Aura HD Debian for Aura HD

[guang6321]

Boot cmd is configurable:
1. Get boot cmdline:
dd if=/dev/sdX(your external SD card) of=./bootenv.bin bs=1K skip=768 count=128
The 128KB binary file contains:
4 Bytes CRC32 checksum
128KB-4Bytes cmdline data
2. Edit cmdline with hex editor and recalc CRC32 checksum(this is very important)

3.Flash into SD card
dd of=/dev/sdX(your external SD card) if=./bootenv.bin bs=1K seek=768 count=128
sync
sync

[tigran]

Thank you.

There is one serious limitation of your kernel configuration: you forgot to include support for iso9660 filesystem and so I can't install software that comes as an iso image, e.g. TeX Live 2014 (I am hoping that its armhf binaries would work) --- I have to mount the iso image on desktop, turn it into a tar file, transfer the tar file, untar it and then try to install it.

Are kernel sources somewhere inside the root filesystem? Then, perhaps I could compile and insmod iso9660 module directly on the device?

[tigran]

I am in serious trouble again --- I pressed something in onboard keyboard and now I am in the mode where pressing a key causes a popup of Chinese hieroglyphs to appear from which one can select. So I can't type anything anymore. How do I get out of this mode back to normal typing?

Btw, this Chinese popup caused me to think something revolutionary: is it possible to actually have an alternative (non-English) layout available alongside the English one? That would be absolutely wonderful and I didn't even dare wish for such a thing because I assumed human-made technologies have not reached such a level of sophistication yet (other than on an Intel-based x86_64 architecture where I use this keyboard layout switching in Linux all the time --- to switch between latin and Cyrillic layouts that is).

Of course I noticed onboard settings and I see that one can clone an existing layout and perhaps even edit it (though editing SVG files seems too farfetched for this task, probably I misunderstood its purpose --- or do nowadays humans directly edit layouts in an SVG representation? I must be behind the modern technologies by some 10 years and I thought nothing serious happened in all these years

But I am not talking about cloning an existing layout but switching between two different (English-US and Russian) layouts --- this would be great.

UPDATE: I have found a home page of onboard program:

https://code.launchpad.net/onboard

It has no documentation, but it has the source code, so maybe I'll figure out how to get out of Chinese mode by studying its source tree (which also has a docs subdirectory)...

UPDATE: I am still struggling with onboard layout switching, but I found a bug: you write the message "Powered off" at the very beginning of shutdown sequence but it still takes the system a few seconds to cleanly unmount filesystems etc --- the only way the user can see this is happening and AVOID taking the card out is by looking at the device from the top and noticing the LED blinking. If the user doesn't look there and takes the card out then there are chances of fs corruption (very high chances). So, the fix for this bug is print "Powering off, please wait...." instead of categorical (and wrong) "Powered off" message.

UPDATE: I "recovered" from Chinese keyboard layout by re-installing from the backup, i.e. I gave up trying to find the same keyboard shortcut that switched to it in the first place.

Now, concerning backups: I assume that all I need to backup is just the root filesystem, correct? I.e. nothing changes on any of the other partitions? Please confirm this as it is very important for me. Thank you!

[guang6321]

Thanks for your suggestions.
Try to answer your questions:

ISO9660 support:
All source codes are on the online file server, You have to rebuild kernel to support ISO9660 filesystem.

Chinese hieroglyphs:
There is no Chinese mode in Onboard, it is IBUS input method, which is used to input Chinese style characters. To switch between Chinese and English mode press "CTRL+SPACE" keys. I think IBUS is not used to switch between some latin layouts, so you may need to try other ways.
The custom onboard source codes can be found on the online file server.(file:custom.tar.gz)


About Backups:
All Debian necessary files are in mmc partition 6, I'll give you an explanation of how to make a whole backup

16GB MMC partitions table:
** head: 30MiB(RAW)
** part1: 4096MiB /FAT32 (Books)
** part2: 1536MiB(Android Data)
** part3: 512MIB(Android System)
** part4: extension
**** part5: 64MiB/FAT32
**** part6: 8192MiB (Linux Rootfs)
**** part7: 512MiB (Linux swap)


