Rooting the nook touch simple
- Add the ability to browse the internet, read saved Pocket Articles, and browse Dropbox on your B+W Nook Simple Touch.
- Fun Fact, after rooting, you can navigate through play.google.com on your computer and install apps remotely to your nook!
- On firmware 1.2.1
- Go to
Settings > About
to find firmware version number
- Go to
- With the NookManager 0.5.0 from here
- Explained in more detail here
- connect microSD to a computer and identify its address
diskutil list
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk#
to unmount itdd if=/path/to/NookManager.img of=/dev/rdisk# bs=1m
- notice rdisk this time, rdisk is unbuffered
- Then insert microSD into a powered off nook, startup, and follow on screen instructions to root
- I also installed:
- SearchMarket To install apps from the Android Store (default Android Market does not have newer apps)
- Instapaper works the same as pocket (but pocket isn’t compatible)
- Just drag the *.apk to any directory on the nook, and browse to it on the nook. More Info.
- Opera Mobile, Way faster than the default browser
- Google Apps, bunch of steps to install, but went well and works fine.
- Cloudpipes for browsing dropbox (Drobox official, Downloader for Dropbox, and Dropbox / Box.net Client did not work)
- ES File Explorer, not really that useful.
Swapping the Dictionary
- place the microSD card with NookManager.img into the nook and bootup, select
Yes, start wireless
, and then selectStart ADB
adb connect <yourNookipaddress>
in the terminal on your computer- Lets look for the dictionary file, I know that it should be a
*.db
fileadb shell
find . -iname "*.db"
- Now lets browse the results (see here). Most notably, we see:
/data/media/B&N Downloads/Dictionary/2940043623508/dictionary.db
and/data/data/com.android.providers.userdictionary/databases/user_dict.db
both look promising
- if we then get out of the adb shell with
exit
, we can doadb pull <nook directory>
to get both of these files copied to our computer- using something convenient like SQLite Database Browser we can visually browse through these databases.
- its obvious that
user_dict.db
is not what we are looking for, its practically empty! - however,
dictionary.db
is much more promising- yet, if we were to delete the file via
rm dictionary.db
(while in the shell and the directory), and thenadb push <local new dictionary file> /data/media/B&N Downloads/Dictionary/2940043623508/dictionary.db
to overwrite the file, and then restart the nook, we would notice that the nook restart would take a while - Then, we would notice that english dictionary lookup still works, and our new foreign dictionary lookup does not work!
- What could have happened? Could the english dictionary have redownloaded and replaced the one that we had just placed in the folder?
- No, if we adb in again, and browse to the directory again, we see with
ls -l
that the file size indeed matches the file we placed in there, and not the one that we removed
- No, if we adb in again, and browse to the directory again, we see with
- So where is the real dictionary file?
- To be continued…
- yet, if we were to delete the file via
- its obvious that
- using something convenient like SQLite Database Browser we can visually browse through these databases.
- finally:
adb disconnect
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