Kubrick: Live CD to debrick Kindle 3, 4, and Touch

I get the Missing requied Java files. I'm booting from a CD. It says to type poweroff. The command line prompt is:
root@kubrick:~#
I've tried typing exit and I just get the same prompt. I tried EXIT and is says not found.

I'm on a Dell Latitude PC. I tried a bootable USB drive, but it wouldn't work - the PC said it wasn't a bootable USB. Same on my Surface.

[Dekks]

Registered just to say thanks for this software. Got my wife a second hand keyboard kindle super cheap (and now I know why...) as she always preferred the physical page turn buttons and her old Kindle 4 died.

Although the seller deregistered it, could not register her amazon account against it, kept getting unable to connect message. Googled, found out about a needed update, went to amazons help page and downloaded needed update file, and...nothing, it would get to about 10% and then say update failed. It was on 3.4.1 but would not update to 3.4.2, tried downloading from other places, same thing, it just would not update from 3.4.1.

Used the dvd image (cd one for some reason didn't work), by using an old usb memory card reader and sd card, tried again and nervously waited three hours...and successful, upon rebooting it was 3.4, copied over the 3.4 > 3.4.2 update file again, updated no problem, and is now successfully registered and syncing.

I assume the seller probably found they also couldn't sync anymore and decided to sell it without mentioning that issue...but hey, got a working Kindle Keyboard in mint condition for £15, so I'm not complaining.

[HansDampf]

Another update from the future:

Also had unrepairable problems with my Kindle 4 (NT). So I needed to "debrick" it with kubrick. Getting the needed files was really cumbersome: Slow 50kb/s downloads, the other mirrors down, ...

In the end I had a working USB Bootstick. Sadly this boot image also shows it age: Snarky comments about apple and they used EFI Bootloader, no USB Keyboard drivers, problems with loading the partitions on newer PCs, ...

In the end I was able to boot the stick on a modern non-apple PC, but neither did the autostart script work, nor could I use any keyboard (No PS/2 keyboard lying around). I took a look at the autostart script and I guess most stuff could be updated and used on a newer Linux Kernel which would not have all these problems. But I guess with the author of this software gone, and probably less and less Kindle 3/4/5 users, this would be wasted time.

Anyway: I was able to use kubrick on a 10 year old laptop (no usb keyboard issues, since I could use the internal one) which I use for car decoding. On this device autostart also did start automaticlly. Everthing worked fine and the best part: My Kindle works again!

Thanks for the work which got put into this kind of software. Really nice to be able to repair an old device like a Kindle 4. And good luck for everyone, who tries to use this in the future in even newer devices...

[son5]

I have a Kindle 3 and used Kubrick successfully to debrick it. However during booting it stops with an "empty battery" screen. So I would like to disable the battery check. I remember that there was a file which could be configured to skip it (/etc/rc2.d/S50battcheck: "_SKIP_CHECK=0" to "_SKIP_CHECK=1". Could someone help me to change this file in the file system image of Kubrick? Thanks a lot.

[son5]

I have installed puppy Linux to be able to edit "main_partition.sfs", but no luck: ERROR - unsquashfs failed to expand /mnt/sdb1/main_par.sfs
It returned the following error message:
zlib::uncompress failed, unknown error -3
read_block: failed to read block @0x141787b8
FATAL ERROR aborting: uncompress_inode_table: failed to read block

Is the SFS file encrypted, or what is the reason for this error?

[BLZB0B]

For those getting the "Can't find Java" error - it would appear that your laptop is too modern! I had the same on a 4 year old HP - dug out a 10+yr old E-Systems (crappy Celeron-m machine!) and it loaded perfectly.

I do have the issue of the flashing saying "It'll take 1-3 hours" but then only taking about 10 seconds ? is there any fix for this ? has it flashed? has it not ?

My issue is that the battery completely died for over a year - I've replaced the battery (was 0v even after charging for many hours). I still have the Empty Battery screen. Tried the 40sec reboot - the screen never changes. I was hoping that Kubrick would help.. any pointers ?