** The first 30MiB head contains partiton table(first 1KB),uboot cmdline and something important, use "dd cmd" to make backups(skip first 1KB)
** part1 contains books, user fonts, dictionaries, backup these
** part2, part3 are for android, not used in Debian
** part4, extension
**** part5: kernel uImage files, boot config files, backup these
**** part6: Debian rootfs, backup these
**** part7: Linux swap partition

Part5 is fat32 format, and the sequence number(mmcblk1p5) is directly written in uboot, not configurable;
Part1 and Part7 are mounted in Debian;
Part6 sequence number(mmcblk1p6) is written in uboot cmdline area(extenal mmc:768KB ~ 768KB+128KB), so is configurable;

[tigran]

Thank you for answering my questions.

Here are a few optimizations I suggest for your next release:

1. Edit /etc/inittab to disable all gettys on tty1-tty6 and serial getty as well.

2. Disable lpd (by "update-rc.d lpd disable")

3. Disable saned

4. Disable rpcbind

5. Disable atd

This would startup slightly faster and, more importantly, leave more memory for user apps.

UPDATE: The external keyboard doesn't work. The keyboard itself is not faulty because it works with all my Android tablets but when I plug it in to Kobo Aura HD nothing happens. Maybe I should enable something in the settings for it to recognize the keyboard.

There are no kernel messages when I plug and unplug the external keyboard, so it appears the kernel doesn't recognize this particular USB device. Or do I need to enable the host controller somehow?

[guang6321]

Originally Posted by tigran

Thank you for answering my questions.

Here are a few optimizations I suggest for your next release:

1. Edit /etc/inittab to disable all gettys on tty1-tty6 and serial getty as well.

2. Disable lpd (by "update-rc.d lpd disable")

3. Disable saned

4. Disable rpcbind

5. Disable atd

This would startup slightly faster and, more importantly, leave more memory for user apps.

UPDATE: The external keyboard doesn't work. The keyboard itself is not faulty because it works with all my Android tablets but when I plug it in to Kobo Aura HD nothing happens. Maybe I should enable something in the settings for it to recognize the keyboard.

There are no kernel messages when I plug and unplug the external keyboard, so it appears the kernel doesn't recognize this particular USB device. Or do I need to enable the host controller somehow?

You need OTG line with power supply (5V ), Kobo do not have USB device power supply

[Frenzie]

Originally Posted by tigran

UPDATE: One crucial thing that is missing in Debian is TeX Live. Yes, of course I know about "apt-get install texlive texlive-formats-extra texlive-latex-extra" but doing this did NOT install all the bits that I need (e.g. xelatex format was still missing) and if I try to do "apt-get install texlive-full" then it fails. So, there seems to be no way to install xelatex in this environment, i.e. I still have to have access to a x86_64 machine running Fedora Linux.

How about texlive-xetex?

Originally Posted by tigran

Also, I noticed that doing "apt-get autoremove texlive texlive-formats-extra texlive-latex-extra" did NOT remove tex and latex binaries --- they are still in /usr/bin/. Probably other files are left as well... Strange.

autoremove removes packages that were pulled in as dependencies but are no longer needed. If you want to remove a package you need apt remove or apt purge.

[flip1314]

Hey, This is an amazing project. Have you tried running it on the Aura? Also can we get the scripts for booting into Android and Debian so we can get it running with the Startmenu hack?

I am also uploading your image to my Mega account so that some people will have an easier time downloading it. Hope you don't mind guang.

[PeterT]

@flip1314: One thing to bear in mind; the Aura does NOT have an internal SD card, so recovery to original state in case of bricking is not feasible.

[flip1314]

Originally Posted by PeterT

@flip1314: One thing to bear in mind; the Aura does NOT have an internal SD card, so recovery to original state in case of bricking is not feasible.

I am not worried about bricking the device. I own several Aura's and this would work much better on a screen that allows for multitouch.

