Neo Noogie, full backup/restore for Glow2, 3, 4

[Renate]

Noogie was the image to put on the NST so that you could backup or restore the entire internal memory.
It was usually put on the removable SD card.
In fact, it could have been just booted directly through fastboot.
Later, people worked on and succeeded on a way to boot up the NST without any valid internal memory at all.
This made the NST unbrickable.

Neo Noogie is pretty much the same, but updated for the Glow2 & Glow3.
Since these models don't have a removable SD card they need to be able to boot over fastboot.
This means that if you totally wipe out the memory on your Nook (including where fastboot is) you'll be bricked.
(That is, until we get working on a USB bootloader method.) We do have a bootloader, see https://forum.xda-developers.com/nook-touch/general/fix-bricked-glow2-3-4-t4002911

Warning: Windows will offer to format anything it doesn't understand! Do not format!

C:\>adb reboot fastboot
C:\>fastboot boot nnglow2.img

<use your favorite utility to copy to/from the disk that appears>

C:\>adb reboot

Update
New versions as of 2019-12-18, nnglow2.img, nnglow3.img, nnglow4.img
Download through the signature

 

[eriol1]

Noogie was the image to put on the NST so that you could backup or restore the entire internal memory.
It was usually put on the removable SD card.
In fact, it could have been just booted directly through fastboot.
Later, people worked on and succeeded on a way to boot up the NST without any valid internal memory at all.
This made the NST unbrickable.

Neo Noogie is pretty much the same, but updated for the Glow2 & Glow3.
Since these models don't have a removable SD card they need to be able to boot over fastboot.
This means that if you totally wipe out the memory on your Nook (including where fastboot is) you'll be bricked.
(That is, until we get working on a USB bootloader method.)

Warning: Windows will offer to format anything it doesn't understand! Do not format!

Can you add md5 sums for the images?

 

[Renate]

Can you add md5 sums for the images?

Neo Noogie does four things:

1. It boots up without mounting any partitions at all
2. It presents the entire internal SD card as a UMS volume over USB
3. It supports ADB
4. It supports the hardware console shell (Ok, most people didn't install a jack in their Nook)

None of this has anything to do with MD5.
But I'm glad you brought it up.

You can get an MD5 of the internal SD card (only when Neo Noogie is running, not when B&N has everything mounted).

# md5sum /dev/block/mmcblk0
0a1c3941a12abff93b44a2603381ad12  /dev/block/mmcblk0

It reliably generates the same MD5 since nothing is changing.

After you have pulled the 4 or 8 GB over to your host machine, you can likewise calculate the MD5.

Right now I seem to be getting two different MD5's despite the MD5's being repeatable (on either end) and multiple transfers give no differences.

 

[eriol1]

Neo Noogie does four things:
It boots up without mounting any partitions at all
It presents the entire internal SD card as a UMS volume over USB
It supports ADB
It supports the hardware console shell (Ok, most people didn't install a jack in their Nook)


None of this has anything to do with MD5.
But I'm glad you brought it up.

You can get an MD5 of the internal SD card (only when Neo Noogie is running, not when B&N has everything mounted).


It reliably generates the same MD5 since nothing is changing.

After you have pulled the 4 or 8 GB over to your host machine, you can likewise calculate the MD5.

Right now I seem to be getting two different MD5's despite the MD5's being repeatable (on either end) and multiple transfers give no differences.
Right now it's a head scratcher.

I actually just meant md5 of the bootable img files, so we can make sure the file is intact before booting.
But it seems you hit an interesting issue so I guess we're lucky I didn't explain myself properly

 

[Renate]

I actually just meant md5 of the bootable img files...

Oh...

nnglow2.img
[strike]21ce45fe df9abe3f 882c73fa 4928d091[/strike] [color=red]Obsolete numbers[/color]

nnglow3.img
[strike]1e3975db 5b0a8a3b 7c6cbf60 ef8e2449[/strike] [color=red]Obsolete numbers[/color]

Something strange is going on with the 8G MD5s, but not the files themselves.
I generate 233 MD5s on 32Meg chunks.
All 233 are identical on both sides!
I generate a single MD5 over the entire thing and they are not the same.

Ok, no problem at all.
What I was seeing was an MD5 utility on my Windows box that hadn't anticipated files > 4G.
MD5's of the transferred images (4GB or 8GB) on Nook and host agree.

 

[eriol1]

Oh...


Something strange is going on with the 8G MD5s, but not the files themselves.
I generate 233 MD5s on 32Meg chunks.
All 233 are identical on both sides!
I generate a single MD5 over the entire thing and they are not the same.

Ok, no problem at all.
What I was seeing was an MD5 utility on my Windows box that hadn't anticipated files > 4G.
MD5's of the transferred images (4GB or 8GB) on Nook and host agree.

