k3flasher, a USB download mode utility

[twobob]

ermm... you got me there. I would have to go look.

It's not in the top-post?

In other news: Here https://gist.github.com/3369924 that looks familiar so you are not alone.

EDIT: ERR. silly me I was thinking of k3libre. no, this one is from source.

[hawhill]

ZIP is fine, I didn't bother to make a Github repo for k3flasher yet. I will if others jump aboard and start developing with it.

The error being shown seems to indicate that the device does not switch into RAM kernel mode. I would give it one or more tries to see if it never sees the RAM kernel, but I guess it's just another case of dead battery or hardware failure (i.e. the "endless reboot" situation). Host side / software-wise everything should be OK, I think.

[eureka]

Originally Posted by hawhill

ZIP is fine, I didn't bother to make a Github repo for k3flasher yet. I will if others jump aboard and start developing with it.

Making a Github (or Bitbucket) repo is better than just zipping and attaching the source even if you're developing without collaborators. Just because it's more convenient to download the source (I mean git clone https://... is better then downloading attachment from Mobileread manually) and it will be possible to look at source without downloading. These services also provide direct download link for zipped (or tarballed) sources, so you doesn't lose anything.

[hawhill]

I know pretty well. It started as a project that was untested and pretty able to allow people to shoot themselves in their feet, potentially bricking devices, yadda, yadda... I just wanted to go the ZIP-attached-to-post route in this case. Some of the reasons are now gone, especially the "untested" part, so I might shift it over to GH soon.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by hawhill

I know pretty well. It started as a project that was untested and pretty able to allow people to shoot themselves in their feet, potentially bricking devices, yadda, yadda... I just wanted to go the ZIP-attached-to-post route in this case. Some of the reasons are now gone, especially the "untested" part, so I might shift it over to GH soon.

Have you given any thought to what license you will be using?

The reason I ask, is that using a viral license (such as the GPL) would prohibit the inclusion of Freescale's binary.

[hawhill]

I'm not really in love with viral licenses either, so it will probably MIT or similar. Though I like my "know-what-you're-doing" licence :-)

[knc1]

Originally Posted by hawhill

I'm not really in love with viral licenses either, so it will probably MIT or similar. Though I like my "know-what-you're-doing" licence :-)

Not a matter of my opinion, it is a requirement of the Freescale object code license.

PS: Perhaps you could put the "Recharge the battery" warning in the top post here?
The Paperwhite "HowTo" has been updated with that information.

[twobob]

have a device that needs love:

/usr/local/src/k3flasher $ sudo ./k3flasher ./mx35to2_mmc.bin info

W: cannot find device (is it in USB loader mode? are you root?) - waiting for it.........................
I: success.
I: found suitable device
E: wrong transfer length, wanted to receive 8 bytes but received 4 bytes.
I: above error can be ignored, it's due to the device being in ROM kernel mode
I: RAM kernel should be running now. Trying to re-open device: .
I: got it.
I: read info
E: wrong transfer length, wanted to receive 8 bytes but received 4 bytes.
E: aborting. It is suggested you power-cycle the device.

Will charge it overnight and try tomorrow. : )

[twobob]

Light was green: (after a good day - or so - on charge )

I: flashed 0x001d0000 (=1900544) bytes
I: flashed 0x001e0000 (=1966080) bytes
I: flashed 0x001f0000 (=2031616) bytes
I: flashed 0x00200000 (=2097152) bytes
I: flashing of 0x00200000 (=2097152) bytes complete
E: reading data from device: LIBUSB_ERROR_NO_DEVICE
E: flashing data
E: aborting. It is suggested you power-cycle the device.

Will try again tomorrow

EDIT: For the future reader - This device (above) was defective and was returned.

[CaelThunderwing]

the idea was mentioned in my topic in getting help to recover my K3, can k3flasher be modified to "resume"? or continute from changed erase blocks?

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by CaelThunderwing

the idea was mentioned in my topic in getting help to recover my K3, can k3flasher be modified to "resume"? or continute from changed erase blocks?

It would need to be modified to log its progress, and add a command line flag to scan that progress log to see where to resume.

Another potential mod that was discussed previously would be to add an option to read before write and only write changed blocks. Because flashing is much slower than reading, this could significantly speed up the procedure when flashing a known good image of the same version as the broken image on the kindle.

EDIT: If nobody implements these k3flasher mods by the time I am ready to build my K3 eink wall (when I will need to flash a large quantity of K3s), I will do it then (when I need it). Like most unfunded software projects, significant code contributions published here are driven primarily by personal need or personal interest, or perhaps by a desire for recognition or fame, tempered by available time and resources. I must admit that all of these things motivate me.

[hawhill]

I think it *does* log its progress. In fact, it's awefully verbose, I guess :-)
The hardest part is probably to cut-and-slice the image to flash accordingly.

I really like the read-before-write idea. Besides being faster, reading should also consume much less energy. I still didn't get to implement it, though, and that is likely to stay that way until the free days over christmas. And in fact, I already planned to dedicate that time to kindlepdfviewer on my KPW....

[dpavlin]

Originally Posted by twobob

EDIT: For the future reader - This device (above) was defective and was returned.

Just a quick comment about

reading data from device: LIBUSB_ERROR_NO_DEVICE

I spent half a day fighting it and in the end it turned out to be Samsung USB cable which was sensitive to movement. I even implemented resume of download in k3flasher during this, but simple change of cable proved to be enough. Hopefully this hint will help someone.

In the process I wrote perl wrapper which can do incremental dumps, and then started hacking on k3flasher adding continuation of dump if file already exists, and ability to specify continue address and read before flash for programing flash. Reading of flash is turned off on first unsuccessful verify, mostly because additional reads beyond end of correctly flashed size showed down flashing a lot.

Code is at https://github.com/dpavlin/k3libre/t...ster/k3flasher

It would benefit from peer review, so be kind :-)

[(-_-)]

I now nothing of Linux, please help me.


I burned a Ubuntu disk just to use k3flasher. ATK wasn't working for me.

I know you said this was for people who know what their doing, but my K3 is bricked!!
I've always had Windows, so I need a little direction here with this programmer's OS.



Running off live CD now.

I have all the files.(including libusbx & the atk file)


ReadMe says run 'make' to get a binary.
run it I get :
fatal error: libusb.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.



Maybe libusbx had installation issues..:

/usr/bin/install: cannot create regular file `/usr/local/lib/libusb-1.0.so.0.1.0': Permission denied
make[2]: *** [install-libLTLIBRARIES] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/ubuntu/Desktop/myname/k3flasher/libusbx-1.0.14/libusb'
make[1]: *** [install-am] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/ubuntu/Desktop/myname/k3flasher/libusbx-1.0.14/libusb'
make: *** [install-recursive] Error 1

[dsmid]

Here's my build of k3flasher, pretty selfcontained:

# ldd k3flasher
        linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xb7702000)
        librt.so.1 => /lib/librt.so.1 (0xb76d3000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0xb76b8000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0xb754b000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7703000)

It's from dpavlin's branch that adds some improvements - https://github.com/dpavlin/k3libre/t...ster/k3flasher .