pre rooted ftf firmwares? - Sony Xperia Z Ultra

Is it possible to make pre rooted ftf firmwares so that rooting is so much more easy?

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Ftf files....no. Have to flash them manually or via recovery. Ftf is only for completely stock firmware
Sent from my Sony Xperia™ Z Ultra

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Spectre51 said:
Ftf files....no. Have to flash them manually or via recovery. Ftf is only for completely stock firmware
Sent from my Sony Xperia™ Z Ultra
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Thank you for the answer. Iam coming from Samsung s4 forum and there we have pre rooted tar.md5 firmware that we can flash with odin. Just the same way we flash stock tar.md5 firmware that sammobile releases. Was wondering if we could take the ftf file and open it than put all the needed files in it for root than make ftf again and than flash it with flashtool.

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Possible with CWM or TWRP, like PA, Carbon, CM ROMs.

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StreamingMT said:
Possible with CWM or TWRP, like PA, Carbon, CM ROMs.
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I think you all dont get it. It's ok.

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boterkaaseneieren said:
I think you all dont get it. It's ok.
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You're talking about the stock recovery, like on Samsung and HTC devices(?). That doesn't exist on Sony devices as far as i know, so you'll have to do the recovery part from your computer using Flashtool or Sony Companion.

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LordManhattan said:
You're talking about the stock recovery, like on Samsung and HTC devices(?). That doesn't exist on Sony devices as far as i know, so you'll have to do the recovery part from your computer using Flashtool or Sony Companion.
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No talking about making a stock ftf firmware that have root in the system. So that we only have to flash the pre rooted ftf firmware for a rooted rom.

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boterkaaseneieren said:
No talking about making a stock ftf firmware that have root in the system. So that we only have to flash the pre rooted ftf firmware for a rooted rom.
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Haha! Wrong thread!
To root a FTF file, we need to be able to find an exploit, and that's the issue people are currently working on. You've probably noticed that we have to downgrade to 532 to be able to root, and we're using vRoot which we have no idea how it works. We are all idiots and now we're paying. You'll have to wait until we have rooted 527, or you can use the exploit in 532 which i guess the chinese knows about.

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LordManhattan said:
Haha! Wrong thread!
To root a FTF file, we need to be able to find an exploit, and that's the issue people are currently working on. You've probably noticed that we have to downgrade to 532 to be able to root, and we're using vRoot which we have no idea how it works. We are all idiots and now we're paying. You'll have to wait until we have rooted 527, or you can use the exploit in 532 which i guess the chinese knows about.
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You don't root ftf files. You root the firmware once it is installed via an ftf. The OP wanted to know if you could root a ftf file before it is installed so once installed you already have root, which isn't possible.
Sent from my Xperia™ Tablet Z

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Spectre51 said:
You don't root ftf files. You root the firmware once it is installed via an ftf. The OP wanted to know if you could root a ftf file before it is installed so once installed you already have root, which isn't possible.
Sent from my Xperia™ Tablet Z
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I have no idea how these things work on Sony devices, but Samsung md5 ROMs can be pre-rooted, so I guess I thought it's the same thing here, which is clearly not the case.
Sent from my C6833 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

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LordManhattan said:
I have no idea how these things work on Sony devices, but Samsung md5 ROMs can be pre-rooted, so I guess I thought it's the same thing here, which is clearly not the case.
Sent from my C6833 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
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Unfortunately it's not. Really wish it was as it would make things a lot easier.
Sent from my Sony Xperia™ Z Ultra

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Thank you all for your answers. In the old days I rooted my Xperia x10 with just on click. Zroot app. Good old days.

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Spectre51 said:
You don't root ftf files. You root the firmware once it is installed via an ftf. The OP wanted to know if you could root a ftf file before it is installed so once installed you already have root, which isn't possible.
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Is the problem that .sin files are signed in some way? A FTF is just a zip file containing sin files, and the format of sin files is understood well enough that Flashtool will extract them into elf files that can be mounted with just a small amount of repair, so if you can convert a system.img back into a system.sin, you should in theory be able to have a pre-rooted FTF.
If whoever wrote Flashtool could add a feature to override flashing a sin with an additional img, that would also do it.
(I first rooted my C6833 this way, following the guide at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=44612882 )

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ResonanceZero said:
Is the problem that .sin files are signed in some way? A FTF is just a zip file containing sin files, and the format of sin files is understood well enough that Flashtool will extract them into elf files that can be mounted with just a small amount of repair, so if you can convert a system.img back into a system.sin, you should in theory be able to have a pre-rooted FTF.
If whoever wrote Flashtool could add a feature to override flashing a sin with an additional img, that would also do it.
(I first rooted my C6833 this way, following the guide at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=44612882 )
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That sounds very logical and not impossible. Hope some dev can look in to this.

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I looked into it a bit more, and in fact sin files are signed (that's actually what the extension is short for, apparently). It was implied that flashmode will only accept signed files, which is why all of the steps to flash rooted image files go through fastboot mode, which can apparently flash anything (is this true? not sure if it it can flash all regions) but is less convenient to use.
That leaves two options for a one-pass rooted update:
1) Find the code responsible for bootloading and alter it to accept an additional signing key. This would have to be fastboot loaded the first time, but would allow modified FTFs later. Downsides: this is the stuff of which hard bricks can be made if anything goes wrong. There will be no way to flash anything if the flashing code itself is broken. Also, it may not even be possible if the code is in a fixed ROM somewhere.
2) Come up with code to unpack FTFs to a series of images that would be flashed sequentially by a fastboot script and discard FTF and sin files as a standard. Downsides: horribly inconvenient, and probably not worth the effort.
Keep in mind that the only thing you are saving yourself by putting it all in one pass is the effort of installing a working CWM kernel briefly to install the SuperSU zip into the freshly flashed FTF, then flashing the original kernel back. Going through a FTF conversion pass is probably more total time spent even if it worked. Without a working CWM kernel, then you would have to go through a bit more effort to unpack the system.sin, modify it, repack it as an image, and flash that, though it's possible someone well trusted could do that and redistribute the result (legally grey), but we seem to be in luck on that front for the moment.