[Nook Touch Android Development] jeff_kz:
This is a graphical, interactive rooting system with the ability to create/restore backups and factory settings.

This has been tested on systems 1.1.5, 1.2.0 (US/UK), and 1.2.1. It will probably work on earlier versions and should be safe to use on future versions. For best results, however, you should be on 1.2.1 before using this tool.

If you've tried rooting your nook unsuccessfully with another utility, it's best to do a factory restore (from NookManager, choose the "Rescue" option and then "Restore factory.zip") and, if your nook came with older firmware, upgrade to the latest 1.2.1 firmware.

Features:

Root your Nook

Backup/Restore

Restore to factory settings

Disable B&N Apps

Custom plugins

How to root:

1. Download NookManager.

2. Unzip the file you downloaded and write the NookManager.img file to an empty SD card. On Windows, you can use disk imager. Linux and mac users can use dd.

Use a real SD card adapter when writing the image,

DO NOT USE YOUR NOOK AS THE SDCARD ADAPTER

.

If possible, you should use a dedicated SD card for the NookManager image (so you can easily restore from a backup should you ever screw up your Nook). A 512Mb card is big enough for the NookManager image plus a backup of your Nook.​

3. Power off your Nook, insert the SD card and power on.

You should see the NookManager boot screen followed within 15 seconds by the welcome screen.​

4. Choose "No, continue without wireless"

the wireless option is for advanced users looking to connect directly to their device​

5. Make a backup using NookManager! Choose "Rescue" then "Backup" then "Format remaining space on SD card" and finally "Create backup"

Because NookManager cleans the empty space on the Nooks' internal partitions and compresses the backup, it will take at least 15 minutes (and up to 45 minutes) for the backup to complete. Be patient. The final backup file can be as small as only be a few hundred megabytes, depending on the number of downloaded or sideloaded books you have.​

6. Copy the backup image to your computer. Connect your Nook to your computer using the USB cable. Copy the 'backup.full.tgz' and 'backup.full.md5' files from the NookBackup drive to your computer.

This is your backup in case anything happens to your SD card. This backup is tied to your individual Nook so keep it safe. It's important to copy this file while your Nook is still booted from the SD card because Windows will normally hide the NookBackup partition on the SD card. If you ever need access to the NookBackup partition again, just boot your Nook using the NookManager SD card and connect the Nook to your computer with the USB cable.​

7. Root! After your backup, press "Back" and "Back" to return to the Main Menu. Press "Root" and then "Root my device"

8. That's it! After rooting, pres "Back" and then "Exit". Remove the SD card and put it someplace safe, in case you need to restore to your backup later.

After rooting, you can install Google Apps using straygecko's excellent NTGAppsAttack package if you want to use Google Market/Gmail/Calendar/etc.

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Technical stuff:

The actual rooting function is minimal and as non-invasive as possible:

uRamdisk is patched to enable ADB

the internal database setting is changed to allow installation of non-market apps

the DroidSansFallback font is replaced with the updated font from jellybean to add support for extended characters

the su/Superuser binary/package is installed

Relaunch is installed

ADB Konnect is installed for enabling/disabling ADB over wireless

on systems running firmware 1.2+, the ModManager jars and package are installed

on 1.2+ systems, the PackageInstaller.apk from the 1.1.2 firmware is installed to resolve issues with package installers

and, finally, the Amazon appstore is installed just to have some easy way of downloading new apps. You can uninstall it using ReLaunch if you don't use it.

The uRamdisk patching is done with scripts rather than copying pre-compiled binaries, so this should be safe for all existing versions of the Nook firmware and (hopefully) will be forward compatible with any new releases.

The rooting procedure is non-destructive and can be run multiple times without causing problems.

Under the hood, this is a minimal linux environment with the nook drivers/binaries and a few core android binaries. The display is generated with imagemagick and written directly to the framebuffer.

If you're connecting to NookManager wirelessly over SSH, the username/password is root/root

Wherever possible, the parts of this system are compiled from source including the Linux kernel, uBoot, and all of the buildroot utilities. The hardware drivers and associated binaries are extracted from the 1.2.0 upgrade package.

The source for the project, including an automated buildscript is available at GitHub.

Support for custom menu items and scripts is documented here.