Kobo µSD Card Image Requests

[WaNa]

Hi, I own a Kobo Libra 2 (model N418) and I have read that the corresponding img file can be provided upon request. I am not certain which of the five hardware versions I have, so I have also uploaded a picture in the hope that you may be able to identify the correct model and confirm which img is compatible. As I am new to this forum, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share the appropriate img file with me. Thank you in advance.

[belyanova]

Hi, I have a Kobo Libra 2 N418 with motherboard 37NB-E70K1M+6E0 (Rev E).

The device has a white screen and a continuously blinking white LED and does not boot. Could you please send me the SD card image for this revision? Thank you!

[bdhaan]

Since my Kobo Libra 2 (N418) shows the issues many others do (white screen, blinking LED), I would like to receive the image of the firmware of this device.

Thank you in advance, Sebastian.

[renke]

I would like the firmware image for a Kobo Libra 2 (Board 6F0) – hoping to revive it…

[jterasla]

Greetings!

My N249 just died and I happily found this forum. Can you please share the image so I can get it working again? Thank you!

[wally73]

I would like the firmware image for a Kobo N236 Aura Edition 2.

Serial number N236790662220, in case that is what decides between the V1 and the V2
image. The last firmware installed on it was 4.31.19086, and the hwconfig block on
the card reports board id E60QL2B0.

If it saves you any trouble: what I actually need is only /upgrade/fs.tgz from
partition 2. My own copy has 4 KB of unreadable sectors sitting in the middle of the
gzip stream, which costs me two thirds of the archive. A full image is equally
welcome though, I can extract the file myself.

Full diagnosis below, in case it is useful to anyone else landing here with the same
symptoms.

BACKGROUND

The device stopped booting. Over USB it enumerated as "i.mx6sl NTX Smart Device",
which means the i.MX6 boot ROM could not read a valid bootloader. The internal
microSD had developed bad sectors, so I imaged it with ddrescue (99.99 percent
recovered) and wrote the image to a new card.

That fixed the bootloader stage. U-boot and the kernel now load correctly, and the
uImage passes its own CRC check. But the actual failure turned out to be something
else: partition 1 (rootfs) is empty. It contains nothing but lost+found, created on
20 July 2024. A factory restore was clearly started back then and never finished,
presumably because the card was already failing.

Partition 2 (recoveryfs) is intact, so I set bootcmd to "run bootcmd_recovery" in
the u-boot environment. The device does boot into recovery and starts the restore,
but rcS runs "gunzip -t /upgrade/fs.tgz", that check fails, and it reboots in a loop.

THE PROBLEM

Both archives on the recovery partition have small holes left by the bad sectors:

fs.tgz : 4 KB missing at offset 21,961,216 (two 2 KB gaps)
db.tgz : 3 KB missing

Because gzip is a single sequential stream, everything after the first gap is lost.
I can decompress 44.96 MB of the 132.3 MB tar, which is 628 files, or 34 percent.
nickel and libnickel.so.1.0.0 are among the recovered files, but two thirds of the
rootfs is gone.

I have retried those sectors for many hours, across three different card readers,
with ddrescue in scraping and retry modes. They are simply dead.

WHAT I AM ASKING FOR

Just one file: /upgrade/fs.tgz from partition 2 of a Kobo Aura Edition 2 (N236).

I do not need a full card image. My bootloader, kernel, hardware config and recovery
partition are all fine. Only the userland archive is missing, and as far as I can
tell that should be identical across hardware revisions running the same firmware,
since the revision differences live in the bootloader and hwconfig rather than in
the userland.

/upgrade/db.tgz would be welcome as well, but it is optional. The device should boot
without it.

That said, if a full N236 card image is what you already have to hand, that is
absolutely fine too and I am happy to receive that instead. I can extract the file
myself. I am only asking for the single file because it seemed like the smaller
favour to ask.

HOW TO CHECK WHETHER YOURS MATCHES MINE

fs.tgz size : 77,062,253 bytes
md5 of the first 20,971,520 bytes : cbd0478340c17228c947fc9b090a319a
db.tgz size : 80,293,470 bytes
kernel uImage build string : dbc34d_#5025 Dec 19 09:19:10

HOW TO EXTRACT IT

If you already have an N236 card image lying around, you can pull the file straight
out of partition 2 without opening any hardware. On Linux:

sudo losetup -Pf --show yourimage.img
sudo mount /dev/loopXp2 /mnt
cp /mnt/upgrade/fs.tgz .

Or without mounting anything:

debugfs -R "dump /upgrade/fs.tgz fs.tgz" /dev/loopXp2

Thank you very much. Happy to give something back: I can share my full ddrescue
image, and I have written up a complete analysis of the N236 boot chain, including
the u-boot environment layout, the recovery trigger, and exactly what rcS does
during a factory restore.

[linus]

I would like the firmware image for a Kobo N429 Clara HD.

[llubo]

Hello, could you please send me the firmware image for a Kobo Glo HD (N437)? Thank you!