[Motorola Edge 20 Lite] trevtdogg:
hi all,

i'm somewhat nervously attempting to root my moto edge 20 fusion, and i have a few questions please.

my most recent experience with rooting a phone was an older moto phone about 5 years ago, which i managed with the help of these forums (as a lurker).

anyway, my edge 20 fusion bootloader is already unlocked. this is confirmed with 'fastboot getvar all' showing 'securestate: flashing_unlocked'.

the phone is booting fine and running fine with the stock rom. android 11, security patch 2022-01-01, software channel retapac, build number RRKS31.Q3-19-97-3.

after reading as much as i could find in the forums here, i've made this pastiche of notes below and added my questions to it:

step 1: obtain the boot.img

- i have obtained a boot.img (size 41,943,040 bytes, last modified 2021-12-30) from the unzipped 'stockrom.net_KYOTO_RETAIL_RRKS31.Q3-19-97-3_subsidy-DEFAULT_regulatory-DEFAULT_CFC.xml' (2022-01-21 version downloaded from https://androidfilehost.com/?fid=17825722713688274049) is that the right file i need?

- does the region of the retail rom above matter for this rooting process? i'm not sure how to determine the region of that rom from that website or from the files themselves. i'm in australia using a locally bought variant of edge 20 fusion, if it matters.

i also found this comment: 'find boot.img under "C:\ProgramData\LMSA\Download\RomFiles\" or "C:\ProgramData\RSA\Download\RomFiles\"'

- i'm guessing i don't need to worry about that since i already have a boot.img file from the previous step? although i'm also wondering if this means i should have the LMSA software tool installed already, or if it means i will need to use it somewhere along the rooting process?

step 2: install magisk

- do i just follow this guide? https://topjohnwu.github.io/Magisk/install.html

- which version of magisk should i install? i'd heard that some of the newer versions don't have the hide function anymore, is there a recommended version number to use in order to best pass safetynet?

- should i install magisk on the phone itself or should i add an sd card first and install it on that?

- i'm guessing the magisk home screen once installed should read "ramdisk: yes"?

- looking inside the stock rom zip where i found the boot.img i can also see vbmeta.img, although it's only 4kb in size. does that mean i should also patch the vbmeta partition as per the magisk install guide?

step 3: patch boot.img with magisk on the edge 20 fusion

- should i check the "patch vbmeta in boot image" or not?

step 4: copy the 'magisk_patched_xxxxxx.img' to the pc via adb

- do i do this while still loaded in the android OS? or do i reboot to fastboot to do this?

- should i backup anything at this point to help with rescue / restoring later on if something goes wrong? i remember from rooting an old moto phone that i needed to back up the 'persist' folder as it would be very hard to recover from a mistake without it.

- will the next step cause any data loss from formatting, similar to how unlocking the bootloader does?

step 5: flash to boot_a and boot_b in fastboot

'fastboot flash boot_a magisk_patched_xxxxxx.img'

'fastboot flash boot_b magisk_patched_xxxxxx.img'

'fastboot reboot'

- is it the exact same file that gets flashed to both boot_a and boot_b, without any changes at all? just like a mirrored backup?

and then it should all be done, right? after that it's only setting up magisk from within android OS to be hidden, and enable zygisk, and check safetynet?

sorry for all the questions, i know most of these answers will probably seem obvious to many others here but i just want to be on the safe side. maybe it will help some others too who like me aren't as experienced! with my last phone 5 years ago i didn't do the magisk setup correctly, and google pay would not work. hoping to learn from my mistakes.

p.s. the above info all mostly came from these threads:

https://xdaforums.com/t/great-device-for-the-price-root-acheived-too.4404167/

https://xdaforums.com/t/root-possibilities-what-has-been-tried-and-tested.4356343/

and @sd_shadow 's thread here: https://xdaforums.com/t/guide-root-motorola-with-magisk-unlocked-bootloader-non-twrp-method.4222583/