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Old 03-30-2012, 09:35 AM   #61
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Quote:
Originally Posted by drunkmonk View Post
1. First thing you will have to format and partition the new sd card using cmd prompt.
Can you confirm what size the partitions need to be? Exactly the size of the extracted image? I'm wanting to try this method for getting the image onto a card larger than 8gig and seeing if the Vox will accept it.

Cheers.
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Old 11-17-2012, 01:29 PM   #62
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I've gone ahead and downloaded all the software and the image file to get my bricked Kobo started again but when I unzip the image (windows user) it says the file is corrupted. I've tried several different programs but all of them end up with the same message of the file is corrupt. Can someone please re-upload the image?
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Old 12-17-2012, 05:14 AM   #63
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Card image dump pls

Can someone upload a working card image with latest update applied ? My Kobo doesn't update with the update.zip - the update is stating, the points me to remove the sd card and restart -progress bar never reaches the end, no matter how long I wait; after restart nothing changes, the same old version without google play is there ; update from firwmare upgrade also doesn't work- the message returned is that I heve the latest version v15. So if some one is kind enough to upload a working card image it will help me a lot. Tnx !
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Old 05-21-2013, 06:12 PM   #64
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Vox Image

Could someone please give me a working link to the Kobo Vox Image file. A lot of time has passed since the original posts and the links do not work. TIA.
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Old 05-21-2013, 06:18 PM   #65
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[QUOTE\] Then using dd created a copy of the memory card, flashing it to the memory cards of the other 3 tablets. All worked. So tested working fix.

[/QUOTE]
What is dd?
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Old 05-22-2013, 08:07 AM   #66
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"dd" is a Unix (and its descendents, like Linux & Android) command which allows you to directly copy disc sectors so you can make a true clone of a disc (or a portion of the disc). This allows you to get at hidden sections of the disc, such as where Android keeps its system files. It's not a simple operation, though.
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Old 05-24-2013, 04:57 AM   #67
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JD Gumby View Post
"dd" is a Unix (and its descendents, like Linux & Android) command which allows you to directly copy disc sectors so you can make a true clone of a disc (or a portion of the disc). This allows you to get at hidden sections of the disc, such as where Android keeps its system files. It's not a simple operation, though.
Many thanks for your quick and helpful reply. I have a VOX with the continuous flashing light problem.
I got hold of another Kobo Vox that was working so I put the working sd card in the non-booting Vox and still got the flashing light.
There are a lot of BGA chips on the motherboard, so I am going to try and reflow the board and see what happens.
I shall try the dd command to copy the working sd card. I have a netbook that I can load Linux on to. It might be worth having a copy of the Vox OS. Especially if I fix the broken Vox.
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Old 05-24-2013, 11:46 AM   #68
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I will try to find the file and upload it again.

Life has been smacking me around for a while, sorry not been around.

Also, my family has moved on to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2's now, all the Kobo's were donated to local church
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Old 05-31-2013, 04:22 AM   #69
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I will try to find the file and upload it again.
Life has been smacking me around for a while, sorry not been around.
Also, my family has moved on to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2's now, all the Kobo's were donated to local church
Many thanks for coming back to this thread! Sorry to hear that life has not been kind to you of late. Donating the Kobos to the local church might bring about a change in your fortune.
The Sammys are a great bit of kit. My mother-in-law (Granny Gadget) has one.
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Old 06-10-2013, 09:58 PM   #70
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For anyone that's comfortable messing with filesystems in Linux, you can create a bootable SD Card from scratch using just the update.zip firmware file. The only difference right now is that the serial number listed in the About dialog is garbage, which means it's probably stored as ASCII characters somewhere. I can login to Kobo and Google Play just fine, though, so I'm not going to worry about it.

All I needed to know to start was what the partition table looked like:

Code:
4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 244224 cylinders, total 15630336 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xcf3814cc

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1           92160      616448      262144+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb2          616449     1665025      524288+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb3         1665026     4286466     1310720+   5  Extended
/dev/sdb4         4286467    15523839     5618686+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb5         1665088     3762240     1048576+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb6         3762303     4286466      262082   83  Linux
Take a fresh card and create the partitions. As far as I can tell, the size only matters with the first and possibly second partitions. The other important bit is the start sector for partition 1. The kernel and initial ramdisks are stored raw in the space before block 92160. So I used fdisk to create partition 1 and 2 using start and end sectors exactly as above. If you're using another 8GB card, go ahead and create the rest of the partitions with exactly the same start and end blocks as well.

I used a 16GB card, though. Partion 3 is an extended partition that's split between the /data (partition 5) and /cache (partition 6). Partition 4 is /mnt/sdcard. I decided to split 4GB between data (3.5GB) and cache (512MB) and put the rest (~10GB) into sdcard.

Once the partion table's written, format partitions 2, 5 and 6 as ext4.

Now find the firmware update that you want. The current firmware can be downloaded in 1MB chunks from http://download.kobobooks.com/vox/images/eng.CAN.20111117.182539.40022/x000 through x166 and concatenated into a sideloadable update.zip file. I used a script with wget to get all the pieces. There's a slightly older one at http://download.kobobooks.com/vox/update.zip that's easier to download, but your Vox will update automatically to the latest when you first boot.

Create a directory and unzip the update.zip file into it. Cd into the directory so you see system.img, uImage, and the rest of the update files. If you want to make changes to the file system, now's the time (mount system.img as loopback and, perhaps, add "su"). Then, as root, run the following commands, making sure you change /dev/sdb to match where your SD Card's device.

