KOA Kindle Oasis Gen 1 fw 5.13.1 (or older) - Serial Jailbreaking Step by Step

[Dra_w]

Good day Oasis 1 owner!
Finally there is a guy! I know I also happy to bring this tutorial to all of you.

Disclamer: I am not responsible for bricked devices. Good luck!

Before doing anything, I strongly recommend you should take a look at below instructions:
1. Kindle Oasis 1 back cover removal from iFix
2. Serial Jailbreaking your fw >= 5.6.x Kindle for Dummies

You'll need:
- A computer
- Your kindle oasis
- USB-TTL serial adapter
- Solder
- Tool to open your kindle
- Python
- PuTTY
- Be patient!

Ok. I believe you have understood basics of serial jailbreaking a kindle.
Let's move to the fun part.

Step 1: Discover kindle diag mode root password
I'm doing this tutorial in Windows environment.
Firstly, please install python from python.org
Then open windows command prompt, input below code

python
import hashlib
print("fiona%s"%hashlib.md5("your kindle serial number with no spaces and all capital letters\n".encode('utf-8')).hexdigest()[13:16])

Your kindle password should be like fionaxxx, write it down somewhere.

Step 1.1: Connect kindle to the computer. Copy all files in the kindle-5.4-jailbreak.zip to kindle. You can find it in Snapshot topic by NiLuJe (kindle-jailbreak-1.16.N-r17396.tar.xz)

Step 2: R̶i̶p̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶d̶e̶v̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶a̶p̶a̶r̶t̶ Open the back cover to access to the mainboard.
If you look closely in the lower right of the display connection port, you'll see 3 tiny round copper connectors which are Tx, Rx and GND. But wait, you need to disconnect the battery first.
Now wire these connectors with any USB TTL adapter that you have.
Kindle Tx --- Rx
Kindle Rx --- Tx
Kindle GND --- GND (you can also connect with the screw as I do)


Step 3: Prepare the software
Connect to USB TTL adapter to computer.
Open Device Manager and set up variable like below


Open PuTYY and setup like this




Then press Open, leave the blank window as it is


Step 4: Jailbreaking!
OK. This is important. As soon as you reconnect the battery, the blank PuTYY window above will begin to display some text. Please press any key quickly to interupt the normal boot and to access uboot.


Now, input below code. It's quite different from original K5 instruction:

run bootcmd_FB
bootm 0xE41000

You're now access to the system diags:


Back to your kindle screen.
Choose Reboot or Disable Diags
then
Exit to login prompt

On PuTYY screen, input username and password
login: root
password: fionaxxx (as you remember on the first step)



Edit the password file, input below code:

mkdir /tmp/main
mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /tmp/main
vi /tmp/main/etc/passwd

on vi editor, use your arrow buttons to move the hightlight cursor to the character "x"

Press X to delete the x character
Input :w to save
Input :q! to quit vi editor
Input reboot to reboot kindle.

Let's the kindle fully boot to your familiar home screen.

On PuTTY windows, press Enter and login with root.

Input below commands to jailbreak:

cd /mnt/us
sh jb.sh

If you find the text ****JAILBREAK**** on your kindle screen,
Congratulation!

You also can create the folder name "update.bin.tmp.partial" on kindle to help prevent OTA update and protect the jailbreak.

Bonus. I'll help you install KUAL on your now jailbroken kindle.
You can find everything in snapshot.
Copy KUAL-KDK-2.0.azw2 (KUAL) to document folder and Update_KUALBooklet_hotfix_44a61b6_install.bin (KUAL coplate) to the kindle root directory.
Update your kindle.
Now, you have KUAL and free to install other plug-in such as helper+, screensaver, KOreader, etc.

Thank NiLuJe, grant2 and other contributors. Your work have helped me a lot.

Cheer!

[NiLuJe]

Was the "disconnect the battery first" the trick necessary to get you unstuck?

[Dra_w]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

Was the "disconnect the battery first" the trick necessary to get you unstuck?

No, at uboot, you need to enter following code

run bootcmd_FB

Before

bootm 0xE41000

To successfully access to diag mode

[Dra_w]

Originally Posted by Eragon

Let's see some pics of it put back together. I'm sure the glass front panel is even more obnoxious now that it's been loosened. I wouldn't do this to a device unless you want it to look like crap.

I don't know what you mean. We just open the plastic back cover, don't think this will damage the glass front panel

[powerlego]

Would this also work with serial jailbreaking the PW4, because what I have seen on another thread that the PW4 also uses U-Boot?

[hius07]

Originally Posted by powerlego

Would this also work with serial jailbreaking the PW4, because what I have seen on another thread that the PW4 also uses U-Boot?

Good point, I bumped their thread.
They are not very interested though (having software jb on any firmware).

[coplate]

Originally Posted by Dra_w

Good day Oasis 1 owner!
Finally there is a guy! I know I also happy to bring this tutorial to all of you.

Very good work!!

This is a great write up, and congratulations on finding the serial port!!!

[claudiume]

have you installed KoReader? if so how it performs?

[Dra_w]

Originally Posted by claudiume

have you installed KoReader? if so how it performs?

It runs flawlessly

[claudiume]

Show us some pictures please! Since you the first one maybe you just make fun of us because they say nobody found them and you just opened the back and boom

[Dra_w]

Originally Posted by claudiume

Show us some pictures please! Since you the first one maybe you just make fun of us because they say nobody found them and you just opened the back and boom

Bro, I don't ask you to follow my guide. You could do it, or not. That's up to you. You never know if you don't try, right?

Anyway, that's lucky for me that I have some pictures of the process to prove to this guy.

[jp12323]

Hi, would this work for Kindle Oasis 2? I have KO2, firmware version 5.12.5 and i'm not sure if I should follow this guide or find another

[Dra_w]

Originally Posted by jp12323

Hi, would this work for Kindle Oasis 2? I have KO2, firmware version 5.12.5 and i'm not sure if I should follow this guide or find another

The first thing is you have to find out the way to disassemble KO2

[Mnementh]

Originally Posted by claudiume

have you installed KoReader? if so how it performs?

Originally Posted by Dra_w

It runs flawlessly

Not quite flawlessly, while it is very very good and is superior to native, it has serious issues with knowing which way it is rotated. you will find out you have to hold it a certain way when starting KOReader or the display will be upside down.


It's brilliant once you work out how to mitigate the issues it does have though.

[NiLuJe]

@Mnementh: Are you talking about https://github.com/koreader/koreader...lua#L721-L727?

Because no-one's ever mentioned anything of the sort on a KOA, AFAIR, only on a KOA2.