I was just about to suggest something along those lines

Good to know there's no deeper issue. Thanks!

 

[RyogoNA]

(That is, until we get working on a USB bootloader method.)

Like i.imx6 usb recovery mode?
https://boundarydevices.com/unbricking-nitrogen6x-sabre-lite-i-mx6-board/
But, I don't really think it will be possible without disassembly.

 

[Renate]

But, I don't really think it will be possible without disassembly.

Right, it's not so friendly as the OMAP in the NST.
You have to play with the boot mode jumpers (which don't physically exist on this board).
You might me able to ground an easily accessible test point.
OTOH, if you've gone that far a JTAG interface would work too.

Big oops on my part
I accidentally left the setting in Neo Noogie for the internal SD card in read-only.
It's actually not a big deal (ahem, since no one complained).
Any backups that you made are fine.
It just means that you can't write them back into the Nook this second using that version of Neo Noogie.
Keep on making backups if you like.
I'll put up new versions of Neo Noogie in a bit.

 

[Renate]

I put new versions of the images in the first post's attachments.
The simple change was just to omit the read-only flag for the internal SD card.

I did a bunch of cleanup that you will probably not notice unless you use the shell.

Rant
Ever see that "__bionic_open_tzdata: couldn't find any tzdata" when running TWRP or other images?
The libc.so wants to get its hands on information about timezones.
Sometimes it's missing and then you get three lines of that gobble-dee-gook error message every time you use any command.
The simple solution is to park the tzdata somewhere (and patch libc.so with the hard-coded path).
All this just to say, "Ok, just use UTC and don't give me the stupid error messages continuously"?
Well, it's stupider. The full tzdata is 0.5 Megs.
Why? So we can have timezones for every podunk village on the globe (576 timezones).
I'm using a modified version of tzdata that includes only UTC and is 194 bytes.

 

[DanChr79]

Noogie was the image to put on the NST so that you could backup or restore the entire internal memory.
It was usually put on the removable SD card.
In fact, it could have been just booted directly through fastboot.
Later, people worked on and succeeded on a way to boot up the NST without any valid internal memory at all.
This made the NST unbrickable.

Neo Noogie is pretty much the same, but updated for the Glow2 & Glow3.
Since these models don't have a removable SD card they need to be able to boot over fastboot.
This means that if you totally wipe out the memory on your Nook (including where fastboot is) you'll be bricked.
(That is, until we get working on a USB bootloader method.)

Warning: Windows will offer to format anything it doesn't understand! Do not format!

C:\>adb reboot fastboot
C:\>fastboot boot nnglow2.img

<use your favorite utility to copy to/from the disk that appears>

C:\>adb reboot

Update
New versions as of 2018-05-04
nnglow2.img c52e433e 1340acd8 f4d89f9b fa572334
nnglow3.img 6bf28a03 aaa24b93 584a8c35 09cf3a0c

Hello - neewby here - I got the Nook Glowlight Plus -
is this a custom image ?ROM?
Thank you

 

[Renate]

is this a custom image? ROM?

It's not really a ROM because it's doesn't run Android or apps.
It is a custom image because it is a minimal OS.
Its only purpose is to allow you to copy the full internal memory to/from your desktop computer.

There are three ways to boot up an OS:

1. From the boot partition (normally the regular OS)
2. From the recovery partition (normally the factory restore routine)
3. Downloaded over fastboot (normally not used)

 

[DanChr79]

It's not really a ROM because it's doesn't run Android or apps.
It is a custom image because it is a minimal OS.
Its only purpose is to allow you to copy the full internal memory to/from your desktop computer.

There are three ways to boot up an OS:

1. From the boot partition (normally the regular OS)
2. From the recovery partition (normally the factory restore routine)
3. Downloaded over fastboot (normally not used)

Thank you for the reply
Then do you know of a customer rom or how to root the device?
The posts here are super old and I am not sure how to fully use (full android) my new Glowlight Plus?

 

[Renate]

Then do you know of a customer rom or how to root the device?

Well, there's a million ways to root it, but since you're on this thread, we can do it this way.

