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Old 10-06-2012, 08:18 AM   #646
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Originally Posted by knc1 View Post
Depends on your file system and file system options.

It is also not restricted to Linux, any **disk based** operating system will "brick" if it runs out of disk space. ANY!

Linux, true to its heritage of Unix, "boots" (actually, system IPL) under the supervisor's username 'root'.
Any *nix related file system will have an area (percentage) of disk space reserved for 'root', so that the username 'root' can recover the system from "out of disk space" situations.

The system administrator (You) can defeat this by:
Running everything as the supervisor 'root' -
Optioning the file system so that space is not reserved for 'root' -
Running the system with a non-*nix file system (which does not implement the concept of a 'reserved area').

A for simple instance of #1 :
lab126 implemented the Kindle system with nearly everything running as username 'root' (a really bad idea) (tm) ;
Many other embedded linux systems make the same (simplistic) choice, likely to be the root (no pun intended) of your NAS problems.

If you don't believe that above ANY!
Fill up the entire disk of your M$-Windows box, see how long it lasts; no cheating, don't allow a dynamically sized swap file/disk.
I know any system has such problem and limitations.
I love Linux in many ways.
I just say the truth: many people's Kindle bricked because the partition been filled up. At least I have two Kindles bricked because of this and saw many in other peoples' hands. And my NAS died too because of this. Under both of the situation, well I can't see you can use root to recover it. You need to boot another system to save it,.
Windows box could have same problem, but I've never experienced any windows box failed to boot to the desktop/restore point because out of space.Actually my windows server 2008 R2 has 0 left on C and it still boots, maybe it's because the thing you mentioned, dynamic swap files etc. I'm not saying windows or any other thing is better than Linux, note.

Last edited by rynax; 10-06-2012 at 08:20 AM.
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Old 10-06-2012, 09:14 AM   #647
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its the swap file.

I've trashed plenty of boxes like that. (I have one windows server living on its swap space atm from time to time. damn you long term contracts and the WinSxs)

They are much of a muchness. One has it's issues just like the other. but they both eat space and need space. simple
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Old 10-06-2012, 10:00 AM   #648
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Originally Posted by rynax View Post
I just say the truth: many people's Kindle bricked because the partition been filled up. At least I have two Kindles bricked because of this and saw many in other peoples' hands. And my NAS died too because of this. Under both of the situation, well I can't see you can use root to recover it. You need to boot another system to save it.
I did write how the intended protection could be over-ridden in the field. If you over-ride those protections, then the system can "fill up".

If you do not over-ride or subvert those protections, your system can not "fill up" to the point where the administrative user can not recover it.

I.E: The problem is one of implementation under local control, not of design.
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Old 10-07-2012, 02:26 AM   #649
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I'm trying to debrick my uncle's kindle. He was trying to update Duokan but for some reason it failed and the kindle wads stuck at half of the loading screen.
Then i' ve suggested to boot it in debug mode, mount the USB and copy another bin file. Jeer he told me he has accidentally pressed 'I'. Now the kindle is here and yesterday tried to reflash the bootloader and kernel to see if i gwt into debug mode. It flashed with k3flasher (later i tried also rootfs) but the usb connection was reset at the end. But even so, the kindle should get into recovery at least with holding enter leery during boot, right? Is there anything else i am missing? The screen does not change at all.
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Old 10-07-2012, 03:57 AM   #650
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So, the previous post I've written from the phone, now I will try to provide more info.
The device is a kindle 3 Wifi only.
Yesterday, after flashing the bootloader found here :
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho....php?p=2217459, when performing the
k3flasher ./mx35to2_mmc.bin info command the device's serial number and Wifi mac are all displaying '???' instead of the real serial and mac.
Was this area overwritten ?
I've used the k3flasher program uboot parameter for it.

Do you have an advice what should I do ? Or the device is permanently bricked ? (I hope not)
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Old 10-07-2012, 04:13 AM   #651
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Quote:
Originally Posted by trex_daemon View Post
So, the previous post I've written from the phone, now I will try to provide more info.
The device is a kindle 3 Wifi only.
Yesterday, after flashing the bootloader found here :
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho....php?p=2217459, when performing the
k3flasher ./mx35to2_mmc.bin info command the device's serial number and Wifi mac are all displaying '???' instead of the real serial and mac.
Was this area overwritten ?
I've used the k3flasher program uboot parameter for it.

