Users of the Motorola Atrix HD received a little bit of a raw deal when their device was updated to Android 4.1. Although they were updated to a more recent OS, Motorola had decided to really go to town on securing the device against being rooted. It was possible to upgrade from a rooted version of ICS and protect root access throughout the upgrade procedure. However, many people couldn’t contain they rampant urge to upgrade, and neglected to do so.

Thankfully though XDA Forum Member djrbliss has made something of a habit of finding root exploits for Motorola devices as well as several other devices, and was able to do just that with the Atrix HDs running Jelly Bean. This exploit though is a little more complex than your regular one click affair, so you may want to make coffee before attempting this one.

First off, you’ll need to access to a Linux distribution of some kind. If you don’t already use Linux and don’t feel like installing it permanently, a live CD will suffice for this procedure. Next, you’ll need to set up a Samba share that can be mounted from your device before placing the relevant files on this share, accessing them and actually using them to gain root access.

There are quite a few steps and a fair bit of Terminal-based jiggery pokery to contend with. But if it’s root your after, it will all be worthwhile. All the steps are thoroughly explained by djrbliss in the forum thread, right through from setting up the Samba share to pushing SuperSU to your device. Some of you whippersnappers might even learn a thing or two about what rooting was like in the good old days, before the advent of the “one click” exploit.

Check out the original forum thread for more information.