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Old 09-14-2017, 04:52 AM   #1
Hayvan
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Just Another Brick Thread

Hello there. I've been lurking the forums for about months, but just didn't care much about internet at all to even register here. So today was the day I guess. Hello again.

All I wanted to do is that to get rid of footer, page counter at the bottom of my Glo HD when reading my lecture and class-note .pdf files. Or at least something that could help keep the page zoom and display area locked when I change pages. It was a huge pain doing zoom and orienting every single time you change pages. It also eats out from e-ink lifetime because of page refreshing everytime.

Tried to upgrade the firmware from 3.14 to the latest released hoping for a fix maybe. Oh boy it was so bad that it was so much internet-biased, with gibberish main screen screaming for other things rather than "read books!", and drained my glo's battery in hours for couple of times.

I downgraded back to my beloved 3.14, default version for Glo HD.

Then after some research time on forums, I did find about Kobo Start Menu, and through that interface was to install Kobo Hacks, so at least then I can use a single hack from its database to achieve what I wanted.

Installing KSM went fine, everything worked in it. Tried Koreader first and it didn't go so well, didn't appeal to me. It was pretty unstable but a nice piece of coding anyways. Then I went on for installing Kobo Hacks. Contrary to Koreader installation, Hacks didn't install instead, and I did give up since I didn't have much free time back then, It was this time I left my kobo on the shelf for 3 straight days.

This morning when I picked it up, It was on KSM main page as I left it, but didn't respond to anything. Didn't respond to my touches, didn't respond to power button, also the reset button. Holding them for long didn't work either, just power button would give a 2 second of red light and that was it. I thought about battery but it was already full last time I left it. Connecting to my PC didn't work because usb connectivity is deactivated in KSM by default. (whatever the reason, this got me pretty angry)

I thought it was bricked. First thing that came up my mind was the little SD storage, the main hd of my kobo. Removed the back cover, took the battery plug out gently, pressed power button several times to drain leftover in circuits, then took the SD card out.

I connected it to my PC using my Sansa Clip, because an adapter wouldn't work on my windows maybe because it's an ext4 formatted disk, but I couldn't see other partitions than the "unreadable one" by default. so Sansa would kind of be a bridge adapter. Connected through, checked the SD with Paragon, there were two 16MB "ears" at the beginning and the end of SD, and between them were
"bootfs" , "recoveryfs", and the casual storage partition.

I have formatted the bootfs directly, gave it back its label, thinking the brick was caused by filesystem malfunction, hoping that the reader would boot for "recoveryfs" and it would install the factory defaults back to "bootfs" partition.

That's where I am now. I put it back and it didn't work, but at least I got my Glo HD back responding to everything, but just a white blank screen and the screen getting a little reset when I hold the power button.

I think I have a blank boot partition along with the usual untouched stuff right now. Any help will be appreciated. Or even for a shortcut a default bootfs image would be fine.

All I wanted was to read my pdf files in true fullscreen. Look where I am now, haha.

Also I wrote these in a long breath so people can see and reason with what I've been through. E-reading community isn't so wide globally yet. Thanks.
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Old 09-14-2017, 07:20 AM   #2
davidfor
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Um, if the power LED flashes a couple of time when you try to turn it on, it is usually because the battery is flat. Charge for a while and turn it on.

If you pull the internal card out, don't use it with Windows. Unless you really know what you are doing. The same goes for a Mac or Linux machine. But neither these will ask you to shoot yourself in the foot when they see the card.

There is a chance that a factory reset at this point will rescue the device. Otherwise, restoring an image to the card almost definitely will. I have sent you a PM with a link to the image.
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Old 09-14-2017, 08:04 AM   #3
Hayvan
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Thanks Davidfor, I'll take a look at that image. But, I don't think the battery went flat, yet I didn't try directly plugging it via plug adapter.

Also you're right about windows, but you just need to be double careful while operating with these kinds of things. For example one of the most first things I do when I format my pc, anytime for about 20 years, is to turn off any kinds of autoplay and scan or such thing if possible. Or when installing a media player, handpicking the file associations and disabling if there's any cd play support etc. You got the idea.

Thanks for the PM, I'll check it now.
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Old 09-14-2017, 10:54 AM   #4
Hayvan
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Alright, I worked it out and have a clean crisp default Glo HD. Thank you so much!

In anyone bumps into this thread in the future, this is what I've done:

Now, to restore the backup .img you've sent to me, I couldn't download the required "Flash Drive Read/Write" software from vconsole.com at this guide;
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=209122

because their pages didn't provide anything, probably changed over time.

Instead, by doing a little search on the net, I've found this small software someone independently made, someone who also seem to have love and fight for animals so it's worth giving his website a click when someone needs it:
http://www.roadkil.net/program.php/P12/Disk%20Image

This software successfully restored the image to the SD card in a couple of clicks.

And then, I have followed the instructions at the post below, because I don't want to sync or update the firmware at all;

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...1664&p=3011981

Zeroed the USER column in sqlite db of kobo, and it launched without in need of sync.


It's working beautifully now.
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Old 09-14-2017, 11:22 AM   #5
Ken Maltby
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The vconsole site has updated and you need to go to Support/software https://www.vconsole.com/download at the bottom of the list.

Luck;
Ken
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