[Fire General] Horgix:
Hello everyone !

tl;dr: feedback on rooting a FireOS 5.3.1 and flashing CM 12.1 on it

After 4 hours of reading (this entire threads + some others), I finally decided to try to root my Fire and flash CyanogenMod on it.

You'll find the entire story and links to helpful posts below as a feedback on exiting tools and for future people who want to do it.

Spoiler: everything went well.

Right after receiving my Fire some weeks ago, I:

- Connected it to Wi-Fi

- Registered it to Amazon

- Read some posts about Fire rooting

- Realized the OTA updates might cause me troublea

- Turned OFF Wi-Fi, turned ON airplane mode to avoid any unexpected update

- Checked FireOS version: 5.3.1

So, starting from there and after reading the 278 posts of this thread, I decided to root this Amazon Fire 5th running FireOS 5.3.1 version and install CyanogenMod 12.1 on it.

I mainly followed this post (#146): https://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=69054014&postcount=146 and a big part of what I'll write will be simply re-saying that with a bit more details.

The prerequisites I followed:

- I did everything from a Windows 10 PC (instead of one of my Linux machines because it's the only one with a wired connection and I din't want to wait for hours to download everything)

- Downloaded Fire USB Drivers - latest version - See Post 146 for link

- Downloaded SuperTool - latest version, the AmazonFire5thGenSuperTool.zip of "2016-11-29 03:52:41" that takes 152.09MB - See Post 146 for link

- Downloaded CyanogenMod - version 12.1, pricesely cm-12.1-20161122-UNOFFICIAL-ford.zip - See Post 146 for link

- Downloaded Open GApps - version arm/5.1/nano (warning, version matters. From what I've read, it has to be the 5.1; also, I followed [MENTION=5488402]Davey126[/MENTION] advice on nano; from what I understood, be careful with bigger packages since there is not that much space available for it) - See Post 146 for link

- I also downloaded the FlashFire apk but it was never used. (Note: I guess you have to download it and install it manually if SuperTool fails to install FlashFire)

- Made sure USB Debugging was enabled: Settings > Device Options > Tapped 7 times on the Device Serial to unlock Developer Options > Developer Options > Set "Enable ADB" to On and accepted the pop-up warning

- Copied CM-12.1 and 5.1 GApps to the Fire's internal storage

Rooting + FlashFire setup:

- Extracted SuperTool

- Run Amazon-Fire-5th-gen.bat

- Selected option 6 - "Root your Amazon Fire 5th gen" and followed the steps (I can provide details and paste the logs if someone wants it) while keeping console window open and tablet connected.

- Running Kingroot now apparently requires a network connection to dynamically get the rooting method for the device

- Having the same fear of the OTA than other people in this thread, I enabled WiFi so Kingroot could start and then disabled it again: I shouldn't have done that since after 2 reboots, Kingroot tried again to connect to the network at 67%, failed to do so, and stopped

- After enabling the WiFi again and letting it ON, I had to run Kingroot 5 times before it succeeded: keep trying !

- As [MENTION=5488402]Davey126[/MENTION] pointed eralier, the OTA indeed never got to be fully downloaded thanks to the many reboots of Kingroot so it was never applied. For what it's worth, I launched some heavy downloads from my PC so my WiFi connection would be slower, just in case.

- I never rebooted the Fire manually between Kingroot attempts, just pressed "retry" everytime

- Got the Fire successfully rooted!

- Once rooted, SuperTool rightfully wanted to replace Kingroot by SuperSu: when asked to remove other root methods, select Yes. From what I've read (please correct me if I'm wrong), KingRoot is the only way to gain root access on an unrooted Fire. But it comes with some crap, and it looks like it's a kind of backdoor and we don't know exactly what data it sends to where for what. So this step is here to use root gained by Kingroot to set SuperSu up instead

- Went into "Settings > Manage applications" to manually remove "Purify", the junk app left behind by KingRoot

- Rebooted just in case

- Selected option 5 - " Install FlashFire app" then 1 - "Install FlashFire App" in SuperTool

- Got FlashFire 0.53 installed

CyanogenMod + GApps install:

- I simply and strictly followed the developer instructions so just go and read it!

Conclusion:

- SuperTool is awesome and bundles everything

- This thread is pure gold for informations if you take the time to read it

- Fire feels way faster/smoother with CM 12.1 than with this crap of FireOS

Thanks a lot to:

- [MENTION=5488402]Davey126[/MENTION] - for so many replies to every question, most of the time with important precisions/reminders

- [MENTION=6688089]JD33[/MENTION] - for the best summarizing post in this thread

- The guys behind SuperTool - it's awesome and bundles everything

- The guys who took the time to make everything work on CM on this tablet

Some more links:

- SuperTool thread - https://xdaforums.com/amazon-fire/development/amazon-fire-5th-gen-supertool-root-t3272695

- CyanogenMod 12.1 thread - https://xdaforums.com/amazon-fire/orig-development/rom-cm-12-1-2015-11-15-t3249416

- Some random posts in this thread that I found useful:

- https://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=68992717&postcount=111

- https://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=68993416&postcount=112

- https://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=68945186&postcount=53 (even though I didn't use SuperSuMe since SuperTool now works on 5.3.1)

- https://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=62986665&postcount=3