First of all, many thanks to verygreen, leapinlar, and bobokan for putting together all of the necessary downloads and processes to make this work. I wanted to outline my specific requirements for the HD+ and the process I used to get there.
Requirements: I wanted to run a rooted stock HD+ with some of my apps sideloaded and some of the built-in BN bloatware removed. This last part was very challenging because BN, in their infinite wisdom, have a startup process where it downloads and reinstalls these "golden" apps on a reboot.
Leapinlar's thread contains all of the downloads that you need. The procedure I followed was as follows:
- Unplug and charge the tablet and then start it to register with BN and allow it to download firmware 2.1.0.
- Ensure that you have ADB setup on your PC and it is able to see the tablet and connect to it. This is a crucial step that will save you hours of work because of reasons that I will specify below. You will need installed and you must follow the ADB install steps precisely as described in LeapinLar's post above. Don't proceed further until you are able to type "adb shell" at a prompt and able to get to the user-mode shell on the tablet. Also, the cable is kind of finicky so you must have it installed firmly in the proprietary BN connector or you will get random disconnect issues.
- Using Win32DiskImager burn CWM to a micro-sd card (I used a 2GB).
- Copy the Universal Root to the tablet storage or the microsd card. Install the microsd card in the tablet.
- (Warning: if you don't follow this tip, depending on the luck of the draw, you can end up wasting hours) Reboot the tablet using "adb reboot". If you cold boot the tablet by shutting it down and restarting it, it will often not detect the microsd card and thus ignore the CWM boot above. I wasted hours trying to rewrite cards, using different cards, using different CWM images, etc. before I stumbled on the tip provided by bobokan where it was indicated that the BN microsd card detection is much more reliable on a warm reboot. From this point on, I only did warm reboots and my card was detected every time. BTW, this is faster too compared to awkwardly holding on to the power button, which only allows a shutdown btw, and then holding it again for a start up.
- Once CWM is up and running, clear the cache folder and flush the Dalvik cache. Then burn the root zip above to flash using CWM.
- Pull out the microsd card and reboot. You now have a rooted tablet. I was given the choice to pick the Zeem launcher here, which I eagerly did to get away from the stupid bloated BN launcher. (Don't break out the champagne yet - you still have a ways to go if you want a tablet that is relatively free of BN's interference.)
- Connect to the tablet using "adb shell" and then type "su". This should get you to a root shell. If not, something went wrong in the above 2 steps. Before type su at the shell prompt, type "echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH" and copy its value. After typing "su", type "export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=<the value you got previously>". This is necessary in some devices to ensure that "pm" (the package manager) works fine.
- Remount the /system filesystem as read-write so you can make changes to get rid of BN malware as follows: "mount -o remount,rw /system".
- Go to /system/app and move the following BN packages to some other directory, ideally created in /sdcard, by doing "mv <app> <backup directory>". The apps are:
[*] CloudService.apk[*] Bn*.apk[*] GMS_Maps.apk (optional. I just didn't want the obnoxious Maps app running on my tablet)[*] Home.apk[*] PlusOne.apk
- Go to /data/app and move some of the ridiculous uninstallable apps that BN forces on you and re-downloads on reboot even if you uninstall or disable them:
[*] com.astraware.*[*] *.fbwrapper.*[*] *.hulu*[*] *.pandora*[*] *.spotify.*
- Warm or cold reboot the device and wait for it to connect to the network. Inspect the Applications tab in settings to ensure that the apps you uninstalled remain uninstalled or disabled. From this point on, any app that you uninstall should remain uninstalled. You can now also use "adb install" to sideload other nice apps in the tablet such as Swype (Play store shows it as incompatible but it works fine), Adaway (but be sure to make sure that the hosts file is stored in data and that you add su.barnesandnoble.com to the blacklist), etc.
Rant to device and app makers: If you think your apps are so great, let people use them voluntarily instead of forcing them on their devices without providing them any opportunity to inspect the privacy policy and permissions. BN in particular was flagrantly bad about this, re-downloading the apps on reboot once connected to the network.
Caveat: I had a session running "adb logcat" to see the app traffic on the tablet and noticed that after uninstalling the Bn garbage, there were some errors being logged complaining about missing cloud services and etc. So obviously there is still some BN malware trying to phone home but I haven't found it.
I am now happy that my tablet runs with just the software I want on it instead of running garbage that someone else forces me to carry on it. YMMV of course.
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