, and then in device manager I installed (from disk) the "Google USB Driver" Heisenberg told us to get (it was in "C:\SDK\extras\google\usb_driver", for me). I've had several Samsung phones previously, and for whatever reason, my work computer insists on listing my phone in Device Manager as "SAMSUNG Android Phone" > "Android Composite ADB Interface" -- even though I tried to uninstall every piece of Samsung software I could find. But anyways, I got "adb devices" to find the phone regardless, so I figure it's good enough. (And I watched a youtube video of someone else rooting their 6p and their device manager said the same thing, so I figure it's safe.)

No problems. In the end, it rebooted back to my stock system, which the guide didn't exactly specify, but surprised me for some reason. That's fine, though.

Aside from the fact that I needed to start with "adb reboot fastboot", no problems with the process as Heisenberg listed it. twrp flashed fine. But I was confused about what to do from there.

I wasn't sure what to do about the read-only vs. read-write option. I thought it would be safer to leave it read-only... (first mistake?) Then I decided that I wanted to make the backups listed in step 4 and step 5, but I wanted to download all my favorite apps and customize my system first. So I booted back into my stock (non-rooted) system. (second mistake? I should have made the customizations between steps 1 and 2, instead of between steps 2 and 3).

The end result was that the next time i wanted to get to twrp, it wasn't there. (but I got my customizations done! and I even got an OTA Update, in the meantime.)

I found the following things helpful:

From the TWRP 2.8.7.0 changelog:

From posts #875-877 via grv00711's identical problem and sirxdroid's helpful reply:

Anyways, that's where am right now... I'll probably try sirxdroid's suggestion sometime today and make my backups (and leave system read-only for now). I'm not ready for root yet, so I'd probably loose twrp again in the meantime. But that's no trouble, I hope. I imagine I can re-flash it again when I'm ready for root.

[MENTION=4153349]Heisenberg[/MENTION], thanks for your guide in general! Specifically, I REALLY appreciate the many direct/easy links to websites that don't contain bazillions of advertisements and misdirection trying to get us to download ad/malware. When I was struggling with the driver stuff, I tried looking for a direct link to download the driver directly from Google, but couldn't find one. All I found were other people linking to websites that were atrociously annoying in the add/misdirection category. So really: Thank you!

:)