[flip1314]

Hey Everyone,

Here is a link to my Mega account with all of the necessary files to download and image the most recent files. This should be a little more stable than the download from China.

https://mega.co.nz/#F!ZUkQkRKA!aKr8h6LgH13mSaqMNfO67A

Cheers,
flip

[bebna]

Hi just bought a Kobo Aura HD this week, after I found out that I can run a full Linux on it.

First let my say thanks to all the people who made this possible and shared it with us, before I come to the bad news. Don't worry nothing serious, just I can't get it to work on my site.

First try, 64GB SDXC

1. I opened the casing, took out the original microSD and put in the shipping box for safe keeping.
2. I used dd on the linux shell to copy the unzipped image.
3. Extended the main linux partition with gparted, so it can fit my 64GB card.
4. Put it in and restarted the reader.
5. Nothing happens, only the LED1 just flashed only once.

Second try, 32GB SD

1. Use dd to copy the image on a normal 32GB microsd card.
2. Didn't touch the partitions.
3. Put it in, still only LED1 flashing once, no bootup.

Third try

1. Take out original card
2. Put original card in reader
3. Bootup
4. Connect USB, put menu KoboRoot.tgz in .kobo
5. Disconnect USB, Reader updates
6. Restart didn't show any menu
7. Power off, switch original with 32GB card
8. Doesn't boot again, only short LED1 flash.

Fourth try, 64GB SDXC with orignal software

1. Copy original SD with dd to notebook
2. Fill 64GB SDXC with original image
3. Extend main fat32 partition to fill up 64GB card
4. Put 64SDXC card into device
5. Successful bootup, system reports ~64GB
6. Reformat 32GB to fat32, put in extension slot, Reader reports ~32GB

So my Kobo doesn't boot any SDcard with the debian image on it, but with the 64GB SDXC and the original software it works. Also I don't get the menu at boot, haven't tried the no menu update yet, download takes roughly a day on my site for it.

Can someone please check against my checksums? So I can be sure that my files aren't corrupt:

[bebna@t400 p5]$ md5sum debian-android.16GiB.raw.img.7z kobo.raw.img.7z 
9e1841aee934a899ac82efbce3f48c7f  debian-android.16GiB.raw.img.7z
b5384092b9e0400d9277d0a01ac3397a  kobo.raw.img.7z     

[bebna@t400 p5]$ sha1sum debian-android.16GiB.raw.img.7z kobo.raw.img.7z 
7bdfc86d385967375b021a0291fc63627a374bf1  debian-android.16GiB.raw.img.7z
5cf35f4ddf2d1d0e3724de003f25513bc3bb7386  kobo.raw.img.7z

It would also be nice if you could document how you build the debian image and the boot update in the first place, I would like to create an ArchLinux if possible.

@guang6321 Can you access github or bitbucket? It would be very nice from you if you could upload your source code there.

[flip1314]

Originally Posted by bebna

Hi just bought a Kobo Aura HD this week, after I found out that I can run a full Linux on it.

First let my say thanks to all the people who made this possible and shared it with us, before I come to the bad news. Don't worry nothing serious, just I can't get it to work on my site.

Did you even read any of the information in this post or any of the others before you cracked open your device? Linux can only be booted from the external sd card reader. That is why your device won't boot when you put this image into the internal reader. All kobo's must have their original software inside. If you had read the readme that comes along with this it tells you how to get this up and running and how to change the boot properties of the kobo is so that you can choose Nicole, debian, or Android.

I would suggest in future you do a little more reading and a little less pointless work and maybe you won't waste a bunch of your time.

[Rizla]

Does the hack work in no-refresh mode. This video suggests that the screen doesn't refresh all the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rkoHcJGo18

Also can you browse, read pdfs, edit text files and view/edit spreadsheets with it?

[tigran]

Did anyone manage to get it working under Kobo Aura H2O? The H2O's screen is better than HD's, so it would be very nice if one could have just one device to be used both as a computer (running Linux) and eInk Document Reader (running Koreader+CoolReader).