Kindle DX update blues

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A few days ago I received a letter from Amazon stating a new firmware was available for Kindle, and that those with coverage problems with Whispernet could get the update file from the web too.

Firmware update for Kindle is supposed to be quite a straightforward operation. First, update file is downloaded to your Kindle, either wirelessly or manually by the user, to the main folder of the system. Once in there, either because user request or automatically, update process starts.

I've done this before and no trouble happened then. This time was different, though. I mentioned on a previous post that I've played with the USB networking hack, that enables network access to the Linux system running in the Kindle. I did some tests, set the correct system time on my Kindle and forgot about it.

Now that I was trying to update from version 2.3.4 to the new 2.5.2 version I was stucked. Update process stated normally, and "stage 1 of 3" was shown on the lower right corner of the display, but a few seconds later the process stopped with an error message and the error code U006 was shown on the lower right corner.

Several minutes later it was clear the problem was due to a checksum error of one of the system config files. I vaguely remember I did some minor changes to several files, but months later I could not remember what I might have done and to what files.

Luckily there was a way to find out where the problem was. System logs are accesible by the debug command ;dumpMessages that will create a new "book" with the contents of the log file. A careful reading of which led me to discover the file causing the trouble was framework.mario.conf.

Again, thanks to Mobilread forums I've obtained the original file, that though did not have the expected MD5 sum, it worked flawlessly. It is a shame the whole process took me a couple of afternoons to figure out.

I guess the moral of the story is that if you fiddle with your Kindle´s internals, please backup any file before changing it and keep a clean record of what you did.

Comments

Josemanu said…
Ahora que llega el verano ¿estás pensando en algún proyecto basado en Arduino?.
No se si lo sabes pero se está intentando formar una comunidad física de usuarios.
Este viernes tenemos "reunión" aquí: http://arduinobarcamp.jottit.com/
1:07 pm
misan said…
Gracias Josemanu,

Ya me he apuntado. Llevaré un par de proyectos que tengo por casa.
1:22 pm
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