yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
Hello,

A long time ago I was using a Nook Glowlight 3. I had rooted it, installed relaunchX and a bunch of readers. Later I switched to Boox Air (for size) and did not use the Nook for a long time.

Recently my son showed interest in reading books from a tablet, and I thought Nook would be suitable for him. However, since it was rooted, it was a bit complicated for him to navigate, so I decided to return it to its original state. Here is what I did to end up where I am now. I will be happy to elaborate on any of these, but I do not want to make my initial post too long, so people will be less likely to skip it.

1. I did a factory reset (by pressing home button during reboot), but this somehow erased the Nook launcher (or maybe I had erased it before, I am almost it was working before). After this reset, upon a boot, I would get past basic setup (timezones and wi-fi) and then get a blank screen.

2. Then using 5taps L-R trick, I turned on USB debugging again and rooted it again.

3. I installed relaunchX and Renate's launcher, but I could not tie them to the home button. I did not know how (I still do not know). I could launch them with adb shell and monkey command though.

4. I tried to get into recovery mode or fastbook through adb (by using things like "adb reboot recovery"), but did not succeed.

5. I downloaded and put the update.zip for this Nook and put it on / as well as /sdcard/ directories. Put Nook to sleep and waited a long time, but no success there either.

6. I was getting frustrated at this point and finally did something really stupid: I unzipped update to a directory under sdcard, remounted various partitions rw and tried to copy all the files coming from update.zip via a cp command. After a short while this command ran, I received an error message, something like "/bin/sh permission denied" (I guess it was referring to execute permissions not being present, and got kicked out of adb shell.

7. Now, the machine is going into factory reset upon boot and after the factory reset it reboots and goes into factory reset again. I tried interrupting the reboot multiple times, pressed various button combinations during reboot, but there are only two outcomes: power off or going into factory reset.

Is there anything I can do? If you can think of a software solution, I'd love to hear it.

I am not good with hardware, and I don't have any equipment (in particular I do not have a UART) but I am faculty member in a physics department in a university, so I can probably access any reasonable electronics equipment. I am willing to do some hardware tinkering, or perhaps to call on a favor or two from some of my experimental colleagues.

I am willing to try pretty much anything since my son is asking if I repaired the Nook almost everyday, and I would like to be able to honestly say I tried everything.

Thanks in advance for any help you may provide.

cheers,

ato
[Nook Touch General] Renate:
Manually installing an update.zip is not difficult, but that's not how to do it.

If it's really in a loop that you can't break and there's no ADB then you'll have to get more drastic.

One way is to use a UART and interrupt u-boot while it's booting and going to fastboot. From there you can flash a recovery and go to it, do a manual update, maybe fix something that's broken.

Another way is to defeat the flash memory on boot so that it goes to the ROM bootloader. From there you can use my imxlink.exe to load a modified bootloader that will go directly to fastboot,

Either of those two ways requires you opening the case. The Glow3 is not as bad as the Glow2, it doesn't use tape.
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
Thank you for your response. I can definitely open the case. I found some instructions here:

Barnes And Noble Nook Glowlight 3 Disassembly

This is a disassembly Guide For the nook Glowlight 3

www.ifixit.com

that looks doable.

It sounds like your second suggestion does not require additional equipment (except to open the case). Did you describe elsewhere on this forum how to defeat the flash memory on boot? I have read so many of your postings here in the last few weeks :) (and I am very grateful for those). I am guessing this might be something you already described before.
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
I can also order a UART. Will a CP2102 unit w/ 3.3 and 5V be adequate? I just think having a serial connection is so cool that I need to try it.
[Nook Touch General] Renate:
Yeah, any USB UART will do.

OTOH, I'm a bit more of a fan of the FTDI than the CP2102. I did have problems with a driver years ago but haven't touched them since.

If you fall in love with UARTs and want to use them on something modern, you might need 1.8V

I think that these are pretty cool in having selectable logic level.

https://www.amazon.com/DSD-TECH-SH-U09C5-Converter-Support/dp/B07WX2DSVB/

OTOH, anything will work for now.
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
I live in Turkey and that FTDI does not seem to be available here. I will keep your recommendation in mind though, thank you!

