Select Boot for K4 and Touch

[thatworkshop]

Originally Posted by Deathknight

Well, I used ixtab's data.tar.gz jailbreak. It bricked my Kindle. Amazon sent me a replacement one, but I tried the jailbreak on that one too. So now I have two bricked Kindle Touch's, with one I need to send back I tried the one with pictures & instructions, but my Kindle Touch isn't showing up a HID device, so I can't flash the diags on to it, it also means it's showing up as "Kindle Internal Storage", which MfgTool won't work correctly with. So, I'm hoping that someone could tell me how to get the Kindle to show up as a HID device. Any help is appreciated.

Hi and welcome to MR.
firstly, don't worry and relax, you can debrick it and send one back to Amazon. There have been people with worse condition that could debrick their Kindles.
Please read my posts, starting with this thread.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by Deathknight

...
So, I'm hoping that someone could tell me how to get the Kindle to show up as a HID device. Any help is appreciated.

All you need to know is here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=170929

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by murz_07

Problem is that I have absolutely no idea how to do it.

I built a touch u-boot that saves "fastboot" into the idme var in mmc, and although that worked for the K4, when I do it for the touch, it boots to fastboot, but disconnecting it and long reset makes it boot to main, not fastboot.

For some reason, the bootmode var seems to NOT be saved on the touch (or when using the touch u-boot).

To be able to unplug the kindle from a windows machine after setting fastboot mode, then plugging it into a linux machine, requires saving fastboot mode so rebooting automatically goes to fastboot.

This is not happening as expected and will take some more study when I get time...

EDIT: Well... I *did* do it just before loading the kernel in the touch u-boot. But on the k4nt u-boot, I did it very early in the boot cycle. I will try that here to see if it works...

[Poetcop]

Psyched you're making progress on this geekmaster! And hang in there Deathstrike: there are extremely smart and generous-spirited folks on here who will help you fix them both - mostly in the form of forum posts that are already written. (it's a lot of reading, but well worthwhile)

[lightstrike]

thanks for the warm welcome and the answers. I do have a lot of books. I think that is the source of my crash. I will be more prudent with the books I put onto the kindle. I had almost 1 GB worth of books there.

Originally Posted by cscat

Hi and thanks for all the kind words. Oh and welcome to the family of MR.
I'm so glad you got your Kindle back. We all owe geekmaster and he has saved us multiple hundreds of bucks! So give karma to him for his Awesomeness!

I try to answer your questions my friend:

1. I leave this to geekmaster but I guess foresic one is 5.0.0 so if you hadn't updated your device before it bricked, it'd be the forensic one.

2. Personally, I don't jump to updates headfirst... according to this thread, there's no actual motivation for me to update to 5.0.4. Mine is 5.0.3 and I like it better than 5.0.0 (except I had to replace a jar file to remedy a software glitch). All in all, if you can't grab a hold of 5.0.3, my best suggestion for you would be to stick with 5.0.0 for now.

3. Yes you can.

4. It could be because of running out of space. Do you have lots of books (and hence a big collection database)?

[lightstrike]

Thanks for the suggestion on the symlink. I will look at it again. Now I am just enjoying my revived Touch ...

Originally Posted by geekmaster

The gitbrew forensic image is 5.0.0.

Too many books can brick a kindle 4 (mini) or 5 (touch) because the collections database is stored on /var/local (mmcblk0p3) which is only 30MB and the system bricks if it is full. One (good) solution is to copy the collections db to /mnt/mmc and replace the one in /var/local with a symlink pointing at the copy on /mnt/mmc. The system will then use the copy on the (much larger than 30MB) USB drive and STOP filling the tiny /var/local partition. There is info about the collections database file name and its location in various forum posts, but I am too tired right now or I would look it up for you. Anybody here care to post its name and location?

And perhaps somebody can write a RUNME.sh to copy and symlink the collections database would be nice too, but be careful to check for one already on /mnt/us. You do not want to kill it by copying a symlink on top of it if somebody runs this more than once. Better to check that you are copying a file and not a symlink, and not to overwrite an existing file. In other words, just be careful so you do not trash a collections database. Thanks...

And for people comfortable with SSH and linux commands, there is an even easier way to repair a bricked kindle touch (or k4nt): https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=170929

Yeah, my karma has been stuck around a half million for far too long -- how long until you folks can double it to a million karma points?

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by Poetcop

Psyched you're making progress on this geekmaster!

I just took another look at this with the serial port connected.

When it is in fastboot mode, if you disconnect the USB cable it immediately drops to a bist> prompt at the serial port, waiting for you to type a bist command.

So... we now know that you cannot stay in fastboot mode and change computers (but it does work well for me dropping into and out of a VM, because the kindle USB port does not lose power.

While typing this I got an idea: put a powered USB hub between the kindle and host PC so the kindle sees power while switching the hub usb cable between a windows host PC and a linux host PC.

Just need to find a powered USB hub around here somewhere (a LONG time since I used one)...

