Now using the latest and greatest microSD image. This post is an update of a previous post.
This aims to be a simple walkthrough for creating a bootable CyanogenMod 9 microSD card for the Nook Color, though it does assume familiarity with disk images, partitions, running text editors with administrative permissions and verygreen’s bootable SD card image.
- Acquire a microSD card compatible with verygreen’s size-agnostic image. Charge your Nook.
- Download generic-sdcard-v1.3-ICS-large.img.zip, and the latest CM9 nightly from Samiam303.
- Write Samiam303′s size-agnostic microSD image on your microSD card, following the instructions given by verygreen in the linked xda-developers thread. Do not put any CM7 image on the card.
The reason for the change from Verygreen’s image to Samiam303′s image is because the size of the nightly encore build has grown past the 116 MB allowed by Verygreen’s image. - After you have written the image to your microSD card, eject the card and plug it back in. You should see a partition named ‘boot’.
- Put the latest nightly file from Samiam303′s repository into the folder labeled ‘boot’. Do not unzip the file. Safely eject the card from your computer and insert it into your Nook.
- Turn your Nook on and wait for the image’s installer to work its magic. When the Nook turns itself off, turn it on to make sure that everything works.
- Once the nightly is installed, check that you are able to view wireless networks. Do not worry if you cannot connect. This will be fixed later. Power your Nook off and remove the microSD card. Insert the microSD card into your computer.
- In the partition that has the ‘etc’ folder, go to etc/wifi/. Open ‘tiwlan.ini’ using a text editor running with administrative permissions. Find ‘WifiAdhoc = 1′ and change it to ‘WifiAdhoc = 0′. Save the file and exit the text editor. Reopen the file to check that it the ’0′ was saved. If it was not saved, then you need to figure out how to run a text editor in administrative mode. Credit for this fix goes to EAK128 on the XDA forums. This will allow you to connect to WPA- and WPA2-secured networks.
- Once it is correctly saved, safely eject the card and insert it in your Nook Color. Power on your Nook Color. Connect to WiFi.
- If you want to install Google Apps, see Samiam303′s readme.txt post in his CM9 build repository. You may have to rename gapps-ics-*.zip to gapps-gb-*.zip because verygreen hardcoded the updater to look for a file with ‘gb’ in it.
- If you have apps backed up as .apk from CM7, you may be able to install them with ‘adb install’. ADB access is not enabled by default. You must enable it by going into Settings > Developer options and checking ‘Android debugging’.
Simple, eh?
Specific Credits:
- verygreen for his size-agnostic microSD card image, and for helping Samiam303 rework it for ICS.
- dalingrin and fattire for their work on porting CyanogenMod 9 to the Nook Color
- Samiam303 for his nightly builds
- EAK128 for the WiFi fix
- Various people in #nookcolor in Freenode for suggesting renaming the gapps package.
[...] An updated version of this post is available here. [...]
I cannot find an etc folder on my microsd card per step 8. The only folders I have in the root are .android_secure, B&N Downloads, LOST.DIR, and My files. There are no etc folders underneath any of those folders. In the update…zip file I see an etc and the file tiwlan.ini, but that is all. I'm lost now.
Starting from the top: You\’ve plugged the microSD card into your computer via a card-reader that is not your Nook? You\’re looking at the microSD card and not at the Nook\’s internal partitions? You have the correct partition chosen on the microSD card?
I successfully completed a CM7 setup using external SD load a few months back. Now I am trying to do a CM9 load and have followed your instructions 3 times. I have an 8gb Sandisk card. After the winimage I have one partition labeled boot and 4 files in it. I copied the nightly build zip file, insert in the nook and boot it. This time I watched the whole process and did see the inflate of systemetc folder. After booting the nook and checking that I can see the wifi networks (step 7) I power off, remove the card. I put the card into two different computers and can see only 6 files in the boot partition with no other partitions being shown. I have show hidden files on folders checked and all hide options off in explorer view. The nook does boot up into ics, but I can not see any other partitions with which to proceed. In disk manager I can see that there are 4 partitions, but only the boot partition is accessible. Now what? Jim Nealand j i m at casadiego dot c o m
For some reason, Windows machines may not see it. Try using a Linux LiveCD. For more information, join channel #nookcolor on irc.freenode.net.
Tried this today with the source time stamped 30-Apr-2012. It seems to go fine up through the Step 6. After the install completes and the screen has been off for awhile I rebooted. The Cyanoboot screen came up stayed up for a bit, goes black, then comes back up again. This loop seems to repeat indefinitely.
Any suggestions?
Try reinstalling it to the sd card?
Try reinstalling it to the sd card?
Worked grat on first attempt, even using a cheap ebay sd card. Quick and easy (I even connected to WPA internet on first try without even doing step 8. I can't wait to have a final release for my Nook and installit permanently. Thanks.
Just a heads up, if you have a lot of pictures on your internal partition it may take a few hours to initially boot. I gave up a few times thinking it was locked up, until I found all the thumbnails on the SD card for some of the pics I have on the Nook's internal storage. I backed up and deleted the pics off the internal, and it took less then a minute to boot into CM9.
Hi! Firstly thank you for putting this article. I have followed the document till step 6, and am kind of stuck at the cyanoboot screen. I selected sd recovery, sd normal but none of them seem to work. It keeps looping…can you pls help? Thanks
Only option I know of is to format and start back from step 0.
i don't see gapps-ics-4.0.3-sam-noinit.zip anywhere i looked through the cm9/ and misc/ folders in samiam's nightlies… did it move/ is there another place to find it?
Hi, Thanks for making this tutorial! I have everything updated and the nook is running fine. I can't seem to find the market to download apps and I believe it is because I never found this file: gapps-ics-*.zip. It is missing from the misc folder in Samiam 303's files. Or am I confused on where to locate the file? Thanks again!
rename the file to update-cm
I've followed these procedures and my Nook Color is working well as an ICS tablet. I didn't do step 8, and like Jim above I can't see a partition with an 'etc' folder in Windows 7. Wifi works fine though.
My question is: when downloading the latest nightly from Samiam's website I also find fix-bootanimation.zip and telephony-permission-fix.zip that the readme suggests I flash. How do I do that? I've tried various options in the Cyanoboot menu, but unlike Clockworkmod there doesn't seem to be a way to choose these .zip files to flash. The update and gapps .zip's just installed automatically when put on the sd card, but that doesn't seem to happen to the others.
Apologies for a noob question, but any help is appreciated.