Hacks My Paperwhite is Jailbroken!

[geekmaster]

The Jailbreak for 5.1.2 firmware works with the Paperwhite 5.2.0 firmware.

I may have the ONLY jailbroken Paperwhite in existence! But not for long, I suspect...

You can download the Jailbreak here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho....php?p=2169819

EDIT: I submitted this post to Hackaday. We may get some new members! Enjoy!

EDIT2: Let's be sure to thank NiLuJe for providing the jailbreak and simple USBnet packages that I installed here. Thanks NiLuJe! I just happened to get my new Kindle first, so I am getting most of the public attention.

[geekmaster]

Be careful what hacks you install on a jailbroken Paperwhite. Debricking still requires using the serial port, until we discover how to get it into USB Downloader mode.

The compatible K5 (touch) hacks need to be repackaged for the Paperwhite, because of its different serial number prefix. I have yifanlu's "simple usbNet" hack installed (repackaged for the Paperwhite by NiLuJe). After searching for ";un" to toggle usbNet, I can ssh into my Paperwhite. Now I need to go lookup my root password:
http://members.ping.de/~sven/kindle.html

It works! I have a root shell on my Paperwhite:

Warning: Permanently added '192.168.15.244' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
root@192.168.15.244's password: 
#################################################
#  N O T I C E  *  N O T I C E  *  N O T I C E  # 
#################################################
Rootfs is mounted read-only. Invoke mntroot rw to
switch back to a writable rootfs.
#################################################
[root@kindle root]# mount
rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
/dev/root on / type ext3 (ro,noatime,nodiratime,data=writeback)
none on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
tmpfs on /dev type tmpfs (rw,relatime,mode=755)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,relatime)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,relatime,gid=5,mode=620)
tmpfs on /var type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=32768k)
/dev/loop/2 on /lib/firmware/cyttsp type cramfs (ro,noatime,nodiratime)
/dev/loop/3 on /usr/share/X11/xkb type cramfs (ro,noatime,nodiratime)
/dev/loop/4 on /usr/java/lib/fonts type cramfs (ro,noatime,nodiratime)
/dev/loop/5 on /etc/kdb.src type cramfs (ro,noatime,nodiratime)
/dev/loop/6 on /usr/lib/locale type cramfs (ro,noatime,nodiratime)
/dev/loop/7 on /usr/share/keyboard type cramfs (ro,noatime,nodiratime)
/dev/mmcblk0p3 on /var/local type ext3 (rw,relatime,errors=continue,data=writeback)
fsp on /mnt/us type fuse.fsp (rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,user_id=0,group_id=0)
/dev/loop/0 on /mnt/base-us type vfat (rw,noexec,noatime,nodiratime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro)
[root@kindle root]# df -h
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root               340.2M    229.4M     93.7M  71% /
tmpfs                   125.1M     60.0K    125.0M   0% /dev
tmpfs                   125.1M         0    125.1M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs                    32.0M    428.0K     31.6M   1% /var
/dev/loop/2             216.0K    216.0K         0 100% /lib/firmware/cyttsp
/dev/loop/3               2.5M      2.5M         0 100% /usr/share/X11/xkb
/dev/loop/4              72.9M     72.9M         0 100% /usr/java/lib/fonts
/dev/loop/5               1.3M      1.3M         0 100% /etc/kdb.src
/dev/loop/6               7.9M      7.9M         0 100% /usr/lib/locale
/dev/loop/7               7.7M      7.7M         0 100% /usr/share/keyboard
/dev/mmcblk0p3           62.0M     17.7M     41.0M  30% /var/local
fsp                       1.4G     49.2M      1.3G   4% /mnt/us
/dev/loop/0               1.4G     49.2M      1.3G   4% /mnt/base-us
[root@kindle root]# 

It is sure mounting a lot of stuff...

But at least the persistent user store (/var/local) is now 62MB instead of 30MB, so having too many books will be much less likely to brick your kindle. That is a good thing.

[bhaak]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

The compatible K5 (touch) hacks need to be repackaged for the Paperwhite, because of its different serial number prefix. I have yifanlu's "simple usbNet" hack installed (repackaged for the Paperwhite by NiLuJe). After searching for ";un" to toggle usbNet, I can ssh into my Paperwhite. Now I need to go lookup my root password:
http://members.ping.de/~sven/kindle.html

It works! I have a root shell on my Paperwhite:

Congratulation! So the root is still generated by the well known algorithm.

