PRS-650 Flashing the firmware

[porkupan]

Originally Posted by goaspy

while the default fonts are used everywhere. The sans font in the reader's interface (Home Screen for example) and the serif font for the book content (txt, lrf, epub).

Not true. Well, almost true. The EPUB uses its own internal set of fonts, it doesn't use the "system" fonts at all. The EPUB module is more or less independent of the other modules in the system. You can make it use the default fonts via CSS, but the default fonts are not represented by full sets (regular, italic, bold, bold-italic), so that's not such a good idea. The other modules know how to simulate italics and bold on a regular font, but the EPUB module doesn't.

[noxx]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

You can get all the relevant info from post #1 of this thread. It does already include a ChangeLog in English but to see more details you do need to Google-translate the page.

sorry for my stupid question: are the firmwares in this post original sony-firmwares?


regard

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by noxx

sorry for my stupid question: are the firmwares in this post original sony-firmwares?

No they are hacks by very experienced Sony hackers.

[noxx]

ok, not the same like prs-plus or ebook-applications? overwrite this russian-firmware the original on the sony-readers?

regard

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by noxx

ok, not the same like prs-plus or ebook-applications? overwrite this russian-firmware the original on the sony-readers?

PRS-Plus is also a Sony hack by an experienced Sony hacker. Just not the same hacker. I'm not too sure, but I believe they (the hackers) may cooperate with each other.

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I understand it, the hacks only replace certain bits of the original Sony firmware.

I don't know anything about ebook-applications.

[Papi]

I should receive in a few days a PRS 950, and was wondering about the "search wikipedia while reading a book" functionality. I guessed, since the device is sold in USA only, that the wiki link is set on the english section of wikipedia, and as I "decramfsed" it, I found 3 files that referenced the wiki link : kconfig.xml, kconfig-auto.xml and systemConfig.xml. They indeed point to http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/. I would like to change this URL to http://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.
My question is : is there any risk in decramfs the firmware, modifying the xml (the 3 ?), recreating the package, creating the md5 file and flashing ?

Another question, but perhaps this shouldn't be discussed here : in my search I stumbled across some URL lists, which makes me think the reader could access other URLs besides Sony bookstore using 3G. I would be interested in doing this, using my own 3G card of course (I'm in France so the one sold with the reader wouldn't work anyway, and I wouldn't use it if it did). Anyone tried this ? I don't even if the sim card is accessible or if you have to disassemble the device.

I know the subject is touchy, because it could lead to illegal use of the connection "offered" by Sony, but consider it's not my purpose.

[Mark Nord]

Originally Posted by Papi

My question is : is there any risk in decramfs the firmware, modifying the xml (the 3 ?), recreating the package, creating the md5 file and flashing ?

Extraction and modification of xml-files seams to be safe.
Rebuilding the package in a Windows-Environment is NOT recommended.

With the boroda/porkupan fw check the test-startup feature, to remount only the modified files, without flashing them.
HTH
Mark

[Papi]

Thanks now I remember you posted something (post #129) about a similar case in this thread. I'll edit startup.sh and use that, it seems less risky, and I don't have any Linux distrib installed so far anyway.

[porkupan]

systemConfig.xml is the initial whitelist for 3G browsing (until the current one is loaded from the Sony server, if I understand it correctly). It seems to be signed (via systemConfig.xml.sig), so it is possible that a changed version will not be accepted by the Reader's fw.

You can safely modify and overmount kconfig.xml

[Papi]

Thanks for the information. So they did implement some kind of protection to prevent adding allowed URLs...Well I guess it seemed too easy. I thought I remember a post about someone trying to change the sim card for one of his own, but I guess that someone had to change the list of allowed URLs too, else it wouldn't be of much use other than access google books and the sony store, but I can't find that thread.

About kconfig.xml : is that a file I have to mount, or just copy to the reight directory in startup.sh ? and what is the use of kconfig-auto.xml ?

[Mark Nord]

Originally Posted by Papi

About kconfig.xml : is that a file I have to mount, or just copy to the reight directory in startup.sh ? and what is the use of kconfig-auto.xml ?

It has to be "mounted" as it resides in /opt/sony/ebook/application/ and is otherwise not accessible.

The cp command in startup.sh is used to have the file(s) copied to /tmp/ and have them mount from there, to avoid any problems by remounting /Data/ in the standard startup-sequence.

To answer your second question:
kconfig-auto.xml is used with the /test-autorun/ folder.
If mentioned folder is found in IM, kconfig.xml, will be replaced by kconfig-auto.xml using the same mount --bind trick.

But don't ask which condition have to be met, and which buttons have to be pressed in sub-sequent order to activate autorun.xml/.js as porkupan didn't want to discuss this in public.

[Papi]

Thanks Mark, very helpful as usual.
OK so I just have to mess with kconfig.xml. As for systemConfig.xml, the more I think of it, the less I think anything going wrong couldn't be resolved by simply putting the original file again, and doing a hard reset or something like that. But I would be surprised if the application allows anything if it can't get the allowed URL list from the Sony server.

[Mark Nord]

Originally Posted by Papi

...the more I think of it, the less I think anything going wrong couldn't be resolved by simply putting the original file again, and doing a hard reset or something like that....

It's even simpler.
Reset the reader and start-up with connected USB. This is "Safe-Mode", no startup-scripts (including PRS+) will be executed, thus the reader again will access the originals from the firmware.
Remove or change startup.sh, and restart w/o USB connected.

[Papi]

Interesting, I didn't know about the safe-mode. I really have to read the thread about boroda's version of the firmware on the-ebook.org (I guess that info was on this thread), but god the french translation by google is most of the times just awful. I'll have to try the english translation, maybe it's better.

[Papi]

Well it's weird I tried 2 methods, both didn't work :
- unpack new_opt.950.img, edit kconfig.xml, replace http://en.m.wikipedia.org by http://fr.m.wikipedia.org, repack, all this on linux. Maybe something wen wrong there because I used standard cramfs tools wwhich didn't have the -d option, but then I thought that was something added by porkupan to preserve owner/group of the files. When I looked at the files after unpacking, they all belonged to root/root, which seemed weird to me but I continued anyway. After flashing with my modified firmware, the wikipedia link inside a book still links to the english speaking website.
- then I tried : modify startup.sh as below, copy modified kconfig.xml in READER:/config/ and reboot the reader. It gave me an error the first 2 times I tried accessing wikipedia from reading a book, so I thought at least something was modified, but next attempt brought the english wikipedia, so no luck either.

Spoiler:

if [ -f /Data/config/kconfig.xml ]
then
cp -f /Data/config/kconfig.xml /tmp
mount --bind /tmp/kconfig.xml /opt/sony/ebook/application/kconfig.xml
fi

So either I'm doing something wrong, or this parameter is not really used by the reader which would seem awkward to me.

On another topic, in the kconfig.xml, there's the following line :
<variable name="dictionaryApplicationOnly" value="0"/> <!-- bit0:dicApp only, bit1:no Word Log, bit2:/Data/dictionary -->
Anyone knows more about this ?