I ordered a CP2102. They had links to a driver on the order page, hopefully I will not have big problems. It should arrive in a few days.
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
I will try and open my glow3. Do I need to do anything special about the power? It is almost fully charged, so it would take a long time to drain the battery, but I can certainly try.
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
OK. I took a leap of faith and opened it up (I have a small window when my kids are sleeping), hopefully did not blow up anything.

Here is a photo in case it might help with someone looking to replace their nook glowlight 3 battery:View attachment 5703283If I need to tinker with J11, J12 or J13, I can tell that they are way beyond my soldering capabilities. Do I need to get some connectors?

Would more detailed pictures help?

cheers,

atakan
[Nook Touch General] Renate:
No, you don't need to solder unless you want to make it permanent.

Usually just sticking wires in holes and adding a bit of sideways pressure is enough to make good contact.

If you have those 0.025" gold pins (like on cable ends) they are a close fit to the hole and work great.

Do you have any resistors on hand? Maybe 100 ohms or so?

We can try to get you going before the UART arrives.
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
I do not have any resistors on hand, but I can pick some up in about an hour. I will do so.

Unfortunately I do not have any gold pins either, but i think I can find some 0.5mm cables, which are probably actually 0.025''.
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
I found some resistors including 100 ohms (but also 47, 1000 etc). I also found some cables that measure 3/128 inches, quite close to 0.025. I got my avometer and optician's screwdriver set :-)

How should I proceed?

While waiting your reply, I will install the WinUSB driver from zadig, I am guessing I will need that.
[Nook Touch General] Renate:
Download from my sig imxlink.exe and nnglow3.img (Neo Noogie).

Get the attached ub3fb.img

C:\>imxlink.exe ub3fb.img nnglow3.img

Now connect from TP23 to your 100 ohm resistor to a ground on the board.

While doing that LONG press the power button.

As soon as Windows "bongs" or imxlink.exe reacts disconnect the resistor and sit back.

You might have to try it a few times. Windows might be slow the first time that it sees 15a2/0063 on USB.
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
Wow! Something happened. iMX Link is working and now saying waiting for Fastboot or ADB.

Before that, the red led for Bootloader was on briefly.

The screen is showing the nook image that it shows while starting to boot.
[Nook Touch General] Renate:
Mmm, do you have the drivers for fastboot already loaded?

Are you sure that it isn't in fastboot?

When you pull the USB cable and reinsert it does it go "bong"?

Check in devmgmt.msc with "Show all devices". Look for 18d1/d00d

Make sure that it has a driver.

It really should go Red - Yellow - Green.

If not, try doing it again.
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
I do not know what the drivers for fastboot are. How I check for them?

When I pull the cable it goes "bong", but not when I reinsert it, not upon further pulls.

I'll try again.
[Nook Touch General] Renate:
Well, if you never saw yellow, you don't have drivers or something.

Did you ever have fastboot working on your desktop?

It's the same "Google drivers" as for ADB.

If you see something with an exclamation mark in Device Manager (devmgmt.msc) that's it.

I know this stuff works because on my Glow3 I intentionally erased u-boot so that I could always reboot using imxlink.exe and get a direct choice of boot image.
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
No, I always used ADB on Linux before, and not on Windows, which it what I am using now.

It is trying to install i.mx6sl driver from windows update and failing.

I will look for this "Google drivers" for ADB
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
I installed the Google drivers. It now went to red, then yellow but not green.

It is now saying

Waiting for disconnect...

Waiting for ADB...
[Nook Touch General] Renate:
Quote the text please, I don't know what's going on.

What's the screen doing?

You probably need to install the drivers for ADB.

If your Linux system has ADB you should be able to plug it in now.
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
I am sorry, I am really a noob w/ Windows, I cannot even take a screenshot (I tried PrtSc button).

Here is the output:

C:\Users\ato\Downloads\renate>imxlink.exe ub3fb.img nnglow3.img

Waiting for bootloader or Fastboot or ADB...

