Kubrick: Live CD to debrick Kindle 3, 4, and Touch

[Rouffian]

Thanks knc1. I tried again last night and got a corrupted file, but at east I know that sooner or later it will work. It's probably because I am in France where the coolest new technology is the guillotine.

[Rouffian]

Made it by using the WiFi in a bar. Now all I need is a PC with a primitive enough build to not have USB3.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Rouffian

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It's probably because I am in France where the coolest new technology is the guillotine.

Careful there.
Our moderator lists his location as some place called: "Paris".
(Might be Paris Texas, but I think not.)

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Have you tried running the Kubric Live CD yet?
I don't think there will be any trouble with your USB3 port(s).

They should be fully compatible with the Kindles.
(Although the Kindles might 'think' they are on a wall charger, due to the much higher current limit on a USB3 port.)

Just try it and report back on the results.

[ouchkt]

See post 760 for background:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&postcount=760

After leaving my Kindle Touch booting for several days I think there is no luck for me there. I pulled the battery out and tested it. It's showing 4.17 volts so I don't think ordering a new one would help.

I'm still open to other suggestions, but after spending another hour reading old messages I think my next best option is to erase Partition 3 aka /var/local aka mmcblk0p3. Everything I've read says bad data here could create boot problems.

I can't get into diag mode so the easy options are not available, but the fastboot command doesn't seem to offer a partition erase option:

erase <partition> erase a flash partition

Unfortunately the partitions listed in the help don't follow the normal conventions I'm used to reading:

partitions:
bootloader bootloader, 376KiB
prod overlaps bootloader, 120KiB
bist bist, 256KiB
userdata userdata, 5KiB
userpartition userpartition
mbr master boot record
kernel primary kernel
diags_kernel diags kernel
system main system (root) partition
diags secondary system (diags) partition
data user data

Anyone know which one is partition 3? Any opinion if this is a good next step?

[Tenrius]

Hello.

I'm trying to debrick a Kindle Keyboard 3G. It's stuck on the home screen and that doesn't change no matter what. Now I've charged it for a few days (it's been a couple of weeks or so, but not consistently, i.e. with breaks), and the light won't turn green. It's orange at first, turns off after a day or so and then it goes orange again immediately after reconnecting.

After all that charging, I decided to run Kubrick and see what's up. It detects the device after me presumably turning the USB Downloader mode on (the reader also shows up on my PC as "SE Blank Ringo"). It even takes me to the next steps, core flashing and main partition flashing and reports that the process has been successful. However, the first step takes about five seconds (instead of the 10-30 mentioned in the description) as does the second one (which should last for 1-3 hours). The device did not turn on after holding the power slide for several minutes. Am I correct in assuming that there's some hardware problem or is there something else I could attempt? The only thing that comes to mind is letting it charge even longer.

Thank you for your help in advance and another thanks goes to the amazing work you guys have put into this.

[rbstech]

@Tenrius, I have basically the exact same situation. My Kindle Keyboard 3g just stopped functioning. The screen has been locked on the screen with the person under the tree and the status bar at ~3% for a week. I had just recharged it the day before (got the green light). Went to use it and it tried to reboot and froze. It had been acting strangely previously though, rebooting on it's own now and again. I have never attempted any "hacks" on this device so that is not an issue here.
When I first connected it to my computer, after it froze, I got the "SE Blank Ringo" message and my laptop would chime as it trwould connect/disconnect...not anymore..nothing.

After charging for days (when the orange light goes off I would just reconnect it and the light would return) I attempted the Kubrick debricking method. Although I do not get any confirmation from the Kindle screen, I followed the directions from Kubrick with the same results as you. It detects the device after going through the USB Downloader mode steps (takes about 10 secs.), flashes the kernel (about 4 secs.), then flashes the main partition in about 5 seconds (goes from 0% to Flashing Done). Tried turning it on with no success.

I have tried to reset the device using the internal reset button to no avail, as well.
Unless there are other suggestions or options I am resigning it to paperweight status.

Thanks for all of the great advice here.

[knc1]

It will never be a paperweight.
Spare parts, maybe.

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Do you have access to a machine that gives the user a bit more information than a chime tone?

If not, have you booted Kubrick and then escaped from the Wizard to find out more about what is happening?

Are you running Kubrick in a VM or on the actual hardware?
What hardware?
What hardware type of USB port(s) {USB-1, USB-2, USB-3} ?

[Rouffian]

Hi knc1,

I tried my own laptop a few times and it's no go. It couldn't see the iso and I couldn't get anywhere. I ran it on my trusty old desktop and it went well. up to the "putting your Kindle into fastboot mode", where it just sat for 15 minutes, until I gave up. I return to Paris tonight, so I guess I am going to try to re-find the manual jailbreak and do that.

