side-loading to new kindle paperwhite

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by Fat Abe

Last month, I purchased a Kindle with UPC 841667140612, and the box says it's a black Kindle 10th generation. Dropped in a few mobi files by using explorer on Windows 10, picking one of the subdirectories randomly. The reader seems to be able to open the ebooks, which means that side-loading is a possibility. This is possibly one of the worst documented products I've ever used in the ebook reader category. Can other forum members please post the UPC's of their models? eReaders are dangerously falling into the category of orphaned products with no name and no long term support.

Lol, I throw away the boxes after I confirm that the device works.

All my Kindles work as expected on Windows including the Kindle 10th generation (2019)/Kindle Basic 3/KT4. There's likely something on the OP's ArchLinux setup causing the auto-mount issues.

Iirc, there's a Kindle User Guide built in although I find it intuitive enough to use that I never bothered reading the guide. I think it also showed where the tap zones were when I first opened an ebook. Granted, when I first got my Paperwhite 2 back in 2013, I do recall putting my side loaded ebooks on a top level folder and not in 'documents' but a quick Google search fixed that. Mind, I just checked the guide, and yep, it does mention you need to place your own files in 'documents'.

[Junket]

^ Everything that ilovejedd said above. Plus the observation that a ten second Google search would have answered your original question. Who uses UPC numbers the way you want to? Nonetheless, Amazon has all of the UPC numbers, if you really must have them, beside the model descriptions that everyone else uses.

Yours is apparently a Kindle Basic (2019) model. Aka Kindle Basic, 10th gen. The model can be discerned from the device serial number, there is a list of models in the "Open Sesame" sticky thread at the top of the sub-forum.

[porphyry5]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

For reference, the old device G090 G105 is a Paperwhite 3 (2015) and the new one G091 0L04 is a Kindle Basic 3 (2019).

Your new Kindle definitely has Androidized layout. However, seeing as you can directly download books to it via wifi, reckon it's just something on your system that has an issue with mounting it.

Can you try bringing it to the library and connecting it via USB to a computer there just to confirm the /mnt/us/ does get exported as a FAT32 partition?

Or perhaps try booting live USB Ubuntu or Linux Mint and see if the Kindle mounts there? Iirc, Arch Linux is a distro that by design doesn't have a lot of things preloaded.

Many thanks for your suggestions. The kindle mounts normally both on a windows machine and running lubuntu live from usb, so a driver has been written in linux for it, but I have absolutely no clue how to identify it so that I can add it to my own system. Suggestions?

[porphyry5]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

The only way to see the kindle's entire flash memory is to jailbreak and use CLI utilities while logged in to the kindle.

What you see over the USB port is an USB mass storage export of the kindle's /mnt/us partition.

The best way I know of to learn what your computer is seeing is to look at the last 10 lines or so of the output of the dmesg command on your computer to get a baseline, then connect the kindle over USB and run dmesg again.

If your computer is trying to auto mount, it may be using incorrect parameters. The output of dmesg might help know the correct mount parameters to use.

The difference between dmesg, before and after plugging kindle in usb, is:

783a784,796
> [ 235.736452] usb 1-2: new high-speed USB device number 6 using xhci_hcd
> [ 235.754739] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=1949, idProduct=0324, bcdDevice= 4.01
> [ 235.754742] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=4, SerialNumber=5
> [ 235.754745] usb 1-2: Product: Internal Storage
> [ 235.754747] usb 1-2: SerialNumber: G0910L04947200RB
> [ 235.756039] usb-storage 1-2:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
> [ 235.758190] scsi host3: usb-storage 1-2:1.0
> [ 236.763807] scsi 3:0:0:0: Direct-Access Kindle Internal Storage 0401 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
> [ 236.766198] sd 3:0:0:0: Power-on or device reset occurred
> [ 236.787102] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk
> [ 238.844452] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdc] 5783469 512-byte logical blocks: (2.96 GB/2.76 GiB)
> [ 239.061607] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdc] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
> [ 239.284318] sdc:

Apparently kindle has changed their storage management since I bought my first model, and its no longer possible to simply open it as a vfat device.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by porphyry5

The difference between dmesg, before and after plugging kindle in usb, is:
Apparently kindle has changed their storage management since I bought my first model, and its no longer possible to simply open it as a vfat device.

No, it is simple to mount. I will give an example for mounting to /mnt but feel free to substitute any mount point of your choosing.

sudo mount -t auto /dev/sdc /mnt
or
sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdc /mnt

For older kindles, it would have been /dev/sdc1

/dev/sdc is an unpartitioned, but formatted disk and /dev/sdc1 is the first partition on /dev/sdc

Newer kindles export the user stroe as an unpartitioned disk.

I suspect your computer has an SD card reader that it sees as /dev/sdb

[porphyry5]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

No, it is simple to mount. I will give an example for mounting to /mnt but feel free to substitute any mount point of your choosing.

sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdc /mnt

For older kindles, it would have been /dev/sdc1

/dev/sdc is an unpartitioned, but formatted disk and /dev/sdc1 is the first partition on /dev/sdc

Newer kindles export the user stroe as an unpartitioned disk.

I suspect your computer has an SD card reader that it sees as /dev/sdb

Thank you so much, works perfectly, and the only difference is now I specify sdc instead of sdc1. Just goes to show, appearance can be deceptive.