How to Enable WiFi Tethering on Motorola DROID

Tethering on Motorola DROID can be enabled easily. The method listed below involves rooting your phone, installing a custom recovery image, and a custom kernel and installing android-wifi-tether alpha4 utility (for Motorola Droid only). These instructions will tether your Motorola DROID phone.

Steps to enable Internet Tethering on Motorola DROID

Step #1 Rooting your Motorola DROID phone.
Follow our step by step guide to root Motorola DROID device

Step #2 Installing the updated kernel.
Install SirPsychoS’ recovery image (Software:Images – Droid-Devs). Use the latest version of the image from Sholes (currently 0.14.0: Sholes). For some details that aren’t covered in the droid-devs wiki, see this thread in droidforums (Custom Recovery Image)

Use SirPsychoS’ recovery image to back up your phone

• Boot in to recovery mode.. hold down Power and X while your phone boots
• Select the nandroid submenu, and choose the “Default Nandroid Backup” option
• Reboot the phone to regular mode

Copy the new kernel and driver to your phone – http://www.sholes.info/wp-content/up…ty-wifi.tar.gz (md5: 1d6123c66cd2824617438030543d5f79)

• This URL contains two files, the updated boot image (boot-new.img), and the updated tiwlan_drv.ko (the WiFi kernel module). These are necessary to enable support for iptables (which allows your phone to act as a router)
• Extract the files using `tar -zxf` (or your favorite unzip program, WinRAR, Stuffit..)
• Copy the new files to your sdcard using your favorite method (USB mount or `adb push <sourcefilepath> <destfilepath>`)
• Disable USB Storage Mode; unmount the drive on your computer, and turn off USB Storage from the phone (very important, since your files will not be accessible from the phone until you do)

Install the updated tiwlan_drv.ko file to /system (this assumes that the new driver is at /sdcard/tiwlan_drv.ko)

• Make sure you’re in root mode: `su`
• Put your /system partition into read/write mode: `mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock4 /system`
• Back up the old driver: `cat /system/lib/modules/tiwlan_drv.ko > /sdcard/tiwlan_drv.ko.old`
• Copy the new driver to the system: `cat /sdcard/tiwlan_drv.ko > /system/lib/modules/tiwlan_drv.ko`
• Sync the /system mount, and remount as read only: `sync && mount -o remount,r -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock4 /system`

Install the updated kernel

• This assumes the new kernel image is at /sdcard/boot-new.img
• This assumes that you still have the flash_image tool installed on your phone from the recovery image installation process
• If your flash_image program isn’t in /system/xbin (as instructed on the recovery tutorial at droidforums.. Custom Recovery Image), you’ll need to specify the full path to your executable
• Some users have reported that they had to be in recovery mode to flash the new kernel. This requires that you connect your phone to your computer via USB, enable debug mode in the Application Settings>Developer options area, and run the `adb shell` tool (part of the Android SDK Android SDK | Android Developers)
• Flash the kernel partition: `/system/xbin/flash_image boot /sdcard/boot-new.img`
• Hold the power button, select power off
• Hit the power button to turn your phone back on

How to tell if it worked (and fix your phone if it didn’t)

• If your phone stays at the white Motorola logo for longer than a minute or two, you probably bricked your phone.
• Simply turn the phone off (you may need to remove the battery)
• Boot in to recovery mode (hold x while you power the phone up)
• And restore the backup you made by selecting the restore option from the nandroid menu.

Step #3 Install the latest android-wifi-tether
Install the latest alpha version from the open source android-wifi-tether.

• wireless_tether_1_70-alpha4_droid.apk – android-wifi-tether – Wireless Tether for Root Users 1.70-alpha4
• This is an unsigned program, so you’ll need to enable the installation of unsigned applications in the Application settings menu
• Install the app using the Android SDK tool, adb: `adb install ss_tether_1_70-alpha4_droid.apk` (specify the actual path to the adb tool and the application)
• Run the app once to install the runtime files in /data/data/android.tether (no need to start tethering.. it won’t work. Just start the app and press the back button to exit)

Step #4 Patching android-wifi-tether.
This step involves replacing the “tether” program that controls starting and stopping the ad-hoc network on your phone.

1. On your computer, copy the tether shell script (tether-1.txt) to your sdcard: `adb push tether-1.txt /sdcard/tether` OR copy the file to your SDCard manually over USB (be sure that you rename the file from “tether-1.txt” to “tether”)
2. Disable USB Storage Mode; unmount the drive on your computer, and turn off USB Storage from the phone (very important, since your files will not be accessible from the phone until you do)
3. Make sure you’re in root mode: `su`
4. On your android shell, execute the following commands as root:
   `mv /data/data/android.tether/bin/tether /data/data/android.tether/bin/tether.orig`
   `chmod 700 /data/data/android.tether/bin/tether.orig`
   `cat /sdcard/tether > /data/data/android.tether/bin/tether`
   `chmod 700 /data/data/android.tether/bin/tether`
5. Open up the android-wifi-tether program, and start tethering. You’ll notice that the gui says tethering failed–this is incorrect. You’ll see that the program reflects correctly that tethering has been started. The error is related to the signals sent by the tethering script.
6. If at this point your tethering still doesn’t work, try rebooting your phone.
7. Limitations of this script: it does not correctly set the SSID or WiFi channel based on your settings; it will use the values from the tether-1.sh script. I doubt that the WPA settings will work correctly, since they are tied to the SSID. Also, most users have reported that the ad-hoc network is only visible for a minute or so after you enable tethering, so be sure to connect your first device immediately–after that, the network will remain up.

Please let us know if you face any issues in Motorola droid tethering.

Via[droidforums]

Disclaimer: The method listed above might brick your phone. Gadgets DNA bears no responsibility