Magic Memory Upgrade Mod

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Derf

On a Mac when you double click a zip, there is a built in unarchiver. It isn’t like on windows where you have to download winzip and winrar.

Windows has natively handled .zip for a while now.

Originally Posted by Derf

The battery IS with a connector and not soldered to the board. I could disconnect/reconnect it, but does it matter if I have my original card in the kobo when I try this? I don’t want it to try to format my card with the OS on it and try to copy a broken system onto it from RAM.

If you unplug the battery, there should be no data left in RAM. I'd suggest imaging your original card to a new card and powering up with the new card installed. Suspenders and belt -- Murphy was a raving optimist.

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by Derf

I am on a Mac, and the file I downloaded was a zip. My unarchiver is a little over zealous and extracted the .tgz from the .zip and I was left with a folder called sbin.

Your Mac will have left the original unextracted file in the Trash. You can fish it out of there.

[Derf]

Thanks everyone for the help, I was a little nervous, but disconnecting the battery cable and reconnecting it DID allow me to hold down the power button and restart the device. With the original SD card in place, things were back to normal.

I then went about the *long* method of cloning my SD card.

I'm posting this for future (mac) readers, or myself, if I ever cross this way again.

1) Open the back of the Clara, starting at the bottom of the cover near the power button/charge port, pry it off from the frame.
2) Remove the SD card, and put it in a SD card reader in your mac.
3) open a terminal, type 'diskutil list' and find what disk your SD card is.
4) type 'sudo dd if=/dev/disk# of=~/Downloads/Kobo/Clara.dmg bs=4096'
where disk# is the number you found in step 3, if is the input file and of is the output file. This step takes a lot of waiting time.
5) eject your SD card (KOBOeReader) and swap in your blank SD card.
6) verify the location of the SD card again, type 'diskutil list', should be same as step 3.
7) verify the blank SD card is erased, type 'sudo diskutil erasevolume FAT32 UNTITLED /dev/disk#'
8) unmount the SD card, type 'diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk#'
9) copy the backed up partition table over to the new SD card, type 'sudo dd if=~/Downloads/Kobo/Clara.dmg of=/dev/rdisk# bs=5m'
again, this will take some time. You can press CTRL + T to check the status.

At this point I tested the microSD card in the Kobo and it does work, but it only detects an 8GB card. To get the full capacity of the new card you need to resize the partition to take up the rest of the volume.
But, Macs can't resize Fat32 partitions on the fly with the built-in diskutil (or disk utility front end). So, I'm currently looking into ways. However, I don't really want to have to install a virtual machine of windows or create a live USB stick to run Linux so I can install gparted... So I'm kind of stuck.

I did try some software* but although it DID resize the FAT32 partition, the KOBO would not boot up. I tried it 2 more times but every time I resized the partition the Kobo would fail to boot. *sigh*...

*Not an endorsement.

[timeisart]

Originally Posted by Derf

To get the full capacity of the new card you need to resize the partition to take up the rest of the volume.
But, Macs can't resize Fat32 partitions on the fly with the built-in diskutil (or disk utility front end).

Maybe this would help?

https://www.macworld.com/article/105...eekfactor.html

I think you already said this wouldn't work but it talks about FAT32 in that article so maybe. but that article is 11 years old so maybe not, I honestly have no clue how this stuff works.

thanks for your explanation of cloning though, I'm on a mac so I was wondering this myself.

edit: nevermind, didn't see this at the bottom of that article:

You cannot resize FAT32 partitions with the diskutil resizeVolume command.

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by Derf

But, Macs can't resize Fat32 partitions on the fly with the built-in diskutil (or disk utility front end). So, I'm currently looking into ways.

Macs should be able to. I did it years ago with my Glo's new SD card... also from the terminal (I think. In any case I certainly did not install any extra software). Unfortunately I can't remember how. I'll let you know if I remember or re-find the method.

[Derf]

Originally Posted by timeisart

Maybe this would help?



https://www.macworld.com/article/105...eekfactor.html



I think you already said this wouldn't work but it talks about FAT32 in that article so maybe. but that article is 11 years old so maybe not, I honestly have no clue how this stuff works.



thanks for your explanation of cloning though, I'm on a mac so I was wondering this myself.



edit: nevermind, didn't see this at the bottom of that article:

Thanks, I think I came across that article, and even went through other google search results with similar results. Unfortunately, macs can not format FAT32 on the fly, as it is a windows type of file system. The linked article even has this disclaimer :

Note that this command works only on Intel Macs with hard disks formatted using the GPT (GUID Partition Table) format with a journaled Hierarchical File System Plus (HFS+) file system. This is the default for Intel Macs’ hard disks, but you can also format an external drive in this manner through Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities).

