Lost my Documents Folder after Jailbreak

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by allowingtoo

B006

update_jailbreak_0.5.1_k3g_install.bin

Please download this kindle-jailbreak-0.10.N.zip file:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/att...5&d=1318991430

Although you have not yet answered my request for which firmware version is installed on your kindle, let's skip ahead and assume for now that it has the latest version 3.3 firmware.

From the kindle-jailbreak-0.10.N.zip file downloaded above, please extract and copy this file to your kindle 3 USB Drive:
update_jailbreak_0.10.N_k3gb-3.2.1_install.bin

Then do:
Press Home button.
Press Menu button.
Select "Settings" menu item.
Press Menu button.
Press "Update Your Kindle" menu item.

If your Update button is still grayed out, we are not done with this step yet.

What are your results?

[NiLuJe]

@geekmaster: That's yifanlu's jailbreak, not mine, so it is indeed up to date and 3.3 aware/friendly .

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

@geekmaster: That's yifanlu's jailbreak, not mine, so it is indeed up to date and 3.3 aware/friendly .

Sorry, I only used the jailbreak linked in the sticky at the kindle developer's corner forum. mario1up did not give alternatives in his jailbreak link. I installed that on all my kindles. I am not familiar with other versions. The file name supplied in response to my question follows the same naming convention as the newer jailbreak file that I recommended. Is there a naming conflict between different jailbreak versions?

Even so, if one does not work, she should try the other. (First post is signed "Laura", a female name where I come from). But then again, ixtab is a male "goddess", so what do I know?

So, NiLuJe, with the information that we have gathered so far in this thread, if the file version listing (version 5, no "-3.2.1") is not the wrong update version, then why is the Update button grayed out, and what do you suggest as the next step?

P.S. I am still waiting for answers on:

1. What firmware version is installed?
2. Does the update button work when copying the version 10 "-3.2.1" file that I suggested to the USB Drive?

@NiLuJe: I am a bit confused by your reply here. My efforts were directed by responses supplied to my questions. If I am not correct in my interpretation, where are we on this?

[NiLuJe]

@geekmaster: Yep, there's yifanlu's jailbreak, and mine. When I started that thread (a while ago now, sometime after the 2.5 update, if memory serves me correctly), everything was based on/forked from something already existent, so I went with the '.N' version suffix to try to differentiate my fork from the originals. It was mostly cosmetic at the time, but became useful again with yifanlu's jailbreak, which uses a classic x.y.[z] versionning scheme .

From what I understood (mostly from post #19), the OP tried to install my jb, but didn't use the -3.2.1 build, so that failed, and he then switched to yifanlu's jb.

As to why everything's borked, well, you got me ^^. My best guess would be something wonky with the whole userstore chain of mounts (because it vaguely reminded me of some of the weirdness I encountered when dealing with volumd/the userstore during some usbnetwork tests), which is why I've been rambling about it, but it very well could be something else... Logs would probably help (but with a broken userstore, that seems impossible :/). I'm not sure if getting into the diagnostics mode would be of use, as I'm not familiar with it, and I don't even know if it's doable with a broken userstore and no means of executing code on the device... :/.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

I'm not sure if getting into the diagnostics mode would be of use, as I'm not familiar with it, and I don't even know if it's doable with a broken userstore and no means of executing code on the device... :/.

I poked around in the 3.3 firmware. I did not see an SSH export in the diag menu. I did find a potential jailbreak though.

It appears that the kindle 3 sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH to a path on the USB Drive for loading some custom font library code. Can you believe amazon would actually load and execute code loaded from the user store partition? Trusting people there at amazon (or not enough coffee that day) I think...

Diags will export a console login to the serial port, and that root login is probably mario, even though the main root was fionaXXX (3 hex digits on my kindle 3 -- just chop the last digit from what KDT says). Then use that to fix things.

For general poking around, or for making backups, all kindles let you login to a user account (no write access): username framework, password mario. It works on all my kindles. I do not have a k1 or k2 to test it on though. The downside is that everything is read-only (even /mnt/base-us/ -- there is not /mnt/us/). Would need to write out to external storage device.

The kindle 3 that this thread is about is not bricked though. Did we get an answer about the size of the USB Drive? There are a number of outstanding questions I would like answered (two of them highlighted in blue in a previous post).

It might need serial port access to fix it.

EDIT: Interesting... I see that when logged in as user framework, all the important writable persistent store folders have bind-mounted tmpfs (ramdisk) folders mounted over them, with some stuff copied in. So most stuff cannot be changed, and what can be changed only lasts until the next reboot.

As mentioned earlier, you would need external storage media (like a wifi shared folder -- pings work) to copy backup files onto. Still useful, but much better if a priveledge escalation could be found ...

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

...
For general poking around, or for making backups, all kindles let you login to a user account (no write access): username framework, password mario. It works on all my kindles.

After some questions appeared in the IRC channel about this:

01:15 < dionoea> and permissions were more what I was worried about. 
                 /etc/shadow is usually only readable by the shadow group 
                 and writable by the root user
01:17 < geekmstr> dionoea : framework has read-only access. That would 
                  let you copy shadow and use john to crack it.
01:17 < geekmstr> on any kindle.
01:18 < dionoea> and the framework user has sufficient rights to read 
                 /etc/shadow?

... I did a test on my kindle touch. While logged in as user framework:

ssh framework@192.168.15.244

I was able to see the contents of /etc/shadow:

cat /etc/shadow

Only the root and framework accounts had a string of "random" password characters in them.

The easy way to copy this file out so it can be cracked with john is through the clipboard. Copy what you see on the screen after the "cat" command. Then paste it in a file on the host PC, save it, and crack it with "John the Ripper".

