Karl Cordes

Root Nook Glowlight plus and install Safari Queue

Update: May 23 2016

My Rooted nook locked up and refused to boot properly. I managed to restore it to factory defaults but the screen had permanent distortion.

I returned the Nook to B&N for a replacement. Which is running the stock software.

An E-ink Android device has been on my wish list for a while, but until yesterday I hadn’t seen any high quality examples. The Nook Glowlight Plus looks great, feels sturdy and runs Android, so I picked one up.

It runs Android 4.4 (with custom Nook launcher), and should make a great litle device for reading technical books on the train with Safari Queue.

Sadly, Barns and Noble didn’t ship the device with Google Play or a regular launcher. A little hacking is required.

Requirements

If you have the Android SDK installed, you should have ADB. If you’re running Debian or Ubuntu, you can skip installing the SDK and get it directly from the respository.

sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb

Side track: I had some troubles making adb see my Nook.

$ cat /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules
#nook 2080
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="2080", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"

adb devices still didn’t list my nook :(

One of the answers in this Stack Overflow thread got it working. Create a file ~/.android/adb_usb.ini with the contents “0x2080” (2080 being the Vendor ID)

$ cat .android/adb_usb.ini 
0x2080

$ adb kill-server
$ adb start-server

$ adb devices
List of devices attached 
62449a4c    device
5054910005073155    device

Success!

62449a4c is my Samsung phone, and 5054910005073155 is the Nook.

Grab rootGLP.zip from cazar’s post on xda-developers. Unzip and run “sh rootnook.sh”

$ sh rootnook.sh
Rooted.

You’ll see that SuperSU has started on the Nook

It might not be strictly necessary to root the Nook before installing regular Android apps. That’s how I did it though.

Get an APK for a launcher

I installed KISS Launcher. It works nicely and is lightweight, free and open source.

Install the launcher on your Google Play device.

Find the package name and path: 

$ adb -s 62449a4c shell pm list packages | grep kiss
package:fr.neamar.kiss



$ adb -s 62449a4c shell pm path fr.neamar.kiss
package:/data/app/fr.neamar.kiss-1/base.apk


$ adb -s 62449a4c pull /data/app/fr.neamar.kiss-1/base.apk
2866 KB/s (243430 bytes in 0.082s)

Install the launcher APK on the Nook. 

$ adb -s 5054910005073155 install base.apk

Reboot your Nook by holding the power button. You should be prompted to choose your new Launcher.

Now we can repeat the process to install any other apps we desire. Here’s how I installed Safari Queue.

$ adb -s 62449a4c shell pm list packages | grep queue
package:com.safariflow.queue

$ adb -s 62449a4c shell pm path com.safariflow.queue
package:/data/app/com.safariflow.queue-1/base.apk

$ adb -s 62449a4c pull /data/app/com.safariflow.queue-1/base.apk
4088 KB/s (4299702 bytes in 1.026s)

$ adb -s 5054910005073155 install base.apk

Now my new shiny Nook is a handy and portable way to read Safari books!