I’ve been playing with Remix OS on a six-year-old Intel-based computer lately. It has 2 GB of RAM (right now, but I do intend to put a bit more in it) and a 320 GB hard drive, and I have to say I haven’t been this excited about an operating system in a long time. It is limited, certainly, but it is beautiful.
So I wanted to tinker with the power management, but for that I needed root access. I installed Remix OS in “writable /system” mode, and so with a quick Ctrl-Alt-F1 I’m looking at a root prompt… but apps can’t access root that way. For that you need something like SuperSU, which I run on my rooted tablet.
I’ll admit right now, if there is a way to boot into recovery mode on Remix OS, I haven’t found it yet. But it turns out that, by hacking on some procedures for rooting other Android devices, you can still make this work.
First, download the current stable SuperSU zip file from here:
http://download.chainfire.eu/supersu-stable
Unzip it on your Remix OS device. I just switched to the shell on the first VT and did it, but you can do it however you like.
From that first VT prompt, you’ll need to put the new su binary in place. Assuming you unpacked the SuperSU file into a folder named SuperSU in the Downloads folder, you need to do this:
cd /system/xbin mv su su.orig cp /sdcard/Downloads/SuperSU/x64/su . chmod 4751 su
NOTE that these instructions are for a 64 bit system. For 32 bit, you need to substitute x86 for the x64 above see the EDIT section below.
Now switch back to the GUI (Ctrl-Alt-F7) and reboot the system.
Once the system has rebooted, open up your file manager and find the SuperSU folder (under Downloads, if you did it like I did). Inside that folder you’ll find a folder named common, and inside that a file named Superuser.apk. Double-click it to install.
After installing, start SuperSU. It will tell you it needs to update; do that, and (with any luck) it will tell you it was successful, and that you should reboot again. Do that, and again with any luck, you are done!
Disclaimer: This worked for me. Your mileage may vary.
EDIT 6/9/2016 — I had trouble with apps that didn’t like the 64 bit RemixOS, so I scrubbed the system and installed the 32 bit version. When I did, the instructions above did not work… the su binary doesn’t seem to be right for the system, but the su.pie file in the same x86 folder does. So here are the updated commands to install on a 32 bit system:
cd /system/xbin mv su su.orig cp /sdcard/Downloads/SuperSU/x64/su.pie su chmod 4751 su