Rooting Nova Air C

[TheNoname]

Hi everyone! Over the past few days, I have been working on rooting the Nova Air C and I finally got it to work, so I figured I would write up a guide to help others.

Big big thanks to Renate for their patience and help and their awesome edl.exe utility!

Note: This guide assumes you have developer mode enabled and that you have adb installed.


Grabbing boot.img from your Nova Air C

1. Download a copy of Renate's EDL tool from here: http://www.temblast.com/edl.htm
2. Download Zadig from here: https://zadig.akeo.ie/
3. Download the Qualcomm 662 Loader attached to this post. MD5: cd7a91985353e0a1a6d581b423e1325c
4. Rename the loader to q662.elf, place it in the same folder as edl.exe
5. Run this command to reboot your Nova Air C into EDL mode:

    adb reboot edl

6. Using Zadig, change the driver of your device to WinUSB.
7. Run this command to grab the boot.img:

   edl.exe /lq662.elf /r /pboot_b boot.img /t /v

8. You should now have a boot.img file in the same directory as edl.exe and q662.elf.

From here, the steps are the pretty much the same as Cascade94's post here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...9&postcount=52 I copied them and put them below:

Originally Posted by Cascade94

Patching boot.img

1. Download the latest Magisk APK on to your Note Air 2 and install it
2. Copy your downloaded boot.img to your device
3. In the Magisk app, select "Install", then select "Patch a file" and finally select your boot.img
4. It'll save a "magisk_patched" boot image in to your Downloads folder, copy this file back over to your PC

Testing & making permanent

1. Reboot in to fastboot mode - this'll take us to fastbootd (adb reboot fastboot)
2. Now go in to bootloader mode (fastboot reboot bootloader)
3. Now boot from your patched boot image (fastboot boot magisk_patched.img)
4. The device should power on normally. Open the Magisk app, check that Magisk has installed correctly...
5. If everything looks fine, select "Install", then select "Direct install" and wait for it to complete.
6. When you reboot, you should be still rooted - success!

I did have some trouble with the fastboot portion, so here are some of the things I did to sort it out:

1. Get the latest Google USB driver from here: https://developer.android.com/studio/run/win-usb
2. Go into Device Manager and change the USB driver of the device to the fastboot driver
3. If for some reason you can't pick the correct drivers. Follow these instructions to temporarily disable driver signing and try again: https://www.thewindowsclub.com/disab...cement-windows

Hope this helps someone else, and thanks again Renate for your assistance!

[wakkaday]

What’s advantage of rooting ?

[TheNoname]

Originally Posted by wakkaday

What’s advantage of rooting ?

There are several advantages, but the reason I did it was so I can use AFWall+ and disable any internet traffic out of the device that I didn't authorize. Unfortunately, Onyx has a history of having their devices phone home to servers in China. Since they don't release their source code (which is actually required), we don't know what is being sent in these requests to Chinese servers.

[Renate]

The advantage of rooting is that it allows you to fix things that annoy you. If you're not annoyed by anything you may not need it. OTOH, even simple things like using a keyboard with a different layout requires rooting.

I question the necessity of doing everything in one command. If there is an issue I'd like to fix it. Please try this and post the result. Download the latest version of edl.exe from this morning, 132,608 bytes.

C:\>edl.exe /lq662.elf /v
C:\>edl.exe /r /pboot_b boot.img /t /v

The /v is not necessary, it is only for debugging. It just adds confusion in normal usage.

[TheNoname]

Originally Posted by Renate

The /v is not necessary, it is only for debugging. It just adds confusion in normal usage.

Yeah, I prefer to use the verbose output just cause I'm curious, but you're right it's not needed

Looks like it did work with the two separate commands. Not sure why I has having trouble earlier

Let me know if you still want to see the output...I hesitate to post it publicly because it has chip serial numbers and other identifiers in it, but I can scrub it if needed.

[psymin]

I'm new to the forum.

I just picked up a Nova Air C and hope to root it.

I unfortunately updated the firmware to 3.2.1 from 2022-03-28.

Do you think this will complicate things?

[Renate]

No. Nope.

[TheNoname]

Nope! I was also on the latest FW when I rooted it

[psymin]

These are the steps I took under linux while following the guides here:

adb reboot edl
edl r boot_b boot.img --loader=q662.elf --debugmode

reboot device

adb push boot.img /storage/emulated/0/Download/

Do the Magisk stuff

adb pull /storage/emulated/0/Download/magisk_patched-24300_GxIP5.img .

mv magisk_patched-24300_GxIP5.img magisk_patched.img

adb reboot bootloader
fastboot boot magisk_patched.img

Do more Magisk stuff

Relevant links:

https://github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk/releases/tag/v24.3

https://github.com/bkerler/edl

https://developer.android.com/studio...ools#downloads

PS: the donor version of AFWall+ is almost essential since it allows for a light theme.

[downeaster59]

Originally Posted by psymin

PS: the donor version of AFWall+ is almost essential since it allows for a light theme.

I'm curious about AFWall+. I imagine its purpose is to keep our Boox devices from phoning home to China for unknown reasons. Other than trial and error, how can I tell which activities I should block through AFWall and which to permit? Thanks!

[psymin]

Originally Posted by downeaster59

I'm curious about AFWall+. I imagine its purpose is to keep our Boox devices from phoning home to China for unknown reasons. Other than trial and error, how can I tell which activities I should block through AFWall and which to permit? Thanks!

I believe the default setting is for it to blacklist everything. It can show a log of which programs attempted to access the network and the IPs involved.

I just whitelisted the apps I believe should have access. Installed a different browser called "EinkBro" too, just in case.

[mergen3107]

I block listed everything except installed apps by me + everything from the group “root” (adb, ssh, and some other useful stuff is there).

Most suspicious things are in onyx apps, which I disabled completely, however their UUIDs are shared with those from google apps, and in AFWall you can disable or enable them only in the same group. So I didn’t enable all those and never used Gapps or Play Store

[downeaster59]

A thank you to psymin and mergen3107! That is helpful! I should be able to sort it out from here.

[psymin]

Originally Posted by downeaster59

I'm curious about AFWall+. I imagine its purpose is to keep our Boox devices from phoning home to China for unknown reasons. Other than trial and error, how can I tell which activities I should block through AFWall and which to permit? Thanks!

For a bit more explanation, here is a screenshot of the AFWall+ Firewall Logs.

Android System(1000) all of the IPs appear to be US and Google related. (port 443)

Unknown(1073) also seem to be primarily Google / US, also Alibaba / US. (port 80 and 443)

Unknown(-100) is all Tencent / China traffic. (ports 8080, 80, 443, 9906 and 14000)

[wakkaday]

any other advtanages of rooting, away this weekend and will get started on monday
does it make a better performance? as its sending less data across to random places