More Ubuntu - Nook Colors into Androids

I had just finished spending a couple very frustrating hours attempting to convert the Nook Colors I had bought my kids for Christmas into Android Tablets. I don't care what B&N thinks about their device, my kids are not getting them so that they can be better book readers... the entire point of the platform, from their perspective, is access to games, games, games. By blocking out the Android market from the Nook, B&N are shooting themselves in the foot, because instead of my kids having exposure to the brand (and even occasionally buying a kid's e-book), they will simply have no clue that this is a Barnes and Noble device, because their Nooks will be running Cyanogenmod.

Another example of idiotic policy: if you install Android on your Nook, it will void your warranty. I actually ordered the extended warranty at $49 per device originally, then found out about this, and cancelled that part of the order. Result? B&N losing out on the extra $100. What relationship the software I am running on the device has to do with hardware breakages (which is really what the extended warranty is for), I don't know, but there you have it.

Idiot corporate executives and their moronic decisions aside, there are smart geeks out there with excellent drives to undo said stupidities in everyday life, and of course, the Nook Colors have long been "broken", or "hacked", or "rooted", all meaning the same thing: taken out of their B&N box and made into full-fledged Android tablets.

The best known of these is Cyanogenmod, which is pretty nifty, well-tested, and stable. That's what I chose. And that's when I ran into trouble, because of one of life's great truisms:

Geeks write shitty instructions.

You can click here for the nicely detailed explanation of how to install this on your Book. I will, in fact, not repeat most of it here. Instead, my goal is solve the one problem that I, and many many others, run into when trying to do this, and which breaks the entire process right at the start:

The Nook will not boot onto the SD card.

And let me tell you, it's a stumper. Go ahead, follow the instructions, and see what happens. In fact, I urge you to find and follow instructions on many others sites, all revolving around a very similar process. You will find that nobody seems to think that an issue might arise with creating the SD card in the first place. It's a given. An assumption. Something too stupid to discuss.

Well, like previous posts in this sort-of series, as a public service to dumb users anywhere, me chief amongst then, here is the missing piece from all those instructions.

So you bought your card, downloaded Clockworkmod, burned it to the SD card, stuck it in the Nook... and it boots normally. Annoying, isn't it? so you try it again, then look for other posts around this issue, blame the hardware, run to the store to get a different reader or SD card or both, and swear the whole way.

But see, just like other things that are too stupid to discuss, this one is, too. The problem is so simple, that most geeks don't even see it as a problem. Here it is:

To create a properly booting SD card, you need to write the image to the master boot record, rather than the (data) partition (more or less, anyway).

So what does this mean, in practice?

When you get your SD card, I strongly recommend that after you stick it in the slot, you run the following command: palimpsest.

This will bring up a cute little GUI, with your drive in there somewhere.

Click on the drive on the left side, and you will see something interesting: it will have not one, but TWO records on the right. The top one is the "device" record, the bottom the "partition" record.

Now format the device, not the partition. It won't give you a typical file system choice, but rather ask if you want to format the master boot record. Nod stupidly. Say yes. Then remember that the computer needs you to click on something to confirm.

Go out of Palimpsest, and only then, run the "dd" command as listed in the original instructions. But you have to use the DEVICE as the target, not the partition.

What this means is that you need "/dev/sdd" instead of "/dev/sdd1" (in the case where /dev/sdd is the SD-card). Where can you find this info? again in palimpsest. Just make sure you use the device name at the top record on the right (for the device) and not the bottom (for the partition).

That's it. Your SD card is now truly ready to go. Continue the normal part (copying the files and booting the Nook with the SD card) and it will be a breeze from there. Good luck.