Code:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1 seek=30408704 count=1
dd if=./u-boot.bin of=/dev/sdb bs=1024 skip=1 seek=1
dd if=./uImage of=/dev/sdb bs=1048576 seek=1
dd if=./uramdisk.img of=/dev/sdb bs=1048576 seek=11
dd if=./recovery-uramdisk.img of=/dev/sdb bs=1048576 seek=12
dd if=./system.img of=/dev/sdb1 bs=512
Once this is done, mount partition 2 as ext4 and copy update.zip (if you made changes to system.img, make sure you rezip the directory) to the partition, naming it recovery_backup_signed.zip. Sync and unmount the partition. Your card should now be bootable. Mine took extra-long to boot because it sets up the /data and /cache partitions, but if you get to the Kobo book animation, you should be home free.
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Old 06-11-2013, 04:22 AM   #71
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Excellent info. Just wondering if this is going to lead into rooting and removing the unecessary apps?
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Old 06-11-2013, 09:15 AM   #72
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Quote:
Originally Posted by suedenim View Post
Excellent info. Just wondering if this is going to lead into rooting and removing the unecessary apps?
Since the recovery image in partition 2 doesn't have to be signed, you can modify it any way you want, including adding "su" to /system/bin and "Superuser.apk" to /system/app. You can download those here.

When removing the unnecessary apps, be aware that removing some combination of Kobo ones causes the Vox to do a factory restore a few boots later (I think it's OTAServer.apk, but I haven't narrowed it down). I had wanted to remove all of the Kobo stuff, but I've settled for just getting rid of the Twitter, Facebook and "INQ" apps. Also, if you get rid of Kobo.apk itself, you can sideload a newer version of the Kobo app (the store says that it's not compatible with the Vox, but I downloaded it on a different tablet and brought the apk over).

I put more info here.
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Old 05-05-2015, 06:45 AM   #73
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Originally Posted by pcampbell View Post
Ok...

I got 4 Kobo Vox tablets for family for Christmas. 3 didn't work, 1 did. 2 had the tablet upgrade error, and 1 kept saying card is full. NONE were able to do a factory reset (vol+ power), also formatting the user partition did nothing.

So the one that worked, did a factory restore from settings, downloaded the updates, then before finishing first setup turned it off. So when turn on it just asks for Timezone ect...

Then using dd created a copy of the memory card, flashing it to the memory cards of the other 3 tablets. All worked. So tested working fix.

This is not an beginners task, say intermediate. I created a torrent for the image (2.5gb) and will seed long as I can from my work at 20Kb/s. If anyone can please help out with the seeding and hosting the .torrent file would be appreciated.

NOTE: Requires Linux (I use Linux Mint here at work), for beginners Ubuntu would make life a bit easier. Also install Gdiskdump to make it easier.

GUIDE:

1) download the image from http://dl.dropbox.com/u/63645/kobovox.img.gz dropbox direct link
http://fileai.com/?r=795 (this one is slowwww, but steady)

2) Take apart your Kobo Vox and remove the memory card. Its easy, take off back cover, remove screws, unplug battery, carefully seperate plastic housing, memory card is on top edge. (this is the not so beginner part)

3) Use a memory card reader and connect to your computer

4) Load up Gdiskdump (Recommend for ease of use, command line dd is my choice)

5) First screen (source) choose "File" from the drop down

6) Second screen (destination) choose "Harddrive", choose your memory card, should show as 7.05gb disk

7) Click go and take a coffee/smoke/tea break.....

8) Put it all back together

9) Turn on and should just ask to connect to wifi, check for updates fast fast then go straight to the timezone selection

10) PROFIT!

****
Thank you DrunkMonk for this following guide for Windows users!
****
Alright, update and alternative solution for those non-linux individuals like myself and those having write access issues.

After getting the .img.gz file I tried, tried and tried again to install on existing SD card. What I found out is that my vox's 8gb card was not allowing write access no matter what I did. I tried everything I could think of and decided I'm done with the card! I bought a new card for $15 bucks and downloaded WinImage here.

http://www.winimage.com/download.htm

If you don't want to use linux use this program. The steps to reflash are as follows:

1. First thing you will have to format and partition the new sd card using cmd prompt. Search youtube if you don't know how.

2. Extract the .img file from the .gz file.

3. Open WinImage. Under the "Disk" tab select "restore Virtual Hard Disk" . Then select your SD card and hit ok. In the popup select filetype in the bottom right and select "all files". Find and select your kobovox.img file. Select ok again to start.

4. Pop back sd card into your vox once re-imaging is complete and follow the setup. Good to go without using linux.

*As a note, it may just be that my cardreader wasn't accessing the microsd from the vox appropriately. This might happen to you. I'd suggest just buying a combo SD card/adapter that's 8gb and doing it my way. It's less than 20 bucks and it will save you the headache of trying to get the internal sd to write. Plus it will save you working in linux if you aren't very knowledgeable of it.

Hope this helps someone else!!!
****

Have fun, hope it helps

UPDATE: Added new download link that won't be going down... Well, not till boss finds out

UPDATE 2: Added dropbox link thanks to Lanord!

UPDATE 3: Added windows guide thanks drunkmonk!
Link is dead. Anyone can reupload it for me please. Or email the link to me khanhdaojtk@yahoo.com. Thank for your help
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Old 05-24-2015, 05:32 AM   #74
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Is there still an image floating around out there? My internal card appears to be corrupted and if I can replace it that would be handy.
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Old 05-25-2015, 04:59 AM   #75
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I was able to get my internal SD card to mount in my other Linux box.
Still don't trust it but did get the recovery_backup file off it. It's surprisingly small (70 meg) but the archive isn't corrupt, so at least I've copied it to a safe place until I replace the card
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