C:\>adb reboot fastboot
C:\>fastboot devices
1234567812345678  fastboot
C:\>fastboot boot nnglow2.img [color=red]nnglow2 for Glowlight Plus[/color]
C:\>adb shell
# echo /dev/block/mmcblk0p1 > /sys/devices/platform/fsl-usb2-udc/gadget/lun0/file
# cat /sys/devices/platform/fsl-usb2-udc/gadget/lun0/file [color=red]this is just a check to make sure that it worked[/color]
/dev/block/mmcblk0p1
# ^D
C:\>sdcard /r G p1.img [color=red]might not be G, use File Explorer and see what letter it is[/color]
SD card G, disk #3, 6,258,688 bytes, 512 sector size
C:\p1.img, 0 bytes
Copy SD card G to image (Y or N)? y
Copying SD card G to C:\p1.img
100%
Finished
C:\>imgutil /x p1.img default.prop
[color=red]Use a real text editor (not Notepad!) to change ro.secure=0 and ro.debuggable=1[/color]
C:\>imgutil /r p1.img default.prop
C:\>sdcard /w G p1.img [color=red]we're writing now, make sure everything was correct![/color]
SD card G, disk #3, 6,258,688 bytes, 512 sector size [color=red]make sure that this number is exactly the same as the first time![/color]
C:\p1.img, 4,421,632 bytes [color=red]this number will be somewhere around this, less than the 6.2M[/color]
Copy image to SD card (Y or N)? y
Copying C:\p1.img to SD card G
100%
Finished
C:\>adb reboot

sdcard.exe and imgutil.exe are in the signature, nnglow2.img is in the first post of this thread.

 

[DanChr79]

Well, there's a million ways to root it, but since you're on this thread, we can do it this way.

C:\>adb reboot fastboot
C:\>fastboot devices
1234567812345678  fastboot
C:\>fastboot boot nnglow2.img [color=red]nnglow2 for Glowlight Plus[/color]
C:\>adb shell
# echo /dev/block/mmcblk0p1 > /sys/devices/platform/fsl-usb2-udc/gadget/lun0/file
# cat /sys/devices/platform/fsl-usb2-udc/gadget/lun0/file [color=red]this is just a check to make sure that it worked[/color]
/dev/block/mmcblk0p1
# ^D
C:\>sdcard /r G p1.img [color=red]might not be G, use File Explorer and see what letter it is[/color]
SD card G, disk #3, 6,258,688 bytes, 512 sector size
C:\p1.img, 0 bytes
Copy SD card G to image (Y or N)? y
Copying SD card G to C:\p1.img
100%
Finished
C:\>imgutil /x p1.img default.prop
[color=red]Use a real text editor (not Notepad!) to change ro.secure=0 and ro.debuggable=1[/color]
C:\>imgutil /r p1.img default.prop
C:\>sdcard /w G p1.img [color=red]we're writing now, make sure everything was correct![/color]
SD card G, disk #3, 6,258,688 bytes, 512 sector size [color=red]make sure that this number is exactly the same as the first time![/color]
C:\p1.img, 4,421,632 bytes [color=red]this number will be somewhere around this, less than the 6.2M[/color]
Copy image to SD card (Y or N)? y
Copying C:\p1.img to SD card G
100%
Finished
C:\>adb reboot

sdcard.exe and imgutil.exe are in the signature, nnglow2.img is in the first post of this thread.

Thank you so much for your time and reply.
This will root the device?
I will still need a custom rom ? android to install on it?
Is there a script available or BAT file since I am a computer noob?

 

[Renate]

Thank you so much for your time and reply.
This will root the device?
I will still need a custom rom ? android to install on it?
Is there a script available or BAT file since I am a computer noob?

This will give you shell root access.
What you want to do with it is another question.
I don't have a script.
There may be other threads on this forum that use different approaches, do a dozen things and have scripts.
I haven't really paid any attention because I just rooted my devices with a hardware root console.

 

[DanChr79]

This will give you shell root access.
What you want to do with it is another question.
I don't have a script.
There may be other threads on this forum that use different approaches, do a dozen things and have scripts.
I haven't really paid any attention because I just rooted my devices with a hardware root console.

Danke Renate....

Usually after rooting, customers image will be applied to phones or tablets no?
So I root it and then.... I am able to use custom apk?

 

[Renate]

So I root it and then.... I am able to use custom apk?

If you just want to install an APK, you can just install an APK without rooting.
Have you tried that yet?

C:\>adb install whatever.apk

I could be wrong. I've never had an unrooted Nook.

 

[cipibad]

Does anyone has a glow3 backup that can share?
I "managed" to brick mine and I will need images to (hopefully) revive it.

Can anyone point me to a recovery guide via USB?
I suppose I should be able to start u-boot via mfgtool/uuu/imx_usb_loader with fastboot enabled and recover partitions content from there?

Thanks,
C

 

[Renate]

I should be able to start u-boot via mfgtool/uuu/imx_usb_loader

A late response, but...

I've tried various of the iMX loaders and didn't have much luck, so I wrote my own, imxboot.exe
It's available in the signature.

There are three new Neo Noogie images to download for the Glow2, 3, 4.
There has been a bit of cleanup and a few improvements.
It's easier to mount partions now, no need to do all the parameters yourself.

# mount system
# mount data

 

[Kramar111]

@Renate NST
Please add md5 for images
And update thread name to " & Glow4"
Thank you for all your work!