Can you already say how different the 5.2.0 firmware is compared to the 5.1.x?

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by bhaak

Congratulation! So the root is still generated by the well known algorithm.

Can you already say how different the 5.2.0 firmware is compared to the 5.1.x?

Because I did not change the root password to the mario hash, until I replace it, the password in the pastebin debricking repair image is fiona2bc. You can download and loop mount it if you want to explore it. Diags is there too...

As you can see from the post above (if you are familiar with 5.1.x), it mounts a LOT more stuff (see all those loop mounts), and there is now twice as much space reserved for book indexes, so too many books will not brick your kindle like it did to many with the K4 and K5 were first introduced. And ENABLE_DIAGS does not work. And we do not know how to get into USB Downloader mode, so serial port debricking may be required for awhile. With these images, I am sure we will discover a lot more differences...

[bhaak]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

As you can see from the post above (if you are familiar with 5.1.x), it mounts a LOT more stuff (see all those loop mounts), and there is now twice as much space reserved for book indexes, so too many books will not brick your kindle like it did to many with the K4 and K5 were first introduced. And ENABLE_DIAGS does not work. And we do not know how to get into USB Downloader mode, so serial port debricking may be required for awhile. With these images, I am sure we will discover a lot more differences...

I had a quick look at those loop mounts and those are cramfs images of stuff we already had on 5.1.x. Cramfs images are compressed by default so they're saving some space, although I don't think that's the main reason why they used them. Maybe ease of update? Instead of updating several small files they can just update one big file?

[peter12345]

I cannot understand anything when u hackers go ballistic.

Be sure to do simple explanations, for the rest of us beginners as it is all very fascinating....such posts are real eye openers.

[Trauma Doll]

Originally Posted by peter12345

I cannot understand anything when u hackers go ballistic.

Be sure to do simple explanations, for the rest of us beginners

Silly user. It's way too early for that.

[Nate the great]

That did not work for me.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by Trauma Doll

Silly user. It's way too early for that.

Yes, it is a lot more work to condense complicated stuff down to simple explanations, and we are still working out the details. Things will get simpler in time...

[Azythe]

Sorry I'm kinda new here. Is there any special useful features for jailbreaking paperwhite?

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

That did not work for me.

I used a jailbreak package that NiLuJe sent me. Perhaps you tried the wrong one. We will get this sorted out. It is still very early, and there may be kinks to work out.

@NiLuJe: any suggestions here?

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by Azythe

Sorry I'm kinda new here. Is there any special useful features for jailbreaking paperwhite?

Yes. Update packages for new (and old) hacks will be provided in the Kindle Developer's Corner forum. Custom fonts are a popular favorite, but there are many more, depending on your interests...

[NiLuJe]

@Nate: Which part didn't work? What did you try? What happened? Which FW version is your PW running?

@GM: I'll post the repacked usbnet later tonight, busy this evening . I didn't send you anything jailbreak related, just some stuff repacked once you were jailbroken, so you must have used the latest released version . Which I'll probably update with a properly sized splash screen, too.

[Greg G]

Neat stuff! It will be interesting to see what goodness comes from this. I like digimuzik's idea for two finger gesture light control. I also think it would be cool to be able to remove the Personal banner from personal docs.

It does not look like android is running underneath (more linux focused) so I'm assuming android apps will not run. I enjoyed having dropbox on my Nook Touch for example.

Anyway, congratulations! I'm going to try to resist the temptation to hack this time but I rarely seem to win that battle

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

@Nate: Which part didn't work? What did you try? What happened? Which FW version is your PW running?

@GM: I'll post the repacked usbnet later tonight, busy this evening . I didn't send you anything jailbreak related, just some stuff repacked once you were jailbroken, so you must have used the latest released version . Which I'll probably update with a properly sized splash screen, too.

I used the jailbreak instructions liked to in the first post. I grabbed the tar file named in the readme, copied it to the root folder on my KPW (FW 5.2.0), and rebooted.

No new ebook showed up so i assume it didn't work.