Found iMX6SL

Load addr 87800400, DCD offset 002c, DCD size 0220

67 DCD ops processed

Write, addr 87800400, size 00039270

********************************************************************************

********************************************************************************

*********************************************************************

Jumping to 87800400

Device disconnected correctly

Waiting for Fastboot or ADB...

product i.mx6sl NTX Smart Device

version 0.5

Sending boot image, 6043648 bytes... ok

Waiting for disconnect...

Waiting for ADB...

I installed Google ADB drivers.

When I try to run ADB from Windows, for "adb devices -l" I get an empty list.

Should reboot into linux and try?
[Nook Touch General] Renate:
Does the screen say "Neo Noogie"?
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
No. It is the usual nook image.
[Nook Touch General] Renate:
I had forgotten whether the ROM bootloader had a timeout or not. It doesn't.

Don't run imxlink. Leave the cable connected. Resistor and reset. It bongs. Remove resistor. Start imxlink.exe
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
Do I keep pressing the power button during all this?

I tried multiple times, but I cannot get past yellow, and I cannot get Neo Noogie image.

I will also try with my wife's computer later, which has windows10 (I have windows 7). If that does not work, I guess I will wait for the UART. Will that have a chance, even though this did not work?

Thanks for your help. I really appreciate it.
[Nook Touch General] Renate:
If you remembered what you wrote that might help.

One of the shortcomings of the Glows is that they rely on the ntxhwcfg.

That's the only thing that comes off the flash that is needed for a "no mount" boot like Neo Noogie.

I don't know whether the resistor gambit is impeding access to that (although I've done it before) or whether ntxhwcfg got screwed up.

Just for fun, try imxlink.exe ub3fb.img (no nnglow3.img).

You should be able to get to fastboot.

C:\>fastboot continue
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
I did get red and yellow again. I guess this means I got into fasboot?

iMXlink then exited. When I ran "fastboot continue" I received:

Resuming boot FAILED (remote: '')

fastboot: error: Command failed

The screen is still nook screen.
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
I am not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean what I wrote with my cp command, trying to copy over the update?
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
Well it failed to write to /META-INF in my first try, then I remounted that directory read-write and tried again, than it failed, and kicked me out. If I had to guess, I would say I must have at least overwritten that directory. I probably also overwrote some part of system, at least /bin subdirectory to change the permissions of sh. But beyond these I cannot say anything.
[Nook Touch General] Renate:
Well, there's no META-INF anywhere in flash.

So, anyway, can you get to fastboot? (With the command without nnglow3.img)

Can you:

C:\>fastboot flash recovery nnglow3.img
C:\>fastboot flash misc misc-rec.img
C:\>fastboot reboot
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
Unfortunetely, no. After getting yellow led. I tried the first fastboot command you wrote and received:

Sending 'recovery' (5902 KB) OKAY [ 0.230s]

Writing 'recovery' FAILED (remote: '')

fastboot: error: Command failed
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
When I ran iMXlink without nnglow3.img it exits after the yellow led by the way.

I sometimes (not always) get the message that a USB device is not recognized. I may be missing a driver but I have no idea what it can be. I did not manage to find the "18d1/d00d" device you mentioned earlier, in device manager. So, perhaps that is the problem.
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
I have Neo Noggie image!!

Somehow windows10 worked.

adb devices is seeing a device, but does not identify it as nook.

This is the full output:

C:\Users\irema\Downloads\ato\renate>imxlink ub3fb.img nnglow3.img

Waiting for bootloader or Fastboot or ADB...

Found iMX6SL

Load addr 87800400, DCD offset 002c, DCD size 0220

67 DCD ops processed

Write, addr 87800400, size 00039270

*************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Jumping to 87800400

Device disconnected correctly

Waiting for Fastboot or ADB...

product i.mx6sl NTX Smart Device

version 0.5

Sending boot image, 6043648 bytes... ok

Waiting for disconnect...

Waiting for ADB...

