For those of you who want to hack your Droid X for real, you will first want to root it.

Rooting your Droid X gives you “full” control over your phone including being able to install custom ROMs, 3rd party apps, free wifi tether, and a whole lot more.

If you are willing to take a risk and take advantage of what a rooted Droid X offers, start by following our step-by-step directions here on Droid X Hacks:

1. First, you will want to install Android SDK. After unzipping the SDK files, put it in a folder easy to remember such as C:\sdk for windows and /sdk for Linux and Mac.

Make sure you also have java installed and run the SDK_Setup.exe (for Windows), which will allow you to update the Android SDK with ADB, USB drivers, and stuff you will need.

2. Once that is done, you can connect your Droid X to your computer.  Make sure your Droid X is in “PC Mode”, not “Just Charge”!

3. Go on your Droid X and go to Settings->Applications->Development and make sure “USB Debugging” option is checked ON.

4. (Windows ONLY) For Windows systems, you might get a “pop-up” saying driver was not installed correctly.  You can update the driver by pointing the driver update to the usb_drivers folder in your SDK folder such as c:\sdk\usb_drivers.

4. Unzip these files into your SDK tools directory such as c:\sdk\tools for Windows or /sdk/tools for Linux/Mac.

5. Open a command prompt by typing “cmd” under Start->search programs and files in Windows and for Linux/Mac, open a terminal.

6. Next browse to your SDK Tools folder by typing “cd \sdk\tools” for Windows and /sdk/tools for Linux/Mac

Type the following:

adb push Superuser.apk /sdcard/Superuser.apk
adb push su /sdcard/su
adb push busybox /sdcard/busybox
adb push exploid /sqlite_stmt_journals/exploid
adb shell

*Tip – If you get errors for above commands, try doing “adb devices”.  If no devices are found, that means you need to make sure your Droid X is in the mode “PC Mode” and drivers are correctly installed for Windows.

7. Once inside the shell type:
cd sqlite_stmt_journals
chmod 755 exploid
./exploid

8. Go back to your phone immediately and toggle the WiFi off and on.

9. Type “rootshell” and type “secretlol” for password.

10. You should now be in “super user” mode, you should have a “#” instead of a “$”.

11. Next, let’s make root permanent, and type:

cp /sdcard/Superuser.apk /system/app/Superuser.apk
cp /sdcard/su /system/bin/su
cp /sdcard/busybox /system/bin/busybox
chmod 4755 /system/bin/su
chmod 4755 /system/bin/busybox

12. Next, exit out of the root shell and try typing “su”:

exit
su

13. Go back to your phone and the Superuser app should ask you for permission, hit “Allow”.
14. If you gotten to this point, congratulations, you’ve rooted your Droid X!

Errors while rooting Droid X?

If you get a blank screen for the Superuser app for some reason or “Permission denied” error, you can re-install the su file like this:

adb shell
rootshell
mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
rm /system/bin/su
cp /sdcard/su /system/bin/su
chmod 4755 /system/bin/su

Then try:

exit
su

You should get a Superuser app pop-up on your phone now.

This is what happened to me while I was rooting my own Droid X but by erasing the su app and copying it again solved it.

Some more tips on rooting the Droid X

Make sure you don’t update your Droid X to the latest OTA update as it could block your root access.

Also, here’s a video I took while rooting my own Droid X, these are not the whole directions as I kept running into problems, getting stuck but in the end I did root my Droid X: (It will be helpful for those of you who have never rooted an Android phone before.)

Related News and Resources

• How to Get Free WiFi Tether Mobile Hotspot on Droid X!
• How to Install Android 2.2 Froyo on your Droid X!
• How to Remove Tethering App and “Unroot” your Droid X!