[Verizon Galaxy S 5 General] Mr. Whippy:
Finally seem to have root and custom ROM installed. I admit I'm a near total newb on this but here are my observations on the process.

I started with a brand new Galaxy S5. No SIM card, 64 Gb microSD installed. In total, I've had to re-root the phone 6 or 7 times because it lost root access after trying to install a custom ROM (deodex VZW BOK3 on page 1) via SS.

The rooting process is actually very straightforward. There is one smalll error in step 18 in the procedure on page 1:

It's just a reboot, not reboot to recovery. If you reboot to recovery, the G5_Root.bat will not recognize the phone no matter how many 05 commands are given at the prompt. Just reboot and when it hangs at Samsung Galaxy 5 screen, G5_Root.bat will recognize it and you proceed to root.

So here are some miscellaneous observations:

1. After successful root, the Samsung Galaxy S5 boot screen has added at the bottom an unlock symbol and "custom". This boot screen stays until the ROM is replaced. I'm assuming it is a function of the ROM, not the booting software.

2. In my case, I could reboot into recovery in SS, flash the BOK3 kernel and reboot system and retain the unlock custom screen, I could make a back up, flash BOK3 and reboot and retain the unlock custom screen (and keep root access) and I could do a full wipe (Dahvik cache, cache, data and system) and restore backup and still retain the unlock custom screen (and keep root access). HOWEVER, if I tried to install the BOK3 deodexed VZW.zip ROM from page 1, I would lose the unlock custom screen and on reboot (10-12 minutes for booting), I would lose all the rooting tools I had installed (Safestrap, Lollipop Safestrap, Busybox, SuperSU me, root explorer and Flashfire) and if I tried to re-install them I would get the "Unauthorized Install" message. My assumption is I lost root access. So I would start again.

3. In my final attempt, I tried to install the BOK3 deodexed VZW .zip via Flashfire. When I loaded Flashfire, it took a LONG time to load. So long that during the enumerating partitions part, I went to the app manager and forced stop and reloaded Flashfire but it finally loaded. All I did in Flashfire is install the ROM.

4. On reboot from Flashfire, the Samsung Galaxy boot screen no longer had the unlock symbol or the word "custom". It took about 10 minutes to finish with the red Verizon screen but when it booted, I still had all the rooting tools except Safestrap. I was able to download and install TiBU, granting SU access. So I clearly was still rooted.

5. Then I reinstalled Safestrap from the apk in the apps_to_install folder. Interestingly, when I rebooted to recovery, SS now had 8 buttons. There were only 7 each time I installed it right after rooting--always using the same apk. Flashed the BOK3 kernel and rebooted and I still have root access.

My questions:

1. Am I loading ROMs in SS incorrectly?

2. Why is SS going from 7 buttons to 8 buttons?

3. Is there a way to tell this ROM isn't the standard VZW ROM?

4. Does this ROM give full r/w access to the extsdcard or do I need to do something else?

5. How to block OTA notifications and VZW updates? (And is there a thread that talks about these sorts of things, for this specific version of Galaxy S5 with root)?

---------- Post added at 12:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:00 PM ----------

Looks like the ExtSDcard fix is already in there, so I'm assuming this is the custom ROM.

Also noticed that SDM is missing in the app folder. That stops OTA correct?