ADB version: 01000000, payload: 4096, type: device::ro.product.name=;ro.product.model=;ro.product.device=;

uid=0 gid=0
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
Windows tried to mount a bunch of partitions and wanted to format. I declined them all.
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
And here is the output of adb devices:

C:\Users\irema\Downloads\ato\platform-tools>adb devices -l

List of devices attached

5080610044193168 device transport_id:1
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
Can I disconnect and power off the device? Will it boot into NeoNoogie next time I turn it on?

If I will have this adb shell permanently, I would like to read more on how to restore the device and try to do it right this time.

Renate, thanks again for all your help. You are a true hacker. I am sorry that the solution might not have been as interesting as you may have thought, it was probably simply a problem with my windows setup. But I really appreciate your knowledge, your willingness to share it and especially your patience. Thank you!
[Nook Touch General] Renate:
Great! That's a lot better.

Mmm, there's really no way to power down from Neo Noogie.

You might just throw it in the corner on a charger until you're ready to deal with it.

Then you can load your update on it and correctly install it.
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
OK. I have been looking around in these forums and elsewhere, and I think I know how I should proceed. I will summarize my plan and my reasoning. The only other person active in this thread was Renate and she obviously does not need this information, but I am hoping that it will be helpful to someone else in the future. I am also hoping that if my plan is obviously doomed, someone will let me know.

First, I now have Neo Noogie [1] running on my Nook Glowlight 3. This program allows an ADB [2] connection with root privileges. The way it launched (see above), it is ran completely from memory; somewhat similar to running a Linux distribution from a LiveCD. This has the advantage that it can access the drives and partitions, and modify them without overwriting itself. Its drawbacks are (1) if you switch the power off, it will go away (just like a LiveCD), (2) it can actually completely brick your Nook if you do the wrong thing.

My aim is to restore my glow3 to almost its original state. I may install an alternative launcher and an alternative reader later, but I will not discuss how to do those here. If I succeed with this first part, and execute these future plans; I will probably write another summary post.

So, first I need an update image. The latest can be obtained from here [3], look into that json file, what you need is the "update.zip" file. The second step is to put this update into my glow3.

The first alternative is the use fastboot (something similar to this [4]). I don't want to do that since I am not sure what is required by fastboot is available, many fastboot commands have failed in my previous tries. This is something to keep in mind if something similar happens, you can get fastboot but nothing else.

The second alternative is to mount all partitions (see [5] for a partition list), and unzipping the update file (or unzipping it on my computer, adb pushing it to glow3 and copying everything over). I am very reluctant to do this, since something similar is what caused my current problems (and Renate explicitly said this is not the way to install updates).

The third alternative is again given by Renate [6,7]. This is what I am planning to implement (in particular the commands in the latter). The cited posts are for other nooks, but I convinced myself that the differences are not important for this purpose. I can probably read more about the options to update_binary, but again the difference between "2 1" and "2 stdout" does not sound important.

1: https://xdaforums.com/t/neo-noogie-full-backup-restore-for-glow2-3-4.3784575/

2: https://www.xda-developers.com/adb-tips-tricks/

3: http://www.nook.com/services/cms/doc/epd_ota/BNRV520_manifest_rel.json

4: https://xdaforums.com/t/new-nook-glow-light-4.4363453/page-2#post-86080409

5: https://xdaforums.com/t/nook-glowlight-3.3698608/post-75004512

6: https://xdaforums.com/t/nook-simple-touch-network-problem.4130461/post-83052867

7: https://xdaforums.com/t/fixing-a-dead-glow-glow2-brnv510.4229851/post-84510247
[Nook Touch General] Renate:
stdout = 1

The first number is the version of update, that is 2

The second number is where you want it to print out, 1 is stdout

On some modern Androids the /data (i.e userdata) partition is encrypted and not (easily?) mountable in recovery.

And the update.zip's are ginormous, 1.5 GB

So it can be difficult to find a place to park them.

On my Poke3 i put the update.zip on a flash drive.

Using USB OTG for update I can't use USB ADB (although I could use ADB over WiFi).

I have a utility that recognizes the flash drive and does the install, showing progress on the screen.

The Glows don't use encrypted /data and the update.zip's are manageable.
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
That sounded almost like a blessing, so I went ahead.

I ran the commands referred above and everything seems to have succeeded.