Here are two solutions:

On k4nt only, boot from diags and start ssh, login as root, and fix or copy and crack /etc/shadow.

On any kindle, login as user framework with password mario, cat and copy /etc/shadow to the clipboard, then on the host PC paste the clipboard to a file, save it, and crack it. Then you will know your forgotten root password. Or it would be simple to edit shadow and copy the hashed password from diags root to main root. Whatever you want, you know? You have the power!

P.S. I posted very similar content in another thread, because it "needed it", you know?

[allowingtoo]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

Please download this kindle-jailbreak-0.10.N.zip file:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/att...5&d=1318991430

Although you have not yet answered my request for which firmware version is installed on your kindle, let's skip ahead and assume for now that it has the latest version 3.3 firmware.

From the kindle-jailbreak-0.10.N.zip file downloaded above, please extract and copy this file to your kindle 3 USB Drive:
update_jailbreak_0.10.N_k3gb-3.2.1_install.bin

Then do:
Press Home button.
Press Menu button.
Select "Settings" menu item.
Press Menu button.
Press "Update Your Kindle" menu item.

If your Update button is still grayed out, we are not done with this step yet.

What are your results?

Update button is still grayed out

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back online.

3.3

Here, I made an album for you:

https://picasaweb.google.com/1150015...6113971/Kindle

[allowingtoo]

k3g means K3 3G (US [B006]) and k3gb means K3 3G (UK [B00A]

I have model B006

Well, I did as you said I tried the K3gb (which was the wrong model?) but since the button was still grayed out, I just removed it rather than restart it. I then tried k3g and it didn't work either.

On the off chance it was jailbroken, I tried the uninstaller for the fonts but with the same thing. I didn't restart it or anything, I just removed it.

It was always kind of confusing with the k3g and the k3gb. I was very very careful installing the first go round. I went back and read and re read that several times to make sure I was reading that right.

Would have been much better to have named them something else (not so similar).

[Tanga]

Your kindle is still jailbroken from last time. You didn't uninstall it, just reset. You can find the files you need to copy over in the 'source' file for the jailbreak you installed. In fact all your installs are still there. All reseting does is delete the contents of the document folder and the other folders that aren't on the vanilla kindle, it doesn't uninstall anything you've put on it. Try putting all the folders back from the updates you did and see if that works.

[NiLuJe]

Heh, and here I thought that was pretty clever naming the UK model gb (great britain, anyone?) ^^. (I may be biased on this though, in France, the term great britain is a tiny bit more widespread than united kingdom, probably because we have the 'little' britain )

Anyway, that does seem to point to a wonky userstore, but we probably can't help much more without logs/shell/serial access... :/.

[allowingtoo]

Try putting all the folders back from the updates you did and see if that works

scratching head

anytime I add a BIN file to the Kindle I never see UPDATE. Or I haven't up to this point. I can keep trying that if you want me to....

Did anybody look at the picture pages I made? Is the empty space a concern?

Oh, that's what the gb stands for. Now that makes sense. Duh.

[allowingtoo]

How do the uninstallers work?

[geekmaster]

If the Update menu item is grayed out, it means that you are using an installer (or uninstaller) update .bin file that does NOT match your kindle. Update packages contain header information that indicates which model and version kindle that package is intended to be installed on. To prevent damage from installing the wrong package, it makes the Update menu item gray (not active).

That is exactly why I stated in previous messages that you need a different update package. It does not matter to the kindle whether the update packages contains a system upgrade, or a hack install, or a hack uninstall. ALL that matters is that the update package contains the correct header information that matches you kindle. If it does, then the update button works.

You must use a different udpate .bin file. If you keep getting a grayed-out Update item, that is simply because you keep trying to update you kindle with an incompatible update package version.

When an update package contains the correct headers, the Update menu item is active. When Update is selected, the update package contents are extracted and put into various locations on the kindle (including startup scripts), and then the kindle is rebooted. After reboot, startup scripts run (including any new ones). If this update was an installer, the work is done. If it was an uninstaller, then when it runs on startup it REMOVES other files (being an UNinstaller), and then it removes itself.

How many times must I repeat myself here?

[allowingtoo]

Thank you for your time.

I offered to send it to any of you so that you could look at it internally so that maybe this mistake could be rectified and not be repeated. I know from reading the past few days that this has happened to others somewhat.

All I have read is how easy it is to Jailbreak your Kindle. Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. Maybe it's only the ones with Ads, I don't know. Just from reading in this thread alone about the fastboot, and it shouldn't have been done, what about that?

I'm always more of the mind if I can help one more person along the line from making the same mistake I did - well, maybe that's just me. I always want to know what went wrong so I don't repeat it.

I'll just sell this one for parts or something on eBay. Again, thank you for your time and your continued patience. Really.

Next.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by allowingtoo

TJust from reading in this thread alone about the fastboot, and it shouldn't have been done, what about that?

Did you put this kindle into fastboot mode?

Or... are you referring to something you read in another post?

Regarding sending it to me, I am a software person who repairs computers occasionally on the side. I have a stack of computers waiting to be repaired, and people are asking when I will have time to work on them. It is low priority and I only take one on when a client insists, but I let them know that it may take quite some time.

Do you want to send it to me so I can but in on the bottom of my "to be repaired" hardware stack (physical stack / logical FIFO) for the next six months? And of course, in that case, my wife will insist that I bill for my time...

Unless you have a geeky friend, relative, or neighbor, who can help you, it will probably be cheaper to just replace it if you cannot fix it yourself with advice and instructions given to you here and elsewhere.

Sorry. I cannot be of much more assistance with the questions that I asked previously still unanswered. I just asked for basic information about your kindle. You have replied to my posts, but your replies do not contain what I asked for.