Rooting the Asus ZenPad S 8.0 Z580CA tablet

Rooting the ZenPad S 8.0 Z580CA tablet

 

The tablet in subject is a very slim and portable high resolution 8' 4:3 device by Asus. Different variants are available; here the model with an Intel Atom Z3560 and 2GB RAM / 16 GB SSD will be considered (full specifications: here).

Instructions are provided for a standard Linux desktop, in particular a Debian stable 8.3 distribution "Jessie". For Windows, see i.e. here. Japanese notes: here.

Enable "Developer mode" on the tablet: "Settings" -> "About device" -> tap "Build number" many times. Confirm and look for the new "Developer options" entry appearing among the "Settings". Tap the "USB Debugging" box to enable it.

Download or copy into the device UPDATE-SuperSU-v2.46.zip (mirror here).

Connect the provided USB cable to an available desktop port, and verify that root can see the device: issue (as root) on a desktop terminal the command:

# adb devices 

Reboot into the bootloader:

# adb reboot bootloader

Verify that fastboot can still see the device:
# fastboot devices

If lsusb shows it but fastboot returns nothing, it can be a known issue with the utility version provided by the desktop Linux distribution is too old. Try a more recent one from Debian 'testing' for instance, or a recompiled i686 binary is provided here (mirror) from the XDA forum by senior developer Vampirefo (but beware of the security risks - safe hex is better! ;-).

Download on the desktop the last Intel Fastboot Tethered Temporary Recovery Session Launcher (FBRL; mirror here) and unpack it under /tmp/FBRL/.

Move to such directory and issue (as root) on a desktop terminal the following 4 commands:

# fastboot flash /tmp/recovery.zip recovery.zip
# fastboot flash /tmp/recovery.launcher recovery.launcher
# fastboot flash /system/bin/cp recovery.trigger.original
# fastboot oem backup_factory

... and check on the device screen that each one completes without problems. Select 'Reboot' to continue.

Insert a microSD card (important: make sure it is formatted as 'FAT32', not 'exFAT', for compatibility reasons: under Linux, the filesystem must be created with mkfs.vfat, not mkfs.exfat) in which the UPDATE-SuperSu-v2.46.zip binary 

Select: Install zip, read it in from 'External SD', proceed with installation and then reboot into the new, rooted state.
Enjoy things like i.e. Linux Deploy for availability of a really open source, complete system!