Older downloads from pgaskin.net not working

[Lily7]

Hello,

I am trying to download software version 4.30.18838 for both the Libra 2 and the Glo from https://pgaskin.net/KoboStuff/kobofirmware.html but the downloads keep getting hung up mid-download and never actually finish downloading. I have tried with different browsers, networks and even different machines, and it's the same across all of them. What do I do?

I was able to download the kobopatch for that software version just fine. Just not the actual software itself.

[geek1011]

For kobopatch, you can use one of these files as the input (just change the src option in kobopatch.yaml): https://github.com/pgaskin/kobopatch-testdata.

I will probably need to expose my mirror of full kobo firmware files if this keeps happening.

[elomire678]

Originally Posted by geek1011

I will probably need to expose my mirror of full kobo firmware files if this keeps happening.

If you can, that'd be great since Kobo's servers are still acting up. How the hell do they not notice (or fix) this?

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by elomire678

How the hell do they not notice (or fix) this?

It's doubtful that anybody is checking. After all, you're not really supposed to be using old firmware, so it's not clear why any of these downloads still exist in the first place.

[elomire678]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

It's doubtful that anybody is checking. After all, you're not really supposed to be using old firmware, so it's not clear why any of these downloads still exist in the first place.

It's not just the old firmware. It's the newest one that I'm unable to download either through the site or on my Kobo. Also can't download Kobo Desktop from their website either, same problem.

[DNSB]

Odd. I just tried downloading the Kobo Desktop for Windows from their site and no issues using Firefox, Edge and Chrome under Windows 11, Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Edge on MacOS Sonoma 14.3 (downloaded the Mac version) and Firefox, Chromium, Brave and Vivaldi on SUSE Linux Tumbleweed with no issues. From the links on Patrick Gaskin's site, downloading 4.38.21908 (the latest version) has no issues.

I had to use wget with the retries set to 0 to download the 3 older versions I tried.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by geek1011

For kobopatch, you can use one of these files as the input (just change the src option in kobopatch.yaml): https://github.com/pgaskin/kobopatch-testdata.

I will probably need to expose my mirror of full kobo firmware files if this keeps happening.

I may know the issue. Because we don't have the dates for the older firmware, it's not possible to build a working URL. Can you please add the dates of the older firmware so we can build the URL? Thanks.

With the correct month/year, I was able to build a Libra 2 URL.

4.30.18838 for the Kobo Libra 2. https://cdn.kobo.com/downloads/firmw...4.30.18838.zip

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I may know the issue. Because we don't have the dates for the older firmware, it's not possible to build a working URL. Can you please add the dates of the older firmware so we can build the URL? Thanks.

The URL on Patrick's site seem to work. Just that the download stalls out multiple times. I tend to wonder is this is an issue between Kobo and Akamai's edge servers.

https://cdn.kobo.com/downloads/firmw...4.38.21908.zip

https://cdn.kobo.com/downloads/firmw...4.37.21586.zip

As for the dates, they seem to be present both in the URLs and the popup panel for older firmware. See attached image.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Lily7

Hello,

I am trying to download software version 4.30.18838 for both the Libra 2 and the Glo from https://pgaskin.net/KoboStuff/kobofirmware.html but the downloads keep getting hung up mid-download and never actually finish downloading. I have tried with different browsers, networks and even different machines, and it's the same across all of them. What do I do?

I was able to download the kobopatch for that software version just fine. Just not the actual software itself.

Do you mean Glo or Glo HD? The URL I posted can be modified to grab the firmware for the Glo or Glo HD. But I would need to know which Glo you have.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

The URL on Patrick's site seem to work. Just that the download stalls out multiple times. I tend to wonder is this is an issue between Kobo and Akamai's edge servers.

https://cdn.kobo.com/downloads/firmw...4.38.21908.zip

https://cdn.kobo.com/downloads/firmw...4.37.21586.zip

I downloaded one firmware file. The other three I am trying are stalling.

Using Firefox, I have to wait until the download fails and retry until it finishes. One of the download did finish. The download will try to continue form where it left off.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I downloaded one firmware file. The other three I am trying are stalling.

Which is exactly what I am seeing and why I used wget for it's automatic retries. 6 seconds to download the first 12MB of a file and then 45 minutes for the rest is not what I really wanted to see.

[elomire678]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Odd. I just tried downloading the Kobo Desktop for Windows from their site and no issues using Firefox, Edge and Chrome under Windows 11, Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Edge on MacOS Sonoma 14.3 (downloaded the Mac version) and Firefox, Chromium, Brave and Vivaldi on SUSE Linux Tumbleweed with no issues. From the links on Patrick Gaskin's site, downloading 4.38.21908 (the latest version) has no issues.

I had to use wget with the retries set to 0 to download the 3 older versions I tried.

Weird. It took me 3 days to finally download 4.38.21908 for my Sage. It'd download about half of it and then stall and stall and stall. This was on several computers at my house, on my server located in the Netherlands and at my work.

[geek1011]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I may know the issue.

It isn't the issue you think it is. This is a separate issue, and I really don't get how kobo can screw up something as simple as serving files this badly... Anything not in the cloudflare cache is downloading in ~40MB chunks then stalling, each taking 4-5 minutes to prepare... It's almost as if they have some poor employee running around grabbing physical chunks in the form of a book off a bookshelf when someone tries to download it (and occasionally making a mistake, returning a corrupt chunk)

At any rate, my mirror should be ready by the end of the week. I'm still waiting for my script to download 23 files, and to re-download 17 corrupt ones.

[geek1011]

Originally Posted by DNSB

The URL on Patrick's site seem to work. Just that the download stalls out multiple times. I tend to wonder is this is an issue between Kobo and Akamai's edge servers.

Kobo no longer uses Akamai AFAICT. It appears that it's now cloudflare, possibly a proxy, then s3 or a s3-compatible server (I could probably figure it out, but my priority rn is to get the firmware files mirrored).

[JSWolf]

What happens on a Kobo Reader with these downloads? Does it eventually fail? Do you get to resume? Do you have to start over?