[Samsung Galaxy Tab A series Guides, News, & Discus] LupineDream:
Samsung Galaxy Tab A

Only for: SM-T550

A trick has been found which will give you root on a brand spaking new Marshmallow ROM for your SM-T550 Samsung Galaxy Tab A. This guide assumes the following:

That you know how to use FlashFire to preserve root on an official OTA update.

That you are aware of the functionality of SuperSU.

That you are starting the process from a stock-rooted Lollipop ROM w/ TWRP recovery installed.

That you own a PC with the correct Samsung drivers and ADB+Fastboot, that you've tested ADB, and it's working.

All of that said, let's begin.

Step 1

Make yourself a backup, both a nandroid in TWRP, and grab all of your important documents, music, videos, hardcore XXX, excetra, from your Internal memory and copy them to your PC. I am not responsible for the loss of data while using this guide.

Step 2

Go and download the French / Indian variant of the ROM on Samdroid. When you have inhaled 3 cups of coffee, listened to some vaperwave, banged head here a few times (on something soft, please. no liability for concussions), your download should be done. Samdroid takes a while, especially when you have a free account. You'll get the official tar.gz file.

Step 3

Copy the tar.gz firmware to the Internal Storage of your device.

Step 4

Get FlashFire from the Google Play store on the tablet.

Step 5

Open FlashFire and grant it root access. This next step is the use of FlashFire. Follow these instructions:

Tap the floating red bubble and select "Flash Firmware Package".

Navigate to your file on your Internal Memory (provided you remember where it is. If not, a rage quit is an option, unless you remembered where you put that USB cable. Deernit!) and select it.

Select partitions: boot, system, data, and cache. Don't flash the stock recovery if you don't want it. If you'd like a clean TWRP install, go that route and select Recovery, then after the flash you'll enter the bootloader from ADB and flash TWRP the normal way.

Allow wiping of the cache, and select the option to inject su and SuperSU before the flash.

Double check your to-do list.

Flash!

Step 6

Okay, so if your tablet hasn't hit a brick wall after the reboot, you're good. I would advise flashing the latest version of TWRP to keep recovery stable. If you somehow don't boot, you probably wiped your data and did not install the default GApps provided by the firmware. A flash of nano OpenGApps 6.0.1 arm32 in TWRP will fix this.

Step 7

One of two things will happen here. You will either:

Weep uncontrollably and start again with Samsung Kies, then Samdroid Lollipop, then root, then...ugh...nevermind. Just talking about it makes me want to cry.

- OR -

You'll be on Marshmallow with SuperSU, without xposed, you can reflash TWRP and go mod-happy!

The Video

I made and edited a 7 minute video explaining most of what I have covered, and proof that the process works.

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/embed/_zuCtAH0a1Y[/YOUTUBE]

Hyperlinked here: https://youtu.be/_zuCtAH0a1Y

Questions:

Q: Why not Odin?

A: Because signature checks and no root injection.

Q: There's already a US OTA?

A: You can do this OTA, but then you get the locked Marshmallow bootloader. After flash and boot there's no way to get root this way on Android 6.0.1.

Q: I'm bootlooping. Haaaalp!

A: Samsung Kies. Go download it, and revert to US stock. Odin-flash Lollipop firmware, root, rinse, repeat.

Q: Does this trip the Knox counter?

A: Yes, unfortunetly.

Q: Does this void my warranty?

A: What warranty? This tablet came out 2 years ago. But, if you got it extended...yes...yes it does

Q: Are you a bad person?

A: Everyone can be a good person, if they just try.

Q: I love you.

A: <- The donate button is over there...somewhere.

Q: I hate you.

A: Thank you. :cool:

Conclusion

Smash the Thanks button if this helped. Enjoy your bloatware free, rooted Marshmallow tablets!

Thank you to chainfire for the toolz, shabbypenguin for picking up the phones no one wants to (Alcatel, ZTE, my eyes in your direction!), ashryx for the dev love, and apophis9283 for the inspiration.