Development avenues on KV (are kindlets possible at all?)

[SeTeVeElCarton]

Hi All,

As a disappointed new KV owner I just came to know that Active Content support has been dropped in this device. In my limited knowledge of the platform kindlets more or less equate to Active Content.

As I've some extensive experience in j2me programming, kindlets'd be my first choice for kindle development but... are those possible at all on the KV?

If not, given we have root access to the device maybe some components could be taken from the PW to reinstate kindlet support. Has anyone looked into this?

Failing all of that, what remaining avenues remain for homebrew on the KV?

Thanks very much for any insights!

[eschwartz]

KUAL still works on the KV.


So Amazon "deprecated" it and doesn't support further Kindle Store sales of Active Content. (I don't think they were overly impressed with the success of Active Content in the store.)
But they haven't actually removed support from the firmware.


All you need to do is use the MobileRead shared developer keystore to sign your Kindlets and run them on jailbroken devices.


Wiki: Kindlet_Developer_HowTo#Developing_Java_Kindlets

[NiLuJe]

They even managed to unbreak support for it after that announcement, which is why some of the original posts might have been a tad on the pessimistic side of things .

Be aware that the Kindlet dev documentation is a bit touch and go, so don't hesitate to ask . (And, as mentioned on another thread, look at a currently maintained working Kindlet for inspiration [i.e;, KUAL/CM]).

[SeTeVeElCarton]

Thanks for your prompt reply eschwartz!

So if I understand correctly, as I already jailbroke my KV I already have those developer keys.

I unziped kif 0.5 to my device and got a promising tile for it marked as "Active". Unfortunately trying to launch it anly got me a "The item you attempted to open is incompatible with this kindle. Please try to upgrade bla bla bla..." dialog :-(

Here is what I put on my KV:

-jb.zip
-JailBreak-1.14.N-FW-5.x-hotfix.zip
-KUAL-v2.6.zip
-kual-helper-0.5.N.zip
-kual-dyn-submenu-example-0.1.N.zip
-kual-gawk-1.5.N.zip
-kual-mrinstaller-1.6.N.zip

Did I miss anything??

[knc1]

Originally Posted by SeTeVeElCarton

Thanks for your prompt reply eschwartz!

So if I understand correctly, as I already jailbroke my KV I already have those developer keys.

I unziped kif 0.5 to my device and got a promising tile for it marked as "Active". Unfortunately trying to launch it anly got me a "The item you attempted to open is incompatible with this kindle. Please try to upgrade bla bla bla..." dialog :-(

Here is what I put on my KV:

-jb.zip
-JailBreak-1.14.N-FW-5.x-hotfix.zip
-KUAL-v2.6.zip
-kual-helper-0.5.N.zip
-kual-dyn-submenu-example-0.1.N.zip
-kual-gawk-1.5.N.zip
-kual-mrinstaller-1.6.N.zip

Did I miss anything??

No: 1 -
Whatever the problem is, it is specific to your device -
Why?
Because a functioning KUAL is required to install our packages - and with all the screensaver and font installs mentioned, without mentioning that the KUAL/MrPI combination would not run - the likely hood of anything other than 'local to your device' is slim-to-none.

In addition to what you installed, tell us (in detail) what steps you followed and what was the result of each step.
(My guess: you did a 'reset to factory defaults' somewhere along the line.)

# 9200

[SeTeVeElCarton]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

Be aware that the Kindlet dev documentation is a bit touch and go, so don't hesitate to ask . (And, as mentioned on another thread, look at a currently maintained working Kindlet for inspiration [i.e;, KUAL/CM]).

Yeah, spotty at least. Fortunately there's the kdk javadocs around which I hope will prove useful.

[SeTeVeElCarton]

Originally Posted by knc1

No: 1 -
Whatever the problem is, it is specific to your device -
Why?
Because a functioning KUAL is required to install our packages - and with all the screensaver and font installs mentioned, without mentioning that the KUAL/MrPI combination would not run - the likely hood of anything other than 'local to your device' is slim-to-none.

