[General Questions and Answers] Nos74:
Hey there!

With bevvare's help I was also able to root my TCL 20Y without much issue, though I encountered a few minor differences and details so we agreed it would be good if I wrote them down here.

Regarding the first guide used to unlock the bootloader:

The mtk_gui utility packed in the, as of today, latest release of mtkclient (1.52) refused to launch. That wasn't too bad seeing as the guide provides the necessary commands, but it's something to keep in mind.

In addition, I found that the phone would stop accepting commands after the first one was issued or after the log got too long*. This might have only been an issue on my end, but just in case, this is how i ran each command:

-Turn the phone off

-Hold the power button along with both vol+ and vol- (you may plug in the phone at this stage)​

-While in the Recovery Mode screen, issue the command on your terminal​

-Select the option to restart the device in the recovery screen, then hold both vol+ and vol- until the terminal starts printing output (the phone's screen will stay off while this happens)​

-After the command has executed, unplug the phone (probably optional) and hold all three buttons again to restart and boot into recovery​

Repeat as needed​

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* Remember how I mentioned the command seemed to fail if the log got too long? Well, this is what happened to me with the very first command on the guide (the one that erases three partitions at once). Just to be sure, I erased them separately using the same command.​

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PS: booting into recovery first may not even be needed, I just found it easier that way.​

The guide provides two unlock commands, the first one being python mtk xflash seccfg unlock, this ran without issue and triggered the orange state warning on boot. The second command (fastboot flashing unlock) refused to work, but the bootloader was nonetheless unlocked.

Also, the guide provides the relock command right after the unlock one as if it were the next step to take. This might be obvious, but don't relock your bootloader until after you're done flashing the new boot image (even then there's no real reason to relock it).

Regarding Magisk's guide on patching boot.img:

Magisk failed to patch boot_b.img. This turned out to not be a problem because my device was using the boot_a partition as the active one (I used this guide to check https://krispitech.com/check-partition-slot-a-b/ )

In order to get the necessary files, namely boot_a.img and vbmeta_a.img, I used this guide to dump all the partitions within the phone into my PC: https://xdaforums.com/t/backup-full...sing-mtk-client-oppo-reno6-5g-mt6877.4406069/

You may also decide to dump only the two partitions you need, in which case you could issue the following command instead: python mtk rl boot_a,vbmeta_a boot_a.img,vbmeta_a.img (this assumes your phone is also using partition A, adjust as needed).

If you used the above guide to dump all the partitions, the files you need will have the .bin extension, just rename them so they are .img files instead.

I recommend flashing vbmeta_a.img (it's optional and doesn't need to be patched in the Magisk app like boot_a.img). Otherwise your device will print a spooky warning at boot about being corrupt and demand you press the power button, which is annoying.