Telus Milestone rooting/flashing

I don't want to post much about personal stuff but this is far too interesting/helpful than to keep quiet about. So here goes.

As many will know, I purchased a Motorola Milestone from Telus a while back. When I got it, it was stock updated to Android 2.1 (originally released with 2.0.1), and since then, there was an update to 2.1, done OTA from Telus to correct call quality issues.

I started, very happy with the phone, but after dealing with the brief (but noticable) slow downs and delays, plus the possibility of never being updated to 2.2, plus the possibility of never having the Flash player or any of the 2.2 official updates, I started looking around.

To be clear, the Milestone here in Canada is supposed to be getting 2.2 (Froyo) in Q1 2011, still quite a ways away, I'm impatient.

When I started, I began by 'rooting' my phone... This process was easy, using a paid, but very easy to obtain rooting software "Universal Androot" from the market... After using this, I unsuccessfully attempted to use ROM Manager to swap ROMs, which resulted in paying for software that doesn't actually work on the Milestone. I don't mind, I'll support good developers, regardless.

The best way to root, and set up a Milestone, running the newest Telus ROM, in preparation to reflash it, is to use RSD Lite (available almost everywhere) and get the milestone "vulnerable recovery" SBF file. The installation of this SBF will allow your milestone to boot an update.zip that is not signed by a certified authority (AKA Motorola). After you have that basic file and app prepared, before flashing you need to setup an Update.zip and nandroid on your SD card on the device. I used Open Recovery on this.

In theory, you could use many of the various options for Recovery software... Open Recovery was my choice and I feel it's been a good one.

once open recovery is situated with the update.zip file on your SD card, you're free to apply the vulnerable recovery sbf to your phone using RSD Lite. this process is highly automatic, and only requires you to have the specific files, as well as your phone connected to the system via USB.

but hold on, don't let that phone start back up. Everytime the phone starts, with the Telus ROM, it checks that bootloader's checksum. if the checksum does not match the checksum on file, it reflashes the bootloader to spec. Before this happens, you'll need to boot into open recovery to make a change.

After the phone restarts after applying the vulnerable recovery patch (it will say update OK, then shutdown for a restart), you want to hold your phone's camera button as it's starting, you'll get to the phone with the exclamation point screen (you'll know it when you see it), at that point, hold volume UP, and press the camera button again, you'll get a menu.
Using your d-pad, select "apply update.zip" (a process you'll have to repeat to get into open recovery, all the time).

Open Recovery loads. browse over to console. At the console run the following command:
rm -f /system/etc/install-recovery.sh

this should delete the specific file that will reflash the bootloader/recovery and prevent you from getting back to the nandroid/open recovery.

after that, you're rooted with recovery, leave update.zip, nandroid, and open recovery on your SD card for future reference, and download a ROM of your choice. it may be a good idea to use nandroid to do a back up of your current ROM before deciding to wipe and flash a new one.

Whenever flashing a new ROM delete all user data, dalvik and cache. This should put the phone into a very RAW/Fresh state for the new ROM and prevent a lot of problems you may run into.

Enjoy, happy flashing.