Unfortunately, upon rebooting the Nook, I got something unexpected. After passing the "Get Started" and wifi setup, I received a blank page. No launcher, no reader, just a few icons at the top for wifi, light etc. and clicking on them gives nothing.

So I went back to "Get Started" screen and tried the easter egg, did not work.

So made a factory reset, and then the easter egg worked. I now have ADB again, with

List of devices attached

5080610044193168 unauthorized usb:1-1 transport_id:2

I think I can get root by following instructions I found elsewhere. Then I will look into installing a launcher, a reader and most importantly, making that launcher work upon boot and w/ the home button. I have more ADB reading to do :)

At the same time, I will try to learn if I can restore the original image somehow. I mean, this device did come with working software. Maybe someone took a backup and made it available.

This is way better than what I had before, at least I am no longer feeling like I am banging my head on the wall, thank you!
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
I had some progress but still did not reach my goal, and I do not have a clue on how to proceed.

I managed to root my nook, install Renate's launcher, enabled glow3 to see it as a launcher, and installed an ereader (Orion) that can read PDFs.

However, I could not restore the original nook application (or more likely, I am missing something that it requires). I installed some nook apk's I found on the web, I also installed the bnereader.apk file from the update (along w/ Settings, SettingsProvider and partner), but Nook app does not work. It does nothing. ps shows that bnereader is running (and unexpectedly for me, when killed it comes back), but I just see a blank screen (with the usual time and icons line at the top).

I also cannot change the brightness settings (either by tapping the icons upper right which does nothing, or by running "Settings" from launcher and within that).

Is there anything else I can try?

Also, I would welcome suggestions for a simple PDF reader :)
[Nook Touch General] nmyshkin:
EBookDroid (the one modified for the NST with increased contrast) is what I use on my NST. It's not perfect and text reflow is just about as bad as you would expect. What does work very well is to view the file at normal magnification in landscape mode. This gives a very nice font size and if the reader is set for a continuous vertical scroll, reading is really nice, albeit with NoRefresh so there's no flicker.

Of course you can't do that with the Glow3. I used to use Orion but found its screen divisions very confusing. How about PerfectViewer and its PDF plugin? Some people have expressed a preference for that, and you can get a more recent version.
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
I will check these out. Thank you!
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
OK, I think I may have found one of my problems:

I do not have this SystemUI

It is not available in the update.zip file. I found some "alternatives" in these forums, for example: https://xdaforums.com/t/replacement...ck-and-menu-buttons-n-as-home-button.1415075/

However, nothing exactly for glow3; can I still use these? Could trying them out break my system even worse?

On a related note, here is what I have in priv-app:

root@ntx_6sl:/ # ls /system/priv-app/
BackupRestoreConfirmation.apk
BackupRestoreConfirmation.odex
DefaultContainerService.apk
DefaultContainerService.odex
ExternalStorageProvider.apk
ExternalStorageProvider.odex
FusedLocation.apk
FusedLocation.odex
InputDevices.apk
InputDevices.odex
Keyguard.apk
Keyguard.odex
MediaProvider.apk
MediaProvider.odex
NookHWTestPiperapp.apk
OneTimeInitializer.apk
OneTimeInitializer.odex
ProxyHandler.apk
ProxyHandler.odex
Settings.apk
Settings.odex
SettingsProvider.apk
SettingsProvider.odex
SharedStorageBackup.apk
SharedStorageBackup.odex
Shell.apk
Shell.odex
ShellCmd.apk
ShellCmd.odex
bnereader.apk
partner.apk

Is there anything crucial missing here? And if so, any ways to find them?
[Nook Touch General] atogurkan:
I have another question: Could running

fastbook update update.zip

produce a different result than running the update-binary as described here: https://xdaforums.com/t/fixing-a-dead-glow-glow2-brnv510.4229851/post-84510247

or are these essentially the same thing?
[Nook Touch General] Renate:
The last thing that I have that had SystemUI.apk is Glow2 45.1.14

They refactored that stuff and put it elsewhere.

Hmm, I've never used (or noticed) fastboot update.