Before you start
Please make a note of this page:
How To Recover
If you are unfamiliar with basic Linux command usage, you should visit this page:
Basic Linux Use
Disclaimer
Enacting any set of instructions from this site has the (remote, but
greater than zero) potential to void your warranty. Our intention and
the specific design of all instructions is such that you should be able
to recover using the
webOS Doctor
should anything go wrong, and put your Pre back to a state which is
indistinguishable from a factory-new Pre, but we give no guarantee. Use
any information from this site at your own risk. At the very least,
you should be prepared to lose all data on your phone at any time. We
cannot tell you what you should do - we provide the information, but
it's up to your own sense of personal responsibility to determine what
you do with that information.
We require you to use the webOS Doctor to put your Pre back to factory condition before contacting Palm or your cellular carrier for service or support.
You might also want to consider backing up any files you have in the usb drive portion of the Pre.
In general, simply installing the Palm SDK gives you everything you
need for full access to the Linux operating system on the Pre or Pixi.
There is no special "rooting" or "jailbreaking" process. Simply
installing the SDK provides you with unlimited access to the Linux
operating system logged in as the root user. Palm does not see this as a
bad thing.
Palm provides all these tools for download by anyone, anytime, for free.
- Download the Palm SDK.
- Install it using the installation instructions for Mac, Linux, or Windows.
- Enable dev mode on your Pre:
- In Card view or in the Launcher application, type the following: webos20090606
- Tap the resulting Developer Mode Enabler icon.
- In the application, move the Developer Mode slider to the On position.
- Tap Reset the Device .
- When reset is complete, Developer mode is enabled.
- Plug the device into the computer via the USB cable, and select "Charge only."
- The next step varies:
- On Mac or Linux, type novaterm in a command (terminal) window to directly access the Linux command line.
- On Windows you will need to download and install a novaterm program.
- On 32 bit Windows download novaterm1.zip and unzip it into the \program files\palm\sdk\bin directory.
- On 64 bit Windows download novaterm64.zip and unzip it into the \program files\palm\sdk\bin directory.
- Then, just like the Mac and Linux users you can just type novaterm.
At this point you will have a window with a prompt that says root@webos-device: or something similar.
You are now logged in as root on your webOS device and can do anything you would normally do on a Linux device.
Please be careful, you can seriously bork your phone now.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
With the addition of the ability to install Optware packages to
Preware, unless you have a need or desire to type commands into the
native Linux shell of your Palm device, there is no need to use the
novaterm terminal to log into your devices.
Webos Quick Install (a java program for your desktop) and
Preware (an app to run on your device)
are fully capable of installing any Optware IPK (including *.patch and *.diff) to Palm devices.
Linux command line access is needed by very few people. If you came
here from a web page that talked about "root access" or "rooting your
Pre" be aware that most of the instructions which require root access
have been