[Desire HD Android Development] Thyrus:
Hi MacDegger,

Good effort, a couple of things that when reading appear a little off, unnecessary or confusing :)

"You should have temproot now. To be sure, go and select ‘run at boot’ (the ‘re-get temproot’ checkbox) in Visionary and reboot your phone (long powerkey press, restart or shutdown, then restart your phone).

You should have temproot again. You can check this after the next step:

7.

Install SuperUser (preffereably from the Market, so you have the latest version).

If you start the Terminal Emulator, you should now be able to type"

- There is no need to reboot. Also, checking "run on bootup" is something I would refrain from. Simply temp-root is enough

- Why "install superuser" from market?! temprooting via visionary (r12 is what I used) already pushes Superuser.apk to /data/app, so there is no need to re-install from market

- So instead, I would simply temp root with visionary. No reboot, not market download

In this next bit, SuperUser might prompt that Visionary is seeking root permission. DENY THIS. It’s my belief that Visionary expects NOT to get that permission and only then runs. Giving permission leads to not much happening after you press the root button. I suspect a few problems happen due to this. Anyway:

Startup Visionary again. (maybe select ‘mount system as r/w’ … for me it didn’t, which is part of why I’m writing this guide).

Now, in Visionary, hit the ‘get permroot’ button. This process might take a while. If it’s working, the menu you pushed the button on should whisk away to the side: that way, you know Visionary is getting you permroot. Your phone should reset and you should have permroot.

Also not necessary. Visionary R12+ (actually use the R13 version as this one skips the "root already installed routine" some people have issues with) will permroot your device straight after temprooting it just fine. It will open the wpx.ko, will write busybox and su to system/xbin, will repush superuser.apk to /data, will then copy wpthis-lovinglymadebymodaco.ko to /data/local and then reboot.

After this reboot, you are already perm rooted. uninstall visionary, and reboot to test it.

Run the wxp script. It should report an error. This is OK.

NOTE: running visionarx to PERMROOT will copy the required wpthis.ko file (with the right kernel version to /data/local), and will call it "wpthis-lovinglymadeforyoubymodaco.ko."

So as a matter of fact you now have 2 (two) modules in /data/local, the wpx.ko and modaco (pauls) version of it. Whilst no biggy, I would simply adapt the wpx script to insmod pauls version, not wpx anymore. Just to be safe the right kernel is used when execuing and opening the exploit to remove the RW protection to /system, and I believe visionary+ actually checks the kernel and then pushed the correct wpthis*.ko to /data/local.

The next steps,

8.

Making it stick.

Use Root Explorer for this next part. I tried using other programs, but they wouldn’t work. Mainly because granting write access hadn’t worked properly.

Now copy

su to /system/bin/

and

Superuser.apk to /system/app/

You can find su in system/xbin/ and SuperUser.apk in /data/app/. You might have to mount the system directories as r/w (from r/o) using Root Explorer. I had to do this, as I didn’t have write access to system files, even though I asked Visionary to do this. No biggy, but it did mean I had to buy Root Explorer. Not a bad price to pay for permroot, write access and a pretty good file explorer 

Couple of things - visionary will only mount to /RW when flagged and executing TEMPROOT. SO by default, upon reboot the system is always in R/O mode, not R/W mode, whether you use visionary or install root manually. Thats fine and as you said, you can remout RW with RootExplore or via ADB.

Pushing SU and superuser.apk from /data/app and /system/xbin to /system/app and /system/bin is, whilst "safe" not really required. Superuser.apk is quite happy being on /data/app, and IF you must move it to /system/app, you should do a couple of things.

a) MOVE it, not copy it. This way, the user data (which permissions are allowing access to root) will not uninstall, and the permissions will also be set correctly (664 permissions for apps, or RWRWR). Copying it is not ideal, as it could simply kill/forget or cause other issues to it when you do it wrong. And if the permissions are missing as you didn't copy right, you basically blocked yourself our of your root-method permanently.

b) Copying su to system/bin is nice, but again, I would rather create a symlink to is in system/bin to execute/link to system/xbin. Again permissions are necessary and vital :)

They work just fine in /data/app and system/xbin. THe only reason to move su to system/bin is that some apps simply look for SU in /system/bin, and not in system/xbin. Most well programmed apps that require root will find it anyway, regardless of whether su is in /system/bin or system/xbin.

SO, I would, if I had to advice "noobs", simply leave them where they are. I would temproot, permroot and then install the s-off recovery. Nothing more after step 7.

PS the point of no return, the really dangerous bit, is actually THIS

Run the hboot script. If all is well, you should get a three (actually four) line report saying that something worked.

Thats where your system is flashing the bootloader, this is the risky part, where things can go terribly wrong. So "something worked" is maybe not very noob-friendly :):) SO when writing for newbies, make sure they understand ONE thing.

ALL they do in your guide is reversible with flashing the RUU again if something got messed up.

But this

"Run the hboot script. If all is well, you should get a three (actually four) line report saying that something worked. "

This is where you CAN turn your device into a 600 USD paperweight!

:)