Compiling the Linux Kernel for the Kindle

[thatworkshop]

Originally Posted by knc1

I would just forget about that, there is a keyboard fork of KOReader that will handle your book display needs.
I have forgotten the name - idoit can tell you - he uses it.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=157047

And if I get interested people, I'd like to get KPV once again as feature rich as KOReader is.
Consulting submitters, it's not a device limitation, contributers didn't have DXG at the time of dev and that's why it's left out. If I can fork out some hobby time, I'll start complementing KPV and for goodness aches (!) hopefully rename it just call it KOReader and based on device, it gets sorted out... After all, it's not just PDF Viewer, duh!

Speaking of 3.2.1, in the place where Yifan mentioned just by step 1, no modifications will be made to the host device (which is not true - Kernel is flashed as we discussed above), if I knew for sure, I'd give performing step 1 another thought. I think it'd have been very helpful, if Yifan clarified that in the readme or OP.

[newman]

How to enable KF8 (MOBI8) on Kindle DX with 3.4.2 FW

Since KF8 was introduced in Kindle 3 in with 3.4 firmware, you have to upgrade your YifanLu's firmware at least to 3.4 (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho....php?p=3149351), I suggest you to upgrade to 3.4.2.

Add following modes to /etc/fb.modes if you are on DX(G), K2 should work out of the box and you don't have to add anything:

mode "824x1200-0"                        
# D: 0.000 MHz, H: 0.000 kHz, V: 0.000 Hz
geometry 824 1200 824 1200 8             
timings 0 0 0 0 0 0 0                    
accel false                              
rgba 0/0,0/0,0/0,0/0                     
endmode                                  
                                         
mode "1200x824-0"                        
# D: 0.000 MHz, H: 0.000 kHz, V: 0.000 Hz
geometry 1200 824 1200 824 4             
timings 0 0 0 0 0 0 0                    
accel false                              
rgba 0/0,0/0,0/0,0/0                     
endmode                                  
                                         
mode "1200x824-0"                        
# D: 0.000 MHz, H: 0.000 kHz, V: 0.000 Hz
geometry 1200 824 1200 824 8             
timings 0 0 0 0 0 0 0                    
accel false                              
rgba 0/0,0/0,0/0,0/0                     
endmode

They are the same as the original "824x1200-0" mode but it's geometry ends with 8 (that's 2^8 of shades of grey, I guess). The last two modes are for landscape mode (test it with

Log in to you Kindle via SSH and execute webreader -d (-d = "Disable Key Events" without this option it crashes like a hell), you should see a bunch of lines wrt DirectFB. In your Kindle interface open some KF8 book (e.g. download free book samples from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000729511). I opened the "Cherokee Lessons", "Three man in a Boat" and "Kindle Format 8 sample". If you see just "the selected item could not be opened. ..." webreader did not made it, see the output of the command. Otherwise you should see a rendering far complicated to what you are used to from old MOBI(v6) books. The rendering goes thru WebKit rendering engine (the same which is used in Experimental Browser), so it looks nice:

Now, it would be cool if webreader could start with Kindle. Set Kindle root to read-write mode:

mntroot rw

Link luigi's PMOND webreader directory to mario's directory:

ln -s /etc/kdb.src/luigi/system/daemon/pmond/webreader/ /etc/kdb.src/mario/system/daemon/pmond/webreader

Remount back to read-only:

mntroot ro

Restart PMON daemon:

/etc/init.d/pmond restart

Start webreaderd via init script:

/etc/init.d/webreaderd start

Try some KF8 books in Kindle, they should work just fine.
Restart Kindle to see if webreader is executed after restart.

--

Images: #1 Broken resolution of framebuffer device, fix your fb.modes; #2-5: Just a bunch of screenshots.

[thatworkshop]

Ok... This looks promising now. One thing which can be next step to make this a desirable upgrade is to give users a way to go back to if they want to/need to, just like Yifan's original 3.2.1 claims it's possible to go back to 2.5.8. With that, this is a good end result.

[knc1]

Sounds like your getting real close to a solution.

AND - it does not have anything to do with building the kernel -
its the board name buried in some of the internal look-up paths.

I guess the entire firmware package is due for a massive "string search".

(My guessing was a near-miss, which is ok in horse shoes, nuclear weapons, and firmware development.)
(( the fuse in anti-aircraft nuclear warheads is actually called the: "near-miss fuse" , trust me, I kid you not. Think on it. you don't have to come very close with a tactical nuke to knock a plane/missile out of the air.
In fact, with 4 tons @ mach 2.5, you don't even need a warhead
Pretty pictures and some more facts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-8_Talos))

[thatworkshop]

@newman: I did some investigations and I'm quite sure even when one is on v3.4.2, they can revert back to v2.5.8 if they wish to do so.
Can you please put your update_restore-os.bin in your DX and let me know if Menu>Settings>Menu>Update becomes active? I'm not asking you to run it, just make sure it's not grayed out for any reason.

[newman]

It's active.

[budalb]

I tried to compile Kindle DXG kernel source. Downloaded from Amazon.com and unzip the linux-2.6.22-lab126.tar.bz2 into a directory.

I copied config.gz from my Kindle DXG. unzip and copy to .config. Then run

make oldconfig

to make the configurations exactly the same as my Kindle DXG. I also got rid of CONFIG_INITRAMFS_SOURCE. Then run

make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabihf- uImage

Here are error messages I got:

arch/arm/kernel/built-in.o: In function `sys_mmap2':
io.c: (.text+0xc94): undefined reference to `do_mmap2'
Makefile:715: recipe for target '.tmp_vmlinux1' failed
make: *** [.tmp_vmlinux1] Error 1

[knc1]

Although not likely to be the cause of this problem -
You are using the wrong ABI compiler.
Kindles are not HardFloat .