I actually had all of this saved and carefully documented, but I fell asleep on the train and someone nicked my bag with my laptop, kindle and external HDD. This is a new Kindle and needs cracking.

Your moderator knows that he lives in the best city in the world, so he's probably used to smart remarks about French telecoms, music and management. All of which are unique. If they were children you would assure them they were 'special'.

I will retry the laptop over the next few days, and try booting from one of the work PCs. I work for a French government institution, so there is plenty of obsolete hardware around. ;-)

[knc1]

hmm...
Working for **any** government institution is usually a good source of obsolete equipment (just look on your desk).

I am not sure what you mean by "the manual jailbreak" -
if you mean some software thingy - then you should have it already on the Kubrick LiveCD (ah, f4 to escape from wizard to command line - I think).

[rbstech]

Originally Posted by knc1

It will never be a paperweight.
Spare parts, maybe.

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Do you have access to a machine that gives the user a bit more information than a chime tone?

If not, have you booted Kubrick and then escaped from the Wizard to find out more about what is happening?

Are you running Kubrick in a VM or on the actual hardware?
What hardware?
What hardware type of USB port(s) {USB-1, USB-2, USB-3} ?

I would like to think that I know my way around a PC but I am nowhere near as knowledgeable as most on this forum, especially when it comes to coding and command line stuff.
That being said:
I have been running Kubrick Live on my laptop (Dell, win7, core i5), booting directly from the CD.
Currently (during normal Windows operation), when I connect the Kindle to a USB 3.0 port nothing happens. If I connect to a USB 2.0 port I get a sound indicator from the laptop and it registers a device as "SE Blank RINGO", no drivers installed. Not sure how to glean any more out of the PC.
After booting from the CD I believe I was able to escape from the Kubrick wizard. It took me to a command prompt and at that point I didn't know how to proceed. Using the wizard still gives me the same result as I described in my original post.
I wish I could provide more insight.

[knc1]

There are some usb-3.0 host ports out in the field that do not wait long enough for usb-2.0 devices to initialize.
(An Oops in somebody's silicon).

This is something that happens at the hardware level, not something we can do anything about other than caution:
"If your Kindle doesn't work on a usb-3.0 port, don't be surprised. (It should, but it might not.)"

[rbstech]

Relating to my two posts (#771 and 775), I have a question regarding the startup of the Kubrick wizard. while Kubrick was booting up from the cd I was noticing words like "error" and "failure" but could not read the complete sentence. I took a slo-mo video with my cell phone and here is what my PC is showing as Kubrick is booting up (not all of it, just the questionable lines):

Decompressing...Linux...Parsing ELF...done.
Booting the kernel.
[1.714521] [drm:drm_pci_agp_init]
*ERROR* Cannot initialize the agpgart module.
[1.714578] DRM:Fill_in_dev Failed.
Switching to tmpfs
.
.
lsmod:can't open '/proc/modules': no such file or directory

I am obviously not fluent in any of this but when I see ERROR and Failed I start to wonder.
Is this just the nature of the program running on my system or is there a problem?
The wizard seems to run fine with the exception that it flashes the main partition of my Kindle in 5 seconds versus the 1-3 hours that Kubrick expects.

Thanks for any and all thoughts.

[knc1]

The first error is just that your PC does not support that type of video card - -
Since you can still see / use the screen after that point, the alternative is working fine.

The second error may or may not be significant, but it is based on how the LiveCD is built at build time.
It works for others, so it must be a false warning in this case.

The third error -
False "completed flashing" message -
that one counts -
It **DID NOT** flash your K3 in 5 seconds.

Read over the posts in this thread, find others with the same behavior and what was said / done about it.

[rbstech]

While running Kubrick Live on a Win XP machine, it could not find my device (Kindle K3). It just sat there searching, and searching... My question is this:
Is there a way to exit the Kubrick wizard, in situations like this, other than to do a hard shutdown of the PC (i.e. pressing the OFF switch until shutdown occurs)? I think I tried every key on the keyboard to no avail.
Thanks in advance.

[knc1]

you must have missed alt-f3 (or maybe alt-f4)
which gives you a command line prompt
then use one of the Linux shutdown commands
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Depending on how dumb your win-box bios is, you might have trouble ejecting the LiveCD before it grabs it again.
Just depends on the power-on sequence your particular box uses.
You might have to 'escape' from the normal power-up sequence by selecting the bios menu during power-up self test.
That will give you power to the dvd drive (so it can eject the disk for you) without trying to access it.

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Off switch is nice, easy to use, can not harm anything (a LiveCD runs RAM resident, without any host machine storage resources open).

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And then again, you might just have to get the disk out while the machine is powered down -
there is usually a mechanical release for situations like this (often a paperclip wire sized hole in the front).