[ardyles]

Hi!
I have a kindle k3 (with keyboard). It got stuck with the birds screen, and thought it connect to pc (seen like a usb with all its directories, etc), calibre recognizes it, and kubrick executes well (flashing and all the phases and come to the end with exit), the screen doesn´t change and kindle don´t awake.
I have tried all the moves with the bottoms (soft reset, hard reset)..

Amazon told me that my product have consumed his life cicle (programmed obsolescence) but this is not true, as other ebooks of this kind are still working.
Is there any solution?

thanks in advance!

[oldman20]

any similar version for OASIS 2? Thank

[NiLuJe]

Nope.

[oldman20]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

Nope.

thank anw

[katadelos]

Just to let people know, I'm considering appointing myself as maintainer of Kubrick as it seems to be long abandoned by ixtab.

The main purpose of doing so would be to address a few shortcomings that I've ran into:

• Kubrick runs as a live CD, which is unnecessary for users who are already running Linux
• The rootfs images are very outdated to the point where using Kubrick effectively downgrades the device
• The live CD is also very outdated and tends to fail in fun and interesting ways on modern PCs
• Kubrick does not have the ability to carry out useful tasks that I frequently need to do (e.g idme backups/cloning/flashing).

The intended end result would be a Linux desktop application as well as an updated live CD, possibly based upon Alpine Linux instead of Slitaz.

I do have a broader intention of expanding the range of devices which can be recovered to include KT2, PW2, PW3, KV, and KT3, but this might not be implemented as an upgrade to Kubrick as I'd like to explore the possibility of creating a "Kubrick 2" with a GUI that makes the process of jailbreaking a device and installing packages simpler.

[mergen3107]

Wow, that sounds great!

katadelos, you can count me in for testers
The thing is, I bought a K3 White recently (3G version). It works OK, put a new battery, set it up for good. But I wasn’t able to update ca-certificates properly.

So I was hoping to flash a pristine FW and try again.
But Kubrick denied to work on my teo laptops. One cannot even boot because it does not support Legacy boot. Another tried to, but keyboard is not recognized, so I can’t type autostart.sh to make Java error go away.

Can your new app work in a VM? That would be absolutely stunning if so

[superpomme]

worked great for me, thank you. I initially had the issue of "missing java files" but typing "exit" worked for me as recommended somewhere.

[katadelos]

Minor update on how things are going:

I managed to find some time between work and life outside Kindle hacking and started looking at a couple of optimisations that will make life easier:

• K3 Flashing - flashing a rootfs for this device takes a longggggg time (read: several hours) due to the k3flasher method being used; it's not efficient in the slightest so fixing this was a high priority. After much digging around, I was finally able to build a kernel that would boot on this device and use the g_file_storage gadget from initramfs to export the entire eMMC, where it can be flashed with a rootfs at a speed that matches the rest of the devices
• K4NT/K5 Flashing - same as above WRT g_file_storage; this device doesn't take too long to flash anyway but the advantage of doing things this way is that you don't need to go through the whole "enable SSH from diags" dance that always struck me as a high friction process

The research needed to build kernels for these devices has paid off in other ways too - it took a while to figure out how to actually get anything to boot on the older devices (solution: scratch-built Ubuntu 10 container + ancient CodeSourcery toolchain) but now that's out of the way, U-Boot + Kernel builds (w/ custom initramfs!) from source are back on the menu.

This means that there's eventually going to be a version of Popcorn jailbreak for these devices too, which will be especially useful for K3+K4 as I've always found those devices to be a massive pain to jailbreak using other methods.

Finally, I've also been playing around with Barebox on K3 and K4, which opens up fun and interesting possibilities. It's significantly nicer to build, is much more powerful than the ancient U-Boot version used on those devices and opens up another method of flashing/jailbreaking those devices as it can export the entire eMMC without bringing up a kernel in the first place(!).

[racemus]

Hi everybody
Explain me one thing, please. First post about Kubrick says the K3 image always includes the jailbreak, but it's firmware 3.4. As far as I know, the highest Kindle 3 firmware for jailbreak is 3.3, or I missed something?