Kindle 3 Boot loop

[jlove]

Hi everyone,

I do have a problem with my kindle. It is booting up till the Tree Shows up and the bootbar is just freezing. After some minutes it just restarts. It is stuck in an eternal loop and doesnot get into the Homescreen anymore.

Im from germany, maybe i can send it to someone who can help me?

Best Regards,
jlove

[Sir Alex]

jlove, You can try to Reset to Factory default, but You will lost your books, magazines etc...
To do it:
1. Initiate hard reset, Hold power button for 30sec.
2. Hold [Home] key, after 10-60sec Kindle will show prompt to reset Kindle.
3. Enter "RESET" word on keyboard, and you Kindle will reset to factory defaults.
4. If it not help you, you need to ask support from Amazon or use Serial adapter to restore Kindle.

[jlove]

Thank you Sir Alex,

I did reset the kindle but no luck, its stuck on the bootscreen and reboots every 5min or so.

I do have an arduino here, is it possible to get a serial connection with that?
I do have an estick too.

I dont have a backup of the Kindle. What is the purpose of getting serial connection? Looking at the boot up process?

Best Regards,
jlove

[Sir Alex]

1. Please, provide information, how you damage Kindle.
2. Sorry I have no information about Arduino and estick (what is it?). I have checked adapters based on FT232RL or PL2303 chips.
3. Serial line needed to access to recovery menu in linux terminal. It have special option "3. Export MMC0 over USB" so you can import over USB in other Linux machine and restore rootfs from backup.

[seaniko7]

Originally Posted by Sir Alex

2. Sorry I have no information about Arduino and estick (what is it?). I have checked adapters based on FT232RL or PL2303 chips.

Sir Alex Have you checked PL2303 (5V) chip or PL2303HX(1,8V-3,3V) ?

[jlove]

@Sir Alex,


I did jailbreak the device and also installed Duokan but it worked without errors or problems. The device started to malfunction without any reason (Nothing installed or changed after jailbreak and doukan)

I do have a FT232BL in another device, will connect vccio to 1.8V from kindle. and check the serial way.
Is hyperterminal (Win7) ok for the communication?
other software maybe?

thanks
jlove

[jlove]

can someone send me a link to the shematics on how the ft232rl should be soldered for usage with the kindle as serialport?

[Sir Alex]

Originally Posted by jlove

can someone send me a link to the shematics on how the ft232rl should be soldered for usage with the kindle as serialport?

It's very simple schematic, see attachment.

Hypererm is enough to establish connection with Kindle terminal. But you need some sort of Linux to import MMC0 via USB.

Also, you can read another recovery store:
http://www.the-ebook.org/forum/viewt...=582156#582156
LexS007 used adapter based on PL2303HX.

Here https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99177 you can find, how to make serial connector for Kindle.

P.S. To Export MMC0 over USB in recovery menu you need password. If you provide me your serial I will generate it for you. Or DIY, see here how to http://www.the-ebook.org/forum/viewt...=577761#577761

seaniko7, PL2303HX, see too http://www.the-ebook.org/forum/viewt...=582156#582156

[jlove]

Thank you very much Sir Alex,

you are a big help.
Can you help me with something? Im trying to make a tutorial to get all t he information together in one thread in english.

Im trying to generate my key for mmc0 and got your initramfs.cpio, gdb and uImage
But I cant get the uImage to run. How do i boot this thing up with qemu?

I extracted initramfs.cpio with 7z but files in /dev are not being extracted and if I execute qemu-arm with with the following command : "qemu-arm -L initramfs -g 1234 -cpu arm1136 initramfs/bin/recovery-util "
it boots up fine (waiting for gdb to connect)
after that i start gdb and get the following:
(gdb) target remote :1234
Remote debugging using :1234
warning: Can not parse XML target description; XML support was disabled at compile time
[New Remote target]
[Switching to Remote target]
0x01800200 in ?? ()

So far so good, but when i set the first brakepoint i get an error :

(gdb) b * 0x18af8
Cannot access memory at address 0x0
Breakpoint 1 at 0x18af8

After typing continue qemu starts but gets lots of errors.

I think the main problem here is that i cant extract initramfs correctly and thus the virtual machine does not boot up correctly.

Can you tell me why you uploaded the uImage? Can I boot into that and execute /bin/recovery-util wthin that image?

I know you can create me my Password and Im very thankful to you. But my tutorial would be incomplete without that. so please can you help me get this thing right.

Best Regards,
jlove

[Sir Alex]

jlove,
Use this command to extract initramfs.cpio:

sudo cpio -i --no-absolute-filenames < initramfs.cpio

uImage not needed to extract password, I uploaded it for someone whom it needed (For restoring damaged uImage).

[jlove]

thanks but i already did that
tried it again and get the following when startin gdb:

server@server-desktop:~/Downloads/sat/sat/bin$ ./arm-elf-gdb
GNU gdb (GDB) 7.2
Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Type "show copying"
and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "--host=i686-pc-linux-gnu --target=arm-elf".
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>.
(gdb) target remote:1234
Remote debugging using :1234
warning: Can not parse XML target description; XML support was disabled at compile time
[New Remote target]
[Switching to Remote target]
0x01800200 in ?? ()
(gdb) b*0x18af8
Cannot access memory at address 0x0
Breakpoint 1 at 0x18af8
(gdb)

after continueing i get the following error:
qemu: Unsupported syscall: 88


I really dont know what im doing wrong...

ps. im on ubuntu 11.04

[jlove]

Ok i think i know what the problem is.

Maybe i need to recompile gdb for x64 bit ubuntu 11.04 ?

[jlove]

@Sir Alex,

Can you help me out with crosscompiling the gdb source?
I cant get it to work. Can you maybe compile the latest sourcecode for x64 to arm?
Or can you help me out, maybe giving me the command to do so?

Thank you very much for your efforts and help on this forum.

jlove

[Sir Alex]

@jlove,

Sorry I don't remember what exactly I do to build gdb (I'm newbie in Linux). I used http://crosstool-ng.org/ to build arm-elf-gbd.