A series of commande to update manually a firmware on the Kobo Touch. (
Do at your own risk, do not do it if you are not comfortable with a shell)
This is was done on MacOSX 10.6. The most difficult part was to find the actual address of the firmware. After magical incantations and observing the clouds, we found the current firmware url
Code:
curl -o ~/kobo3-upgrade-1.9.9.zip http://download.kobobooks.com/firmwares/kobo3/kobo3-upgrade-1.9.9.zip
The terminal will display.
Code:
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 23.4M 100 23.4M 0 0 1007k 0 0:00:23 0:00:23 --:--:-- 1071k
You can see the content of the file with:
Code:
unzip -l kobo3-upgrade-1.9.9.zip
which will display
Code:
Archive: kobo3-upgrade-1.9.9.zip
Length Date Time Name
-------- ---- ---- ----
22906325 07-28-11 15:55 KoboRoot.tgz
102 07-28-11 15:57 manifest.md5sum
0 07-11-11 15:23 upgrade/
1862596 07-28-11 15:56 upgrade/uImage
117252 07-28-11 15:56 upgrade/u-boot.bin
-------- -------
24886275 5 files
Plug the Kobo ereader. Do not start the desktop application
In the shell, it is possible to access the device directory.
On the macintosh
Code:
cd /Volumes/KOBOeReader
to list all directories including those starting with a dot (hidden unix files)
There is a .kobo/ directory
will list the content of the system
Code:
total 2000
drwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 4,0K 2 aoû 19:33:02 2011 ./
drwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 4,0K 24 jul 14:58:04 2011 ../
drwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 4,0K 22 jul 02:08:20 2011 Kobo/
-rwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 1,9M 2 aoû 21:35:40 2011 KoboReader.sqlite*
-rwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 3,3K 22 jul 02:42:22 2011 Trolltech.conf*
-rwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 31B 2 aoû 19:33:04 2011 affiliate.conf*
-rwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 75B 22 jul 02:08:20 2011 device.salt.conf*
drwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 52K 4 jul 01:05:40 2011 images/
drwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 4,0K 4 jul 01:05:40 2011 kepub/
-rwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 83B 22 jul 02:08:18 2011 version*
We want to unzip the zip file, we downloaded
into the .kobo directory.
To be sure to have a security backup, I did before a compressed archive of the full volume.
Code:
tar zcvf ~/kobo-bkp.tar.gz /Volumes/KOBOeReader/
Now let's proceed on unzipping
Code:
unzip ~/kobo3-upgrade-1.9.9.zip -d /Volumes/KOBOeReader/.kobo/
The terminal displays:
Code:
Archive: kobo3-upgrade-1.9.9.zip
inflating: /Volumes/KOBOeReader/.kobo/KoboRoot.tgz
inflating: /Volumes/KOBOeReader/.kobo/manifest.md5sum
creating: /Volumes/KOBOeReader/.kobo/upgrade/
inflating: /Volumes/KOBOeReader/.kobo/upgrade/uImage
inflating: /Volumes/KOBOeReader/.kobo/upgrade/u-boot.bin
If we display again the content of .kobo directory, we get
Code:
total 24388
drwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 4,0K 2 aoû 21:07:36 2011 ./
drwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 4,0K 2 aoû 21:09:44 2011 ../
-rwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 4,0K 2 aoû 21:07:36 2011 ._KoboRoot.tgz*
-rwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 4,0K 2 aoû 21:07:36 2011 ._manifest.md5sum*
drwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 4,0K 22 jul 02:08:20 2011 Kobo/
-rwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 1,9M 2 aoû 21:35:40 2011 KoboReader.sqlite*
-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 karl karl 22M 28 jul 15:55:54 2011 KoboRoot.tgz*
-rwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 3,3K 22 jul 02:42:22 2011 Trolltech.conf*
-rwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 31B 2 aoû 19:33:04 2011 affiliate.conf*
-rwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 75B 22 jul 02:08:20 2011 device.salt.conf*
drwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 52K 4 jul 01:05:40 2011 images/
drwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 4,0K 4 jul 01:05:40 2011 kepub/
-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 karl karl 102B 28 jul 15:57:02 2011 manifest.md5sum*
drwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 4,0K 2 aoû 21:07:36 2011 upgrade/
-rwxrwxrwx 1 karl karl 83B 22 jul 02:08:18 2011 version*
let's come back to our home folder
Let's eject the volume KOBOeReader from the desktop.
unplug the reader from the computer. The Kobo should display a screen saying "Updating your Software" for a while, then a "Update Successful". Finally the device will reboot with your home screen giving a message about the version number. In our case 1.9.9