[T-Mobile myTouch 4G Slide] Blue6IX:
As I am working my way through the public transportation circuit back to my dev chair, I have a chance to ask for help if someone(s) are interested in helping the doubleshot development effort at large.

Development in the open source community is about two main points:

1. Being driven by your curiosity to learn something new or make something do whatever it does differently or better.

2. Distributing the workload of what we want or need between multiple people - many hands make light work and if everyone contributes something small collectively it turns into a whole lot of progress and success.

So here's something that would help us all out immensely even though it seems like a small issue on the surface:

.nb0 and .nbh files - how to break them down and an explanation of how exactly they work.

What they are is a proprietary format used to wrap up some of the installer files within OTA and software updates we get from HTC for this device. (Other HTC devices too)

We also need to have or have links to the software we need to break them down with.

This information and how to use it will make a tremendous difference in how quickly and effectively we can assimilate and process our official software updates and continue to deliver both S-OFF and Root solutions when they are stripped from us on OTA pushes.

I'm making too much progress on other fronts and with other issues to stop and take care of this, and the very limited searching I've been willing to spare on this front has lead to dead ends and dead (mostly megaupload) links to what we would need.

Honestly, I've got a lot of dev work I've gotten myself involved in with this device and the progress I make doing other stuff is greater then putting more time into this, based on the project files I have in process. If I was just starting with helping out on doubleshot development this would be what I would be spending time on - just where I'm at I lose momentum focusing on this.

I get PM's from people asking for advice or direction on how to help out in addition to a scattering of threads around here started by people with lot's of enthusiasm but no direction, and I definitely understand! I've been and (believe it or not) continue to be in that very same position!

Sometimes all people need is a nudge in a direction, a path pointed out to them that they can explore and learn about - this is just such a signpost on the way to becoming the developer some of you out there want to be.

Development basically = knowledge + implementation, and the more you know the more creatively you can leverage it to your advantage. We certainly have some creative people who have passed through or are here now surprising us every day.

From the impressively out of nowhere CM7 port kornyone gifted us with in the past to the jaw-dropping brute-force ICS work tbalden blazed a trail into ( and sucked a few people into along the way :) ) all the way down to the work XMC has been steadily chipping away at building tools for us to use and wrap it all together with - we really have some talent, passion and a lot of success in our small but effective corner of the XDA forums.

...and those are only a few of the people who have made a lot happen around here, there are and certainly have been others who have either left a mark on development for this device or continue to do so.

Excited? I am! There's so much cool stuff to do and who cares if we never get an 'official' ICS update? We (collectively) are producing software the manufacturers/carriers wish they could produce in a fraction of the time it would take them to do so.

What some may not realize, though, is that it isn't this person or that person making it happen, but the collective efforts of us all together that enhance and compliment the individual strengths we all bring to the table separately.

...and it's all built on us sharing what we know and helping each other out. Maybe some out there, especially the more casual viewers or unregistered lurkers don't realize just how much we work together - where the larger sub-forums are more scattered and individualized just because of their population.

As an aspiring dev, this should make our little corner even more appealing because that leaves a lot more new ground to cover and gives everyone who jumps in that much more of an impact on what we have available.

Maybe in other places you're the fiftieth person to make some lockring or point something out, but over here just about anything you get into is new ground for us - so we are definitely excited about everything anyone has to offer, no matter how trivial it may seem to you.

As many of you have gathered by now I'm a bit long winded at times, but it's all so exciting!

So back to the original point, which was that if someone or a handful of someone's wanted to do something to help out, and push development for the device forward but wasn't sure what to do, figuring out how those .nb0 and .nbh files work and finding some software to crack them open with would be a big help in gaining and maintaining S-OFF and Root for this device.

.nb0 files especially, because they are something within the OTA that is a single file that impacts multiple partitions, and we really haven't gotten a look inside of them at what exactly they are doing to our device and how.

The death of megaupload and sites like it cost the open source community a lot of tools that are in some cases still missing and in others maybe never to be replaced...at least not without someone taking the time to sit down and do so.

...could that be you?

Cliff notes:

Any and all info on the .nb0 or .nbh file format, anything people can gather.

How do we break them apart?

What is inside of them when we do?

What partitions does it flash it's pieces to, are the individual pieces signed or just the file itself?

Can we make these files?

...How?

.nb0 is inside the OTA packages, .nbh is a type of package like the PG59IMG.zip files, so the tools to work with them are different?

Here is an .nbh thread that could help get someone started...

NBHextract: Extract contents from NBH files with a tool but we don't have any of these files yet?

Here is the wiki page it links to which will help more:

NBH wiki page that it links to on that tool page which might help some more.

I bring up .nbh because that is one of the methods of insertion the auto-install tries to use when booting to hboot:

...and the more people we have familiar with these files and spend time helping us to figure them out, the better equipped we will be to deal with new OTA packages and everything that goes with them.

What do we know? Collectively, here, not very much - if so, someone speak up and if not here's something people can help with.

How do we make .nbh files, or any of the other packages quoted there we don't have?

We've pretty thoroughly examined PG59IMG.zip files but the .nb0 files in them are still somewhat of a mystery - here are the ones from the 3 PG59IMG.zip files you can find links to here:

Restore to Stock

Files:

doubleshot_1-28-531-9_nb0.zip

Download Link

MD5: d5e8721090dbc048c711d7f42404286b

Size: 1.75 MB

doubleshot_1-55-531-3_nb0.zip

Download Link

MD5: dba1925982b4c5e0a41f3291942e09e0

Size: 1.75 MB

doubleshot_1-63-531-2_nb0.zip

Download Link

MD5: aaa9edc7b2c5ec91559ab01caebab8ac

Size: 1.75 MB

These zip files are in uncompressed form, simply zipped in store - small files but 2 each. Here you go, hope someone has fun with them!

Sent from a digital distance.