In addition to what you installed, tell us (in detail) what steps you followed and what was the result of each step.
(My guess: you did a 'reset to factory defaults' somewhere along the line.)

# 9200

hmm.. no reset to factory defaults as far as I can tell.
KUAL seems to be functional. It launches, Helper+' Show network info works, etc.

I did follow indications here https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=270651 and followed indications on several other posts linked from there, in the same order as presented. Everything reported a successful.

As per other hacks I did not install anything else, be it fonts, screensaver or whatnot related.

I'm sure I'm doing something wrong. Might it be that de Quincey's code signing keys are not the same as jailbreak process's installed ones? I did not use mrPI to install KIF, should I?

No doubt the issue is device (or user!) local. Never doubted it

Maybe KIF is not the best kindlet to perform my testing. Could you suggest something better?

[knc1]

Originally Posted by SeTeVeElCarton

- - - -
I'm sure I'm doing something wrong. Might it be that de Quincey's code signing keys are not the same as jailbreak process's installed ones? I did not use mrPI to install KIF, should I?

No doubt the issue is device (or user!) local. Never doubted it

What is 'de Quincey'?
What is 'KIF'?

For kindlets, you want the "combined developer's keystore"
there was a post on that subject within the past few hours.

Package key (well, the one and only MR signature certificate) handling -
well the key (pun intended) to all of that is KindleTool.

Hmm....
I have a clone of that source handy:
https://github.com/NiLuJe/KindleTool
(and from there you can navigate to the current (NiLuJe) repo)

We use the "Linus backup model" everybody clones each other's repos.

[SeTeVeElCarton]

Originally Posted by knc1

What is 'de Quincey'?
What is 'KIF'?

I was under the impression he was popular around here
At any rate he's the one who wrote KIF and other kindlets.
KIF stands for Kindle Interactive Fiction I suppose. It's one of the kindlets listed at the Kindlet Index wiki page here

For kindlets, you want the "combined developer's keystore"
there was a post on that subject within the past few hours.

Oh, I thought that was precisely what NiLuJe's bridge update pack (JailBreak-1.14.N-FW-5.x-hotfix.zip) was doing. KUAL is working and KCrosswords to. So some keys are being installed with it but not all of the ones present in combined keystore?

Sorry for so many questions, I've been reading lots of posts here but I'm quite confused

https://github.com/NiLuJe/KindleTool
(and from there you can navigate to the current (NiLuJe) repo)

So I should use KindleTool to generate an update package with the combined developer's keystore inside? and then what? install with mrinstaller? Cannot fin a post explaining this.

[knc1]

for a long time there was confusion here because we had two things called: Jail break.

One (what we still call a jail break) put our (MR dev) signature certificate into the Kindle's certificate store.

The other, updated the Java application keystore, and also installed that *.jar file to "break" out of the Java jail.

Due to that confusion, it got re-named MKK (Mobileread Kindlet Kit - or some such).

Then, since it was almost **always** installed on jail broken Kindles, the "device jailbreak" got expanded to also bundle the Java Kindlet jailbreak and install it at the same time.

History.

= = = =

You will have to sign your Kindlet's jar files (details in that wiki page link above) -
That is where the 'Combined Keystore' thingy comes into play - during the signing.

Kindlets are just *.azw2 documents that drop into the /documents folder so you don't need to create an update_*.bin file for them with KindleTool.

Anything that needs to be model locked and/or will alter the filesystem tree outside of user storage needs to be packaged as an update_*.bin file.
KindleTool will do that for you.
It has the private signature key built into it.

[eschwartz]

As knc1 said, the combined developer keystore is installed on the Kindle as the MKK (bundled with the jailbreak) -- you need it on the Kindle, to run Kindlets (*.azw2), and you need it on your computer, to sign Kindlets (*.azw2).

KindleTool is irrelevant unless you intend to create, modify, or extract update_*.bin installers.