K3 Noob's guide to debricking through ATK :D

[opusitibm]

Originally Posted by BrianG8

Maybe upload it to a torrent site?
As popular as the Kindle is, you would think that the file would be somewhere else other than that 1 site.

I had K3 keyboard, here is what happen.

I follow the guide in wiki and download 3.02 image, ATK recognized my K3 after several iteration of 30s and volumn button, the flash took more than 4 hours for the rootfs.bin, finally both done successfully according to ATK (over night). Now kindle is at total blank, no response to any key or power button. Charging light permanent yellow and turn off a few hours charging, charge again appears same cycle.

One thing strange is, now my computer can recognize it as MX device and install driver automatically once connect it. But the K3 wont boot up. Am trying to get 3.3 image and try again, since now ATK can recognize it immediately, it is just a time and image, then pray..

[opusitibm]

Originally Posted by knc1

It does not appear to be meant for anyone:

core2quad Downloads $ unzip -t mmcblk0p1-k3g-3.3.zip
Archive:  mmcblk0p1-k3g-3.3.zip
    testing: mmcblk0p1.img            bad CRC fb5ad0ed  (should be 1de996c8)
At least one error was detected in mmcblk0p1-k3g-3.3.zip.

and:

core2quad Downloads $ 7z t mmcblk0p1-k3g-3.3.zip

7-Zip 9.20  Copyright (c) 1999-2010 Igor Pavlov  2010-11-18
p7zip Version 9.20 (locale=en_US.UTF-8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,4 CPUs)

Processing archive: mmcblk0p1-k3g-3.3.zip

Testing     mmcblk0p1.img     CRC Failed

Sub items Errors: 1

Although that does not explain how GM was unable to detect the same error.

Downloaded using windows tool and when unzip, Winrar report CRC checksum error, will try one more time.

Anyone had 3.3 image link other than this? thank you

[geekmaster]

We provided a link to download 3.0.8 because of the CRC problem with 3.3.

Did you flash your image to the correct offset? Did you flash a matching kernel with your image?

If you flashed it to 0x0, that could account for not booting (going directly to USB Downloader mode). Hawhill provided a boot loader and partition table image to flash at 0x0, in case you damaged yours by flashing the main partition image to the wrong location.

I hope you did not overwrite your serial number and other "idme" vars. Can you still fetch the serial number from your kindle?

[opusitibm]

Originally Posted by hawhill

Attached to this post is the partition table and the (open sourced, free software) boot loader part. It goes to offset 0x0 - after gunzipping it, of course (i.e.: don't flash this file directly).

However, this does not include the device ID part that seems to be at offset 0x00040c00. I'm not sure what exactly the K3 does when there's garbage data in that part, too. And in case you managed to write something to 0x0 of your eMMC device and want to recover, it would depend on the size of that something whether more than this partition table and bootloader is needed.

Kernel, Rootfs and this file do contain most of what you need for recovery, but not everything. I'm not sure what the function of the part is that is referred to as "ISIS" in Amazon's code - however, that could be determined. At least that part (offset 0x00381000, length 0x00040000) hasn't been made available as far as I know. And I would strongly recommend to not make the part that stores the device ID public...

Sorry, I am not a Linux person, can share how to use this in Windows environment? thank you

[opusitibm]

Originally Posted by opusitibm

Sorry, I am not a Linux person, can share how to use this in Windows environment? thank you

So dumb me. I flashed the partition table, now kindle is able to boot. After several reboot sequency automatically, now Kindle stop at a message said " Your Kindle Needs Repair." and contact Amazon and so on. any suggestion to get it fix?
thank you so much

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by opusitibm

So dumb me. I flashed the partition table, now kindle is able to boot. After several reboot sequency automatically, now Kindle stop at a message said " Your Kindle Needs Repair." and contact Amazon and so on. any suggestion to get it fix?
thank you so much

You may be the first to have this problem on a K3, but it was a common problem on a K5.

You need to reset the boot counter. The simplest way would probably be to zero the persistent user store partition that contains it. Although on the K4/K5 that is mmcblk0p3, on a K3 it is different. There is probably information about the partition layouts either in this thread, or in the k3flasher thread.

For more information about resetting the boot counter on the K5 (to get an idea of what you need to do on your K3), search the forums. It may also be in the K5 hacking wiki.

[opusitibm]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

You may be the first to have this problem on a K3, but it was a common problem on a K5.

You need to reset the boot counter. The simplest way would probably be to zero the persistent user store partition that contains it. Although on the K4/K5 that is mmcblk0p3, on a K3 it is different. There is probably information about the partition layouts either in this thread, or in the k3flasher thread.

For more information about resetting the boot counter on the K5 (to get an idea of what you need to do on your K3), search the forums. It may also be in the K5 hacking wiki.

Thanks for the suggestion. I managed to go recovery mode so that it can connect to PC. The root folder in the kindle is empty, is that the cause.

I will check on boot counter you recommend above. thanks.

[NiLuJe]

@geekmaster: The boot counter wasn't so pissy as on the Touch on those older devices.

You can safely hard-reboot from the 'YKNR' screen, and it will do the 5 or 10 tries again, IIRC .

[opusitibm]

Tried hard reboot 3 times already, still showing message after few reboot by itself.

I realized I flash image 3.02, but the bootloader us 3.3, is there anywhere to get the 3.3 image? thank you

[hawhill]

I don't think the bootloader ever changed, that would have been a bit too risky and simply unnecessary. But kernel and rootfs should match (if you want to upgrade later, that is).

I'm not too sure here under which conditions that "repair needed" screen is shown.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by opusitibm

Tried hard reboot 3 times already, still showing message after few reboot by itself.

I realized I flash image 3.02, but the bootloader us 3.3, is there anywhere to get the 3.3 image? thank you

But which KERNEL do you have? The 3.0.2 mmcblk0p1 needs the 3.0.2 kernel.

[opusitibm]

yes, I was using 3.02 kernel and the 2 zip combined rootfs file, both downloaded from pastebin.

[grapherd]

if my kindle fw is 3.3, can i use 3.0.2 kernel to recover ?

thanks

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by grapherd

if my kindle fw is 3.3, can i use 3.0.2 kernel to recover ?

thanks

You can use 3.0.2 if you flash both the kernel and main partition. Be sure to download both parts of the multi-part zip file before extracting it. It was split because it was larger than the maximum file size allowed at that hosting provider.

You cannot use a 3.0.2 kernel with a 3.3 main partition.

[grapherd]

thanks for the answer, I'll test it on win xp tomorrow