Do you have an advice what should I do ? Or the device is permanently bricked ? (I hope not)
When a failed official firmware update destroyed my idme vars (including serial number and wifi mac), I used a custom patched uboot that rewrote my own hard-coded values taken from a backup copy of a diagnostics log that contained all those values.

It can be done. But you need to compile a custom u-boot with your values in it.
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Old 10-07-2012, 04:27 AM   #652
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Originally Posted by geekmaster View Post
When a failed official firmware update destroyed my idme vars (including serial number and wifi mac), I used a custom patched uboot that rewrote my own hard-coded values taken from a backup copy of a diagnostics log that contained all those values.

It can be done. But you need to compile a custom u-boot with your values in it.

I have an identical working kindle 3. I am currently creating a backup with k3flasher's script. I was thinking I could flash this to the broken one. So I suppose this will not help, right ? It wouldn't bother me to have the same mac or serial number. I won't be using both on the same network.
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Old 10-07-2012, 04:35 AM   #653
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Quote:
Originally Posted by trex_daemon View Post
I have an identical working kindle 3. I am currently creating a backup with k3flasher's script. I was thinking I could flash this to the broken one. So I suppose this will not help, right ? It wouldn't bother me to have the same mac or serial number. I won't be using both on the same network.
The mac and serial tie into your registered amazon account, identifying your kindle. It may get strange to have two different devices that identify the same. Perhaps firmware update history. Perhaps kindle store cookie weirdness. Better to avoid such possible problems by keeping their identifying information in the idme vars unique.
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Old 10-07-2012, 04:39 AM   #654
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Originally Posted by geekmaster View Post
The mac and serial tie into your registered amazon account, identifying your kindle. It may get strange to have two different devices that identify the same. Perhaps firmware update history. Perhaps kindle store cookie weirdness. Better to avoid such possible problems by keeping their identifying information in the idme vars unique.
I agree with you, but I don't have the old serial number or mac. Unless it's written somewhere on the device itself.
So my best idea was to flash my data into his.
Normally he uses it with duokan, and I will tell him not to register it to the amazon account.
It's still better than having a bricked kindle

Now I see the k3flasher has almost exported all the conentent. It should finish with rootfs soon.

./k3flasher mx35to2_mmc.bin dump 0x0 0x00040c00 partitiontable-header-uboot.img
./k3flasher mx35to2_mmc.bin dump 0x00040c00 0x00000400 devid.img
./k3flasher mx35to2_mmc.bin dump 0x00041000 0x00340000 kernel.img
./k3flasher mx35to2_mmc.bin dump 0x00381000 0x00040000 isis.img
./k3flasher mx35to2_mmc.bin dump 0x003c1000 0x28a07000 rootfs.img
./k3flasher mx35to2_mmc.bin dump 0x28dc8000 0x01800000 varfs.img
./k3flasher mx35to2_mmc.bin dump 0x2a5c8000 0x00800000 partition3.img

out of these files, which one should I reflash ? Everything , or should I skip something ?
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Old 10-07-2012, 04:45 AM   #655
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Quote:
Originally Posted by trex_daemon View Post
I have an identical working kindle 3. I am currently creating a backup with k3flasher's script. I was thinking I could flash this to the broken one. So I suppose this will not help, right ? It wouldn't bother me to have the same mac or serial number. I won't be using both on the same network.
It's not a good idea to reuse the same Serial Number for two Kindles. You can find out the serial number of your bricked Kindle from the Amazon web page.

The MAC should be slightly less important, so it may (or may not!) be ok to simply choose a more or less random one. I've read somewhere that the "device" on Amazon is tied to the MAC as well, but then again, Amazon shouldn't be able to directly determine the configured MAC address via network (that's a different story of course if the *payload* that is sent to Amazon contains the MAC somewhere).
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Old 10-07-2012, 05:12 AM   #656
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ixtab View Post
It's not a good idea to reuse the same Serial Number for two Kindles. You can find out the serial number of your bricked Kindle from the Amazon web page.

