Kindle Touch: Bricked and readonly filesystem

pmugabi · 09-14-2012, 06:53 AM

Hi,

My Kindle Touch stopped working 2 days ago. I was reading a book and it became sluggish, so I did a reset by holding down the power button. Since then it has been rebooting endlessly at the boy under tree screen. I had never done any jailbreaking/hacking before this, only installed the automatic OTA updates from Amazon.

I have followed the guides here to de-brick it but nothing has succeeded. What I think seems to be the problem is that all the filesystems are readonly and I can't change them. I can go into fastboot mode and also into diag mode and export the USB drive. I have tried following the Simple debrick guide but the changes do no take effect.

For example if I put files on the USB drive, they are gone at the next reboot. Even deleted files re-appear at the next reboot. I have as a test also used fastboot to erase the diags partition and kernel but it starts up fine in diag mode even after this.

Any ideas on how I can make the device writable again so that I can fix it?

NiLuJe · 09-14-2012, 07:07 AM

Vaguely sounds like the userstore badly loop moounted thingy/kindle in low-power fake drive mode. It has come up from time to time, but I can't for the life of me remember if someone managed to fix it properly once...

You can try to dig in the forum, it was a while ago the last time that came up...

knc1 · 09-14-2012, 07:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

Vaguely sounds like the userstore badly loop moounted thingy/kindle in low-power fake drive mode. It has come up from time to time, but I can't for the life of me remember if someone managed to fix it properly once...

You can try to dig in the forum, it was a while ago the last time that came up...

I think I remember that one,
The solution was: "Re-charge the battery".

In an earlier case, the person's Amazon Wall Charger had failed.
They **thought** that they where re-charging the battery.

In another earlier case, the person was trying to re-charge from a computer's USB port, but did not realize their computer was turning off external USB power when it went to sleep.

Here is another possible solution to eliminate the possibility of either of the above:
If the user has an externally powered USB hub (the sort with its own power supply - usually a "wall wart") - - -
Try re-charging from that.
It will be the "slow" re-charge curve, so 24 hours or more may be required.

One of the hints above was:
"Reading a book for a long time and the machine became sluggish."
The SoC sensed the low battery condition and scaled back the clock speed (way back, to about 1/10 the normal speed).

pmugabi · 09-14-2012, 07:52 AM

FWIW, the Kindle has been plugged into an always on laptop for the past 2 days as I tried to fix the issue. It is also reporting that the battery is at 99-100% in diag mode.

However I have now moved it to a wall charger and I'm going to read up on the low-power fake drive mode as suggested above.

knc1 · 09-14-2012, 08:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pmugabi

FWIW, the Kindle has been plugged into an always on laptop for the past 2 days as I tried to fix the issue. It is also reporting tha the battery is at 100% in diag mode.

However I have now moved it to a wall charger and I'm going to read up on the low-power fake drive mode as suggested above.

It is worth a try.

Since it is hard to trust the indications given by a machine (of any sort) that is not working properly.

The "fake drive mode" is just a power saving mode.

It presents the user with a "user storage area" view (to let them know the thing is working) without actually giving access to make changes on the flash.

The flash device can only do read/erase/re-program and the erase/re-program are both power hungry operations.

geekmaster · 09-14-2012, 10:52 AM

Laptops can turn off the USB ports to save power, depending on how their power-save options are configured. You may want to check and adjust those for "USB always on", so you can reliably charge a kindle from it, even when no USB traffic.

But even so, it would charge faster with a wall charger.

pmugabi · 09-17-2012, 01:50 AM

An update.

I charged the Kindle for 24 hours using a wall charger and then retried flashing the 5.0.0 recovery software (diags + diags kernel), they still don't get copied over. Fastboot runs properly and reports success, however I still have the old diags tool when I boot into diags mode.

The USB drive exported when in diags mode is still readonly (files get copied over, changes to the filesystem are accepted but it reverts to the previous state on reboot). I tried the nfs mount + script hack, this also did nothing.

Is it possible that maybe the flash storage has a problem and is genuinely unwritable? Any other ideas I can try?

09-14-2012, 06:53 AM	#1
pmugabi Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2012 Device: Kindle Touch	Kindle Touch: Bricked and readonly filesystem Hi, My Kindle Touch stopped working 2 days ago. I was reading a book and it became sluggish, so I did a reset by holding down the power button. Since then it has been rebooting endlessly at the boy under tree screen. I had never done any jailbreaking/hacking before this, only installed the automatic OTA updates from Amazon. I have followed the guides here to de-brick it but nothing has succeeded. What I think seems to be the problem is that all the filesystems are readonly and I can't change them. I can go into fastboot mode and also into diag mode and export the USB drive. I have tried following the Simple debrick guide but the changes do no take effect. For example if I put files on the USB drive, they are gone at the next reboot. Even deleted files re-appear at the next reboot. I have as a test also used fastboot to erase the diags partition and kernel but it starts up fine in diag mode even after this. Any ideas on how I can make the device writable again so that I can fix it?

09-14-2012, 07:52 AM	#4
pmugabi Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2012 Device: Kindle Touch	FWIW, the Kindle has been plugged into an always on laptop for the past 2 days as I tried to fix the issue. It is also reporting that the battery is at 99-100% in diag mode. However I have now moved it to a wall charger and I'm going to read up on the low-power fake drive mode as suggested above. Last edited by pmugabi; 09-14-2012 at 07:57 AM.

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09-14-2012, 07:07 AM	#2
NiLuJe BLAM! Posts: 13,506 Karma: 26047202 Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Paris, France Device: Kindle 2i, 3g, 4, 5w, PW, PW2, PW5; Kobo H2O, Forma, Elipsa, Sage, C2E	Vaguely sounds like the userstore badly loop moounted thingy/kindle in low-power fake drive mode. It has come up from time to time, but I can't for the life of me remember if someone managed to fix it properly once... You can try to dig in the forum, it was a while ago the last time that came up...

09-14-2012, 10:52 AM	#6
geekmaster Carpe diem, c'est la vie. Posts: 6,433 Karma: 10773670 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Multiverse 6627A Device: K1 to PW3	Laptops can turn off the USB ports to save power, depending on how their power-save options are configured. You may want to check and adjust those for "USB always on", so you can reliably charge a kindle from it, even when no USB traffic. But even so, it would charge faster with a wall charger.

09-17-2012, 01:50 AM	#7
pmugabi Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2012 Device: Kindle Touch	An update. I charged the Kindle for 24 hours using a wall charger and then retried flashing the 5.0.0 recovery software (diags + diags kernel), they still don't get copied over. Fastboot runs properly and reports success, however I still have the old diags tool when I boot into diags mode. The USB drive exported when in diags mode is still readonly (files get copied over, changes to the filesystem are accepted but it reverts to the previous state on reboot). I tried the nfs mount + script hack, this also did nothing. Is it possible that maybe the flash storage has a problem and is genuinely unwritable? Any other ideas I can try?

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