As I was trying to get back up-to-speed after my recent time off for my son’s wedding, I came across a post made on DroidForums.net by user Sam Fisher. Since I can’t actually count how many times per day someone says “I heard what you just said, but what does that mean?”, I thought it might be fun to post this so that you can have an inside view of what all this Rooting and ROM business is all about. Welcome to the world of Linux hacking!
[The post below was made by Sam Fisher; I have tried to clean it up just a bit, added some highlighting and spelling consistency, added some comments, and in a couple of cases, broke one entry into two for clarity. Apologies to Sam!]
I just wanted to take it upon myself to create a well organized post providing abbreviations and terminology so that any one, Droid master or Droid ‘noobie’, can have a quick reference guide to all things Droid. I myself do not know everything but i do know some things and I believe with some help from the moderators and contributing members of this amazing site, we can throw together a one-stop-shop for Droid info.
ADK:Android Development Kit, What people use to develop anything for the droid such as ROM’s
Baseband: In communications and signal processing, the baseband describes signals and systems whose range of the frequencies measured from close to 0 hertz to a cut-off frequency, a maximum bandwidth or highest signal frequency; it is sometimes used to describe frequencies starting close to zero. In Android OS, it is the code that drives the actual radios the phone uses.
Boot Loader: State in which the droid can be flashed from RSD with an appropriate .sdk file that reprograms the phone into a specific ROM or update. This is typically a last resort when the recovery screen cannot be reached to make a much simpler and less risky solution
Boot Loop: simply means something is preventing the phone from completing it’s boot cycle and is stuck between the boot animation and the unlock screen, creating a looped animation. This is often fixed by either reloading a Nandroid, or re-flashing a ROM from the Boot Loader.
Brick or Bricked: Jargon for a completely unrecoverable device, (no more than a brick or paperweight)
Bug or Software Bug: an error or flaw in software that produces a failure or unexpected/unwanted result. Typically created from incorrect code, this is why some ROMs are better and smoother running than others, because certain developers have taken the time to input “perfect” code
Busybox: BusyBox is a single multi-call binary that packages the functionality of most widely used standard Unix tools; BusyBox provides a fairly complete environment for any small or embedded system.
ClockworkMod: A recovery program that is often used to apply updates, ROMs, or create a back-up or restore a backup file
De-odex: Apk files have respective odexes that devs use to supposedly save space. Deodexing means you convert it back to a .dex file and put it back inside the apk. This allows you to easily replace files (not having to worry about odexes), but the main point was to deodex ‘services.jar’ so that you can change all text to different colors (such as the clock color to white) and to deodex services.jar, you need to deodex everything. Deodexing will create longer boot times, but should be equal after that and it gives you the ability to make changes otherwise impossible to do.
Dev. or Developer: An individual who creates, or alters a file in such a manner as to advance the program.
Flash or Flash Memory: a program technology that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It’s major benefit is that data is NOT lost when power is removed.
Kernel: The governor of the CPU usage and Battery output. One can upload modified Kernels to achieve greater performance speed of their device at the cost of some battery life. This is done by altering the clock-cycle of the CPU to higher or lower values.
Root: Common word associated with giving a user “super user” (or “root”) access to their phone’s programming and other various aspects, such as the file system, that would normally not be possible, also known as “Jailbraking” for iPhones.
Nandroid or Nandroid Backup: A file typically created in the custom recovery program, such as SPRecovery, that is a carbon-copy of whatever state your phone is in before a drastic change is made. The file then can be moved onto or off of the SD card for later use in case something should go wrong in the ROM or another Update, or if a Boot Loop occurs, etc.
OS: Operating system, i.e. Windows 7 or Mac OS X or iOS or Android, etc.
Overclocking: Speeding up the CPU past the factory presets to achieve a faster and more responsive device. This is most often accomplished by loading a new Kernel.
ROM: Read Only Memory. This is the entire OS/Apps that are loaded (flashed) to memory to run the device. Custom ROM’s can be used to make changes to anything from the look of the home screen, to icons, to custom boot animation or even to remove/replace apps.
RSD or RSD lite: Remote Software Download. Motorola’s own tool in flashing virtually any type of program, (so long as its in .sbf form) to the Android OS
Shell: A local terminal or command-line interface to interact with your device
SSH: Secure Shell or ssh is a network protocol that allows data to be exchanged using a secure channel between two networked devices
SPR or SPRecovery: A recovery program that is often used to apply updates, ROMs, or create a back-up or restore a backup file. See Nandroid above.
Stock: Simply means an unaltered state, such as when you first purchase your phone from Verizon, or when you do a factory reset to “go back to stock 2.1″
SU: “Super user”, or root permissions
Theme: A set of icons, backgrounds and app trays that change the aesthetics of the overall look and feel of the Droid and its applications
TUN/TAP: Refers to a network TUNnel, operates within Layer 3 packets, or IP packets. Packets sent by a system via a TUN/TAP device are delivered to a user-space program that attaches itself to the device. A user space program may also pass packets into a TUN/TAP device. In this case TUN/TAP device delivers (or “injects”) these packets to the operating system’s network stack thus emulating their reception from an external source.
Under-clocking: Slowing down the CPU below the standard speed, mainly to limit battery usage. Most modern kernel implementations allow for auto-speed changes between a minimum/maximum speed as demand requires.
.sbf: Summation Briefcase File
.apk or APK’s: An .apk file extension denotes an Android Package (APK) file, an .apk file can be opened and inspected using common archive tools
.tar: Similar to a zip file, a tar file archives multiple files into one file
.tgz: TGZ files are commonly used as install packages for Slackware Linux.
Thank you and happy hacking!