[frostschutz]

If you don't mind doing a factory reset, just change the partition table (max out partition 3).

Originally Posted by Derf

Yes, I can upload a copy, but you’re right, it really is just better to use the file you have.

Still interested in that upload, just to rule out any other factors.

[Derf]

Originally Posted by frostschutz

If you don't mind doing a factory reset, just change the partition table (max out partition 3).

I don't understand what you're saying... that doing a factory reset would allow me to change the partition table with a mac somehow? I was able to use some third party software on the mac to extend the third partition, but the Kobo wouldn't boot at all once I did. Maybe you mean do a factory reset to force the Kobo to reinstall itself from the recovery partition and then re-update my firmware. Maybe it would work, if it can see its primary and secondary partitions to reinstall the firmware, but I'm wondering if it can't see its partitions to boot, how would it see its partition to reinstall?

Still interested in that upload, just to rule out any other factors.

Here ya go. Link

[Elaxon]

Just curious does still work with latest firmware? I would like to clean reset H20 and then back it up using this tool so I have a clean copy with my S/N.

[frostschutz]

It should still work, (but I haven't actually tested it myself recently). I should update it regardless to give better onscreen instructions/feedback, which is now possible with fbink... it's on the todo list somewhere.

[Elaxon]

Originally Posted by frostschutz

It should still work, (but I haven't actually tested it myself recently). I should update it regardless to give better onscreen instructions/feedback, which is now possible with fbink... it's on the todo list somewhere.

Hey, I am not sure if I am doing anything wrong but I move over the update and the only thing I have installed is KSM and latest firmware, it does seem like its not working. It loaded at the Nickel progress bar for over 5 hours, could it be cause I have no external sd card inserted?

[frostschutz]

The external card only matters if you're using the external alternative of this mod, and even then it should show black/white screen first. It shouldn't get stuck on the progress bar... unfortunately, it's hard to tell what went wrong, that's why I have to update it to give actual report messages. Sorry :-}

If you reset/reboot your device everything should be back to normal... uninstalling itself is the first thing it does.

[Elaxon]

Restarting got rid of it, I wanted to use the external version. Would it be stuck in the Nickel progress bar if I didn't have a SD card inserted? What I wanted to do was insert the card to format it but should I have kept it inserted and then readd it to clone?

[frostschutz]

What the external variant does is roughly:

- wait for nickel [default Kobo UI] to be started (if you are using some launcher, you have to launch nickel manually first)
- kill nickel
- umount user partition (other mods could prevent that from succeeding, which would be suboptimal)

- display a "progress bar" (same as nickel bootup bar, squares, going backwards)

- mount the filesystems read-only (of the internal card)
[progress bar would get stuck forever if this fails, e.g. possible if earlier umount failed]

At that point the preparation would be done, now comes the interaction part:

- show a black screen
- if external card is present, wait for it to be removed first

- show a white screen
- wait for external card to be inserted [this card will be formatted]

The removal/insertion is simply a means to confirm that you want this card to be formatted. It's to help avoid blindly formatting a card that was left inside the device.

After replacing the external card, user interaction phase has ended.

- display a "progress bar" (going forwards)
- partition and format the new card
- copy all data

this takes a while, depending on amount of data and card speeds.

- reboot the device

After reboot the device would complain about unable to read the external card (since it's formatted for internal use) however this didn't cause any damage when I tested it, so I opted to not have a 2nd interaction phase prompting you to remove the card first...

[Elaxon]

Originally Posted by frostschutz

What the external variant does is roughly:
- wait for nickel [default Kobo UI] to be started (if you are using some launcher, you have to launch nickel manually first)
- kill nickel
- umount user partition (other mods could prevent that from succeeding, which would be suboptimal)
- display a "progress bar" (same as nickel bootup bar, squares, going backwards)
- mount the filesystems read-only (of the internal card)
[progress bar would get stuck forever if this fails, e.g. possible if earlier umount failed]
At that point the preparation would be done, now comes the interaction part:
- show a black screen
- if external card is present, wait for it to be removed first
- show a white screen
- wait for external card to be inserted [this card will be formatted]
The removal/insertion is simply a means to confirm that you want this card to be formatted. It's to help avoid blindly formatting a card that was left inside the device.
After replacing the external card, user interaction phase has ended.
- display a "progress bar" (going forwards)
- partition and format the new card
- copy all data
this takes a while, depending on amount of data and card speeds.
- reboot the device
After reboot the device would complain about unable to read the external card (since it's formatted for internal use) however this didn't cause any damage when I tested it, so I opted to not have a 2nd interaction phase prompting you to remove the card first...

I guess it failed on umounting the filesystem as it was stuck on the Nickel bootup forever. I will try later on to uninstall KSM and then run the script so nothing is affecting it there.