For the time being, these instructions are a copy/paste of toastcfh‘s instructions. 100% of the credit goes to him and others who helped. I am working on a GUI method for windows users. I will not be providing help with rooting for now. Please post any questions about it over on XDA. I have locked comments on this topic for the time being.

Major thanx for those who helped:

keishou (for the rooted build. without it none of this would be possible)
maejrep (for testing and modding a recovery for the EVO)
Paul (for his recovery work on the desire and legend)
Amon_RA (for his recovery source on github)

WHAT THIS ROOT METHOD WILL DO

  • Allow you to flash custom roms
  • Boot into a custom recovery
  • Write to system, boot and recovery partitions through recovery

WHAT THIS ROOT METHOD SADLY WONT ENABLE YOU TO DO

  • Write to system or recovery while in android
  • Flash a custom recovery that can be booted into by holding vol down and powering on
THINGS YOU WILL NEED

Download files below:

INSTUCTIONS FOR ROOTING

  • Put the PC36IMG.zip on the root of your sdcard

adb push PC36IMG.zip /sdcard

  • Power off the phone
  • Hold volume down while powering the phone on. continue to hold volume down until you see the WHITE bootloader screen.
  • After a few seconds it will begin to checking for files, and find PC36IMG.zip. while its doing this it will show a blue progress bar while its checking. (this takes 30 – 60 seconds to finish)
  • It will then list all the images in the zip and ask you if want to flash. SAY YES
  • When its finished it will ask you if you would like to reboot. AGAIN… SAY YES
  • At this point it will boot into a rooted rom.

YOU ARE NOW ROOT!!!

  • rename the PC36IMG.zip on your sdcard:
  • plug your phone into a usb port on your desktop and do:

adb shell mv /sdcard/PC36IMG.zip /sdcard/root-PC36IMG.zip

RECOVERY INSTRUCTIONS:

  • Extract the evorecovery.zip to your desktop
  • plug your phone into a usb port on your desktop

In a shell:

adb reboot recovery

This will reboot your EVO into recovery mode. at this point turn your attention to the directory u extracted the evorecovery.zip to.

In a shell:

For Windows XP ~~> Run recovery-windows.bat
For Vista and Windows 7 do it as Admin
For Linux ~~> ./recovery-linux.sh

At this point turn your attention to the phone and navigate to create a Nandriod Backup. you can now flash custom roms, write, and make changes to system.

To flash a custom rom put the rom on the root of your sdcard. wipe data, dalvic cache and chose the option to flash update.zip from sdcard.

RECOVERY NAVIGATION

Volume up/down moves through the list and Power selects.

RECOVERY SOURCE

git clone git://github.com/jhansche/amonra_bootable_recovery.git
git checkout supersonic