Instructions for patching firmware 4.15.12920

[Semwize]

Originally Posted by Maillemom

patch file contains tabs (it should be indented with spaces, not tabs)

You used tabs for indentation, spaces should be used.

[Maillemom]

Many, many thanks to everyone that helped me out. I got everything to work and I'm back in the reading zone.

Much appreciation and awe to the great group of readers and techies in the group.

Trice

[snarkophilus]

Can't believe I've only just found out about Kobo patching after having had one for a couple of years. Back in the Sony PRS days I used to play around a lot with patches.

Anyways, I'm a Windows user but prefer my Unixy environments, including doing as much as possible with Cygwin on Windows. This little patch lets me run kobopatch from Cygwin using kobopatch.sh instead of needlessly needing me to fire up a CMD shell in the right folder .

--- kobopatch.sh.ORIG   2019-07-18 12:16:00.000000000 +1000
+++ kobopatch.sh        2019-09-02 13:35:38.857097400 +1000
@@ -23,4 +23,7 @@
                 echo "Unsupported architecture"
        esac
        ;;
-esac
+    CYGWIN_NT*)
+           ./bin/koboptch-windows.exe
+           ;;
+esac

[droopy]

Hi. I have a 3-week-old baby Forma. I have done no hacking/patching to it. If I follow the instructions on this thread to patch, will that get in the way of the other hacks/tweaks available on this DevCorner subforum?

[geek1011]

Originally Posted by droopy

Hi. I have a 3-week-old baby Forma. I have done no hacking/patching to it. If I follow the instructions on this thread to patch, will that get in the way of the other hacks/tweaks available on this DevCorner subforum?

No, nothing except the invert screen ones, which may interfere with the invert screen mod. The AutoUSBGadget one may also interfere with mods which scan for the connection dialog. the reader CSS ones (I don't mean the CSS UI ones) will obviously change the rendering of books, so if you have anything unexpected there, try disabling those patches first.

And about @snarkophilus's changes, I've committed them here for the next version: https://github.com/geek1011/kobopatc...490f2361bfbc46 . Thanks!

[droopy]

Originally Posted by geek1011

No, nothing except the invert screen ones, which may interfere with the invert screen mod. The AutoUSBGadget one may also interfere with mods which scan for the connection dialog. the reader CSS ones (I don't mean the CSS UI ones) will obviously change the rendering of books, so if you have anything unexpected there, try disabling those patches first.

And about @snarkophilus's changes, I've committed them here for the next version: https://github.com/geek1011/kobopatc...490f2361bfbc46 . Thanks!

hi geek1011,

thanks so much for your post, and writing about mods by name. I'm not familiar with any of them (because I'm a noob who's done no modding/patching/hacking on my Forma yet), but I think I'll get to know them as I keep reading up on this subforum.

ANother question. If I patch the firmware following the instructions on post#1, can I undo the patch, just in case? And is it easy to undo the patch (again, just in case)?

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by droopy

If I patch the firmware following the instructions on post#1, can I undo the patch, just in case? And is it easy to undo the patch (again, just in case)?

Un-patching is exactly like patching but with all patches set to 'Enabled: no'.

Alternatively you could do a manual re-install of the correct firmware (over the top of the patched firmware) which also wipes out all patches.

[droopy]

Originally Posted by geek1011

This patch thread is for firmware 4.15.12920 (b231bfea368f4d641c17a337e80e9ee4219d55be).

Instructions for patching on Windows, Linux, or macOS with kobopatch:

1. Download the firmware from here.
2. Download and unzip kobopatch_4.15.12920.zip from here.
3. Copy the original firmware you just downloaded into the kobopatch src folder.
4. Install the firmware on your kobo BEFORE proceeding with the next steps.
5. Enable patches in the files in the src folder (or use the overrides in kobopatch.yaml to keep your options separate).
6. Run kobopatch.bat on Windows, or kobopatch.sh on Linux.
7. If the patching succeeded, a file named KoboRoot.tgz will be created in the out folder. Copy it to the .kobo folder of your device.
8. Safely remove your device.

Download

See the kobopatch - An improved patching system thread for more details.

I wanna make sure I do this correctly.

I've done steps 1 and 2.
About step 3: Should I extract/unzip "kobo-update-4.15.12920.zip" (the firmware) first? Or do I just move that zip file (unextracted) into the unzipped "/kobopatch_4.15.12920/src/" folder?

About step 4: How exactly do I *install* the firmware?

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by droopy

... just move that zip file (unextracted) into the unzipped "/kobopatch_4.15.12920/src/" folder?

Do this.

[droopy]

Ok. I did step 3, as jackie suggested.
Now how exactly do i do step 4 ("Install the firmware")?

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by droopy

Ok. I did step 3, as jackie suggested.
Now how exactly do i do step 4 ("Install the firmware")?

You only need to do step 4. if your Kobo is not already running fw 4.15.12920. What version is your current firmware?

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

You only need to do step 4. if your Kobo is not already running fw 4.15.12920. What version is your current firmware?

You can also proceed up until step 7 without worry. Perhaps do that so you can ask all questions at once rather than having to ask individually and wait for a reply each time

[Phil_C]

Originally Posted by droopy

Ok. I did step 3, as jackie suggested.
Now how exactly do i do step 4 ("Install the firmware")?

You can turn on Wi-Fi and install the most recent firmware from Kobo (if you do not already have it). Or you can download the zip file as noted in this thread and install it manually. The instructions here under "Manually updating firmware" probably work:

https://cheat.readthedocs.io/en/latest/kobo.html

I say probably, because I did the Wi-Fi thing instead.

NOTE to the nice folks in this thread:
The patching system and tweaks here are awesome. But I was as confused as droopy the first time I tried patching. The reason is that there are no instructions for updating the firmware in the first post. Step #4 just says do it. While the procedure is second nature to you, a newbie may not know what to do. It might be a good idea to add the original firmware install instructions or a link to them in the first post.

[droopy]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

You only need to do step 4. if your Kobo is not already running fw 4.15.12920. What version is your current firmware?

4.15.12920. And I got this fw from turning on the wifi on the Kobo and updating it the regular way.

Does this mean I can skip from Step 3 directly to Step 5?

Question about Step 5: What exactly must I do? I see these 5 files:
1. download_firmware_here.txt
2.libadobe.so.yaml
3. libnickel.so.1.0.0.yaml
4. librmsdk.so.1.0.0.yaml
5. nickel.yaml

UPDATE: On my Linux computer, I tried to do Step 6. First, I ran

chmod +x kobopatch.sh

. I then ran

./kobopatch.sh

But got this:

kobopatch cfae583
https://github.com/geek1011/kobopatch

Loading configuration from kobopatch.yaml
Reading input firmware zip
Error: could not apply patches: could not open firmware zip: open src/kobo-update-4.15.12920.zip: no such file or directory

Jackie said I can skip Step 4 if my Forma already has fw 4.15.12920, which it does. Based on the error message I quoted though, it seems that I'm forced to re-install the same firmware. Am I wrong? What must I do now?

[jackie_w]

Step 4 is about installing fw 4.15.12920 on your Kobo, which you don't need to do because you've said it's already been installed via wi-fi.

However, you do still need to download and place a copy of kobo-update-4.15.12920.zip in the src subdirectory (on your Linux machine) so that kobopatch can extract the files it needs (there are 1-4 of them depending which patches you enable) so it can apply your chosen patches to those files.