EDIT: If the powered USB hub helps the kindle stay in fastboot mode while changing host PC, this will be a MUCH easier method than trying to debug the custom u-boot to see why fastboot mode is not surviving a kindle reboot. I cannot locate a powered USB hub right now, so I requested help in a new thread to test this to see if we can use a powered USB hub to switch host PCs while staying in fastboot mode.

UPDATE: I realized that one of the LCD displays sitting in front of me has a built-in powered USB hub. I tested it. It did not work. So... we still need a way to make u-boot permanently change the idme bootmode var to "fastboot" (until you change it to something else later). For now, the only way to do this is to run either linux or windows in a Virtual Machine (emulator), or to get fastboot working in cygwin on windows.

*** Has anybody gotten the cygwin version of yifanlu's kindle fastboot tool working correctly?

[Poetcop]

Hi geekmaster, this is exciting stuff! So glad you were able to reproduce my Kindle's fastboot behaviour. Just to clarify my observations, I believe that I also lose fastboot when I reboot the computer (which probably loses power at some point), and when I am running WMware player with Ubuntu in Windows XP (via Bootcamp), switching on that USB device within VMware also drops it out of fastboot, despite the Kindle being physically plugged in the whole time. Perhaps there is a power interruption there too. However it sounds like the same thing didn't happen for you using VirtualBox, to emulate a PC within linux? (I'd be trying virtualbox for the PC right at this moment if it wasn't a big time investment, due to running out of space on my bootcamp partition) Can't wait to hear if your hub idea works, because that would definitely be another way for it to work for me.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by Poetcop

Hi geekmaster, this is exciting stuff! So glad you were able to reproduce my Kindle's fastboot behaviour. Just to clarify my observations, I believe that I also lose fastboot when I reboot the computer (which probably loses power at some point), and when I am running WMware player with Ubuntu in Windows XP (via Bootcamp), switching on that USB device within VMware also drops it out of fastboot, despite the Kindle being physically plugged in the whole time. Perhaps there is a power interruption there too. However it sounds like the same thing didn't happen for you using VirtualBox, to emulate a PC within linux? (I'd be trying virtualbox for the PC right at this moment if it wasn't a big time investment, due to running out of space on my bootcamp partition) Can't wait to hear if your hub idea works, because that would definitely be another way for it to work for me.

The hub did not work. I am trying to compile fastboot for windows now.

Rebooting a computer resets the USB port, which would have the same effect as losing power (just like a powered USB hub did not work).

VirtualBox boot windows an OS with the kindle owned by the host PC OS. When you pass a USB *device* through to the VM, or pass it out of the VM to the host, the kindle does not lose fastboot mode.

I am running WinXP in a VM on a linux host, but I have heard of success running linux in a VM on a windows host as well.

It makes things a little more difficult when the kindle drops out of fastboot mode on USB reset or disconnect.

I am having issues getting libusb for mingw/msys right now. But when done, fastboot should run as a native windows app (no cygwin shell or cygwin DLL needed).

[bluefire1128]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

I do not know of any "driver" for fastboot mode. Yifanlu's kindle fastboot program communicates directly with the raw USB port using libusb (or equivalent), so no device driver is required. I have not tried the windows version. I use the linux version which works quite well (at least the parts that I needed). Thanks yifanlu!

Some files are removed from kindles before they are shipped. The touch is missing files needed to use SSH from diagnostics mode. Perhaps you can added the missing files later, to enable those menu items to function properly.

Hello,geekmaster,could you give me a hand for:
1 the Yifanlu's kindle fastboot executable file on windows (xp sp3) platform;
2 I have met the same problem like cscat, would you please help us to resolve this problem?
3 in KT 5.0.4, diags mode, usbnetwork can't work,could you give me a instruction for this?

[Deathknight]

Well, cscat, I can't seem to get the RUNME.sh to run. I got it to run once, no idea how, but it created a file called RUNME.err, and it said something along the lines of "line 3, /usr/sbin/factory_reset not found". Anyway, I'm trying to get the RUNME.sh to run, no idea how. Followed your instructions, still a little lost.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by Deathknight

Well, cscat, I can't seem to get the RUNME.sh to run. I got it to run once, no idea how, but it created a file called RUNME.err, and it said something along the lines of "line 3, /usr/sbin/factory_reset not found". Anyway, I'm trying to get the RUNME.sh to run, no idea how. Followed your instructions, still a little lost.

You need to delete RUNME.done before RUNME.sh will run again.

You might need to run factory_reset after booting from the main partition (no ENABLE_DIAGS file).

[Deathknight]

Geekmaster, now I have one of the two Kindle's fixed. No idea how I did it, but pretty sure I couldn'tve done it without you and cscat. Thanks alot.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by Deathknight

Geekmaster, now I have one of the two Kindle's fixed. No idea how I did it, but pretty sure I couldn'tve done it without you and cscat. Thanks alot.

You are welcome. I added your success report to the growing list:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=170929

[Deathknight]

Geekmaster, if you're stilll there, I'd like just a little more help. I mentioned I had two bricked Kindle's. I can't get the second one unbricked because it isn't running the RUNME.sh file. If you have any suggestions, I would appreciate it.