How to unlock and root the Nexus 7

 

by Robert Nazarian

Those of you that pre-ordered your Nexus 7 should be receiving it in the next week or so. If you plan on unlocking and rooting it, you’ve come to the right place. We have all the instructions and download links to get your Nexus 7 primed and ready for customizing it to your delight. Just hit the break to get started

**These instructions are straight forward and easy, but things can go wrong so we don’t take any responsibility.
Requirements

1. You must have the sdk installed and able to access and use adb and fastboot.
2. You must have debugging enabled on your Nexus 7.

Unlocking the bootloader

1. Connect your Nexus 7 to your PC via USB cable.
2. Launch Terminal / Command Prompt
3. Navigate to the fastboot folder which will be inside the location where Android SDK is installed (On Windows, it should be in C:\)
4. Enter the following command: fastboot oem unlock
5. Once flashing is complete, enter: fastboot reboot
6. Download and place CWM in the fastboot folder and type in the following: fastboot flash recovery CWM-grouper-recovery.img
7. Reboot again by entering: fastboot reboot

Making ClockworkMod Recovery Permanent
Enter the following commands in terminal:

mount system
adb shell
cd /system
mv recovery-from-boot.p recovery-from-boot.bak

Gain Root Access

1. Download and place SU.zip directly under /sdcard on your device.
2. Enter ClockworkMod Recovery by shutting off your device, pressing and holding Volume Up, Volume Down and Power buttons until you see the screen flash with the iconic CWM logo.
3. From the main menu, navigate to install zip from sdcard > choose zip from sdcard > JB-SuperSU.zip
4. From main menu, select reboot system now

If you followed these instructions correctly, your Nexus 7 bootloader is now unlocked and you should have permanent root. Congratulations!!!
For more information please visit the source links.
sources: rootzwiki / xda / redmondpie