The MAC should be slightly less important, so it may (or may not!) be ok to simply choose a more or less random one. I've read somewhere that the "device" on Amazon is tied to the MAC as well, but then again, Amazon shouldn't be able to directly determine the configured MAC address via network (that's a different story of course if the *payload* that is sent to Amazon contains the MAC somewhere).
I will try to get the serial from somewhere, but I'm afraid the device was never registered on the amazon account.

So.. suppose I find the serial and mac, does anybody knwo if I can modify some of the img files it created and flash the modified img this way, without compiling a custom uboot for it ?


Edit: I found the serial meanwhile. The question that remains is how to flash the serial into it ?

Last edited by trex_daemon; 10-07-2012 at 05:18 AM.
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Old 10-07-2012, 05:35 AM   #657
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Well.. Ive flashed:
uboot, devid, kernel isis and varfs, but still there is no change... The greed led does not light up and the image doesn't change on the display...
Any clues why ?

EDIT: now instead of the ???? marks for wifi and serial number I get blank
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Old 10-07-2012, 07:21 AM   #658
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Totally awesome! I am very happy to know that you can run a K3 without an amazon-approve battery. I just upped your karma to all 2's (adding an extra digit).

And I added your success report to the first post. It just keeps growing.
Not fully successful though. Reflash works reliably (which is good) but the device is not back to life and without a serial cable it is hard to tell what is happening (something _is_ happening because power drain varies over time -- tens of seconds -- perhaps because the device is trying to reboot or something).

Now that you mention the Amazon-approved battery, it might well be that
the system refuses to run because it is not detecting a good battery,
but to fix this i need some more work -- my LiIon battery now is very low
(down to 2.69, it even shut off at some point). If i let it charging, the light
stays on only for some 30 minutes, then goes off and apparently the
battery restarts discharging. This makes the charging process very
tedious, as i need to monitor what goes on and periodically disconnect
and reconnect the cable.
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Old 10-07-2012, 08:56 AM   #659
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lrizzo View Post
Not fully successful though. Reflash works reliably (which is good) but the device is not back to life and without a serial cable it is hard to tell what is happening (something _is_ happening because power drain varies over time -- tens of seconds -- perhaps because the device is trying to reboot or something).
Now that you mention the Amazon-approved battery, it might well be that
the system refuses to run because it is not detecting a good battery,
but to fix this i need some more work -- my LiIon battery now is very low
(down to 2.69, it even shut off at some point). If i let it charging, the light
stays on only for some 30 minutes, then goes off and apparently the
battery restarts discharging. This makes the charging process very
tedious, as i need to monitor what goes on and periodically disconnect
and reconnect the cable.
Maybe our "charge for 3 days" advice is part of the problem here. Maybe all those reports of cannot initalize flash in ATK were because the Kindle didnt have enough power to run the RAM Kernel.....


When mine was bricked it did the same thing..... Maybe it wasn't actually permabricked... just had a really dead battery...
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Old 10-07-2012, 09:37 AM   #660
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There is a basic problem with the recovery process that uses the Freescale provided code.

With the exception of the off-chip RAM and 2 models of USB UARTS, the Freescale code only handles on-chip devices.

The battery charger and management is done off-chip.
Without code to control the off-chip battery management, things are more than a bit non-deterministic.

The good news is the source code license which the ATK is under - it covers derivatives of the client side code (mis-named by Freescale as a "RAM kernel").

The bad news is that same license prohibits the addition of any code that would bring the Freescale provided code into the "Open Source" world. I.E: You can not add GPL licensed code (or any other "viral" license) when making your derivative.

The only known (to me anyway) sources of battery management chip code is GPL licensed.

The solution is to re-write (rather than derive) the client side code so that existing GPL code can be re-used.

In the time I have been posting about this, I have not been exactly over-whelmed by offers of assistance and it is too much of a project for me to do on my own.

Which leaves the end-user with the next-best alternative - remove the battery and re-charge it with an "Amazon approved" charger outside of the Kindle.
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