Glo Kobo Glo "Bricked"

[UniqueCar13]

I have a very old Kobo glo with technically non functional battery because it dies whenever i unplug it. I have no idea if that correlates to it not working but anyway

As soon as i figured i have i immediately turned it on and i cant exactly remember what happened but long story short it got bricked. I found this forum and attempted to recover it by looking at other peoples issues. Once i figured out i need to use a new disk image for this and needed to make account for this forum i looked for different ways because i did not want to make an account for some reason.

i found this iso on the internet archive

https://archive.org/details/kobo_glo...factory.img.7z

and at least 10 different firmware patches by downloading the firmware while the sd card was still in my computer right after duplicating the card.

I was lucky to even get to a setup screen with most of them.

Eventually i gave up and made an account for the forum and requested an image (which i got in like 1 day ) and attempt to boot it with no firmware upgrade.

I was very happy to finally see a home screen for the first time in forever until i connected it to my pc and it asked my to log out because the kobo was logged into the default email account and i couldn't sync it. Since i thought it would be fine now i tried hooking it up standalone without a pc by selecting the network and putting in the wpa2 details manually and both did not work.

At this point i have no idea what to do hence why i am here as a last resort.

Any help is appreciated very much. Thank You.

[DNSB]

One quick and dirty trick would be to delete the KoboReader.sqlite file and then restart your Glo which should recreate the database with no user entry in the database. This should allow you to continue the setup.

Otherwise, you could try a manual factory reset.

• Charge your Glo for at least an hour.
• Power it off. If you don't see the Powered Off message, just hold the Power button to the right for 30-35 seconds.
• Press and hold the light button.
• Slide the power button to the right, hold for a second and release. You may need to do this several times before your Glo powers on.
• Continue to hold the light button until the power LED blinks rapidly (discoing).
• Release the light button.
• You should see a Restoring message on the screen
• Once the restore has finished, continue with setup.
• Note that the WiFi may not work since the firmware in the image is too old to support current minimum security standards. There is also likely to be an issue with updating directly to the newest firmware. I would suggest after setting up with the Kobo Desktop App, that you deleted the KoboRoot.tgz, manifest.md5sum and upgrade directory and replace them with a older firmware (one report was that they used 3.19.5761, then 4.30.18838 and then let the automatic update run.)

[UniqueCar13]

Thanks for the quick feedback. I tried deleting it and it did work and after a couple of attempts i was able connect to the internet for the first time through the kobo because whenever i do it on the computer it freezes once completed syncing. As soon as i did the time and whatever it froze on "downloading update please be patient 0% complete". It has been on that for 10 hours plugged in now. Does any of this have to do with the battery or not?

[DNSB]

It might be a battery issue though hard to be certain. You might want to try downloading the latest firmware from Patrick Gaskin's Kobo Firmware Downloads site and do a manual install. Do this without running the Kobo Desktop app while connected to the computer. One question is if you are using a new µSD card? If not, give that a try.

[UniqueCar13]

I Have been using the original sd card. I found a different 4gb that is fine to use right? I just have a question, after using minitool partition wizard to delete and recreate a partition do i just go ahead and mirror your image to the card with the upgraded firm ware on it or do i have to put it of with the kobo booted up through USB.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by UniqueCar13

I Have been using the original sd card. I found a different 4gb that is fine to use right? I just have a question, after using minitool partition wizard to delete and recreate a partition do i just go ahead and mirror your image to the card with the upgraded firm ware on it or do i have to put it of with the kobo booted up through USB.

You can't put re-image the card with the Kobo booted through USB. The USB connection only exposed the FAT32 partition. The two ext4 Linux partitions (system and recovery) and the information stored in unpartitioned space will not be visible. You need to mount the µSD card on your computer and then write the image.

For most cases due to some of the odd partitioning on some µSD cards to allow for backup software, etc., I suggest doing full overwrite of the µSD card using the SD Card Association's SD Memory Card Formatter for Windows/Mac before writing the image. Some users have reported a better experience using a different tool to write the image such as Balena Etcher (PC & Mac) or Rufus.

[UniqueCar13]

I Finally got it working and i just have one more question. Since the battery is dead how do i shut the kobo down while plugged in safely before just unplugging?

[UniqueCar13]

Originally Posted by UniqueCar13

I Finally got it working and i just have one more question. Since the battery is dead how do i shut the kobo down while plugged in safely before just unplugging?

Sorry how do i also put my PDF files on there to read and can i put any PDF

[DNSB]

I would suggest adding NickelMenu and adding USB Connect to it's menu. I've placed a sample config file in the spoiler below and attached it as well. Just copy the file config (no file extension) inside the .zip file to the /.adds/nm directory on your Kobo after installing NickelMenu. After safely ejecting, you should be able to use USB Connect to reconnect to your computer without needing to unplug/plug.

Spoiler:

# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
#
menu_item : main    : Dark Mode           : nickel_setting : toggle : dark_mode
menu_item : main    : Screenshots         : nickel_setting : toggle : screenshots
menu_item : main    : Import books        : nickel_misc    : rescan_books_full
menu_item : main    : Toggle Auto USB     : nickel_setting : toggle : auto_usb_gadget
menu_item : main    : USB Connect         : nickel_misc    : force_usb_connection
menu_item : main     : Reboot             : power          : reboot
menu_item : main     : Shutdown           : power          : shutdown
#
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
#
menu_item : library : Dark Mode           : nickel_setting : toggle : dark_mode
menu_item : library : Screenshots         : nickel_setting : toggle : screenshots
menu_item : library : Import books        : nickel_misc    : rescan_books_full
menu_item : library : Toggle Auto USB     : nickel_setting : toggle : auto_usb_gadget
menu_item : library : USB Connect         : nickel_misc    : force_usb_connection
menu_item : library : Reboot              : power          : reboot
menu_item : library : Shutdown            : power          : shutdown
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
#
menu_item : reader  : Dark Mode          : nickel_setting  : toggle : dark_mode
menu_item : reader  : Reboot             : power           : reboot
menu_item : reader  : Shutdown           : power           : shutdown
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------#

As for PDFs? I just copy them to my Kobo from my calibre library. If you are not using calibre, just create a directory in the root of your Kobo's exposed storage and store the PDFs there. The only reason for the directory is that the root of a FAT32 partition has a limited number of directory entries and long filenames chew up that number like it was popcorn.

[UniqueCar13]

Thanks David. I am very glad that i can finally read and not have to worry about taking the back cover of of my kobo again.