Andrew de Quincey's livejournal

kindle devkey problems?

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 21:32:35 GMT

Hi, a number of people have reported problems with my kindle devkeys 0.2 and the 3.1 firmware. I can't seem to replicate the problem here on two kindles (both K3GB - UK wifi+3G).

I've just reinstalled the latest jailbreak from mobileread. I then deleted my keystore from the device and reinstalled it from the zipfile downloaded from my adqmisc googlecode project. Result: works fine.

Obviously something is affecting some people though, but as I can't replicate it, I'm at a loss as to what it is. I can only suggest a few things to try out:

1) it could perhaps be some of the other files in the keystore directory. If someone wants to try sshing in and :

cd /var/local/java/keystore
rm .* *

That should wipe everything. Then reinstall my devkeys (the above will zap them) and try again.

Update: I've created a standard kindle update that will do these steps, available here. If you're using the latest jailbreak, you'll need to add "update_zapdevkeys" to the end of "<Kindleusb>/linkjail/etc/whitelist, or the update will fail with a U007 error.

I can't guarantee it'll help as I can't replicate the problem, but its the only thing I can think of. You'll still need to reinstall my devkeys afterwards. Please let me know either way!

2) Another thing springs to mind: check the date on the kif.azw2 file on the kindle's USB exported filing system; perhaps the kindle is checking this against the key somehow?

Update: I don't think its (2) - just tried setting the date on the file to 1-jan-1970 and 1-jan-3000, but it still loads fine here.

Kindle 3.1 jailbreak

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 16:19:39 GMT

Cool, looks like there's now a Kindle 3.1 jailbreak! ~~See~~ ~~here~~.

Update: The latest jailbreak is available from the normal mobileread thread, here. I've confirmed it works with installing my devkeys.

Kindle firmware 3.1

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 18:08:03 GMT

I've been doing some playing about with the recent kindle 3.1 firmware release. The salient points are:

The jailbreak can no longer be installed because Amazon have patched the busybox tar exploit which allowed unrestricted writing to the root filing system. Keep an eye on this thread over at mobileread for information on 3.1 jailbreaking progress.
Homebrew can no longer be installed (or deinstalled) because Amazon have patched the /usr/sbin/otaup script to only use Amazon's keys when verifying software updates: the extra one installed by the jailbreak (and used to sign homebrew updates) is ignored.
If you installed the jailbreak and then the usbnet patches (or any other homebrew) under <= 3.0.3, and then updated to 3.1, they should be left intact.
You can't downgrade to an older firmware release since Amazon's binary patch update format does not support this (it could be done manually if you already had root shell access though).

So, as long as you installed usbnet previously, you should still be able to ssh into the kindle and gain a root shell.
If you look at a diff of the old vs the new /usr/sbin/otaup script, they have changed the line:

KEYFILES=$(ls /etc/uks/*pem)

to:

KEYFILES="/etc/uks/pubprodkey01.pem /etc/uks/pubprodkey02.pem "

The jailbreak key is called "/etc/uks/pubhackkey01.pem. Therefore, as long as you have a root shell, you can simply manually rename them. In fact, I've decided to disable the Amazon keys by default to avoid any unwanted future updates they might automatically push to me:


mntroot rw
cd /etc/uks
mkdir AMAZON
mkdir HACK
mv pubprod* AMAZON
mv pubhackkey01.pem HACK/pubprodkey01.pem
mntroot ro

Then, when you want to install/deinstall a homebrew app:


mntroot rw
cd /etc/uks
cp HACK/* .
mntroot ro

And for an Amazon firmware update (you might want to remove their keys after the update again to disable pushed auto-updates):


mntroot rw
cd /etc/uks
cp AMAZON/* .
mntroot ro

Finally, the good news is that they haven't changed the signing of Kindlets, so as long as you've got my devkeys installed, they'll work as previously.

Interestingly, they have a new Kindlet API jar, version 1.2. I'm going to analyse it and describe what is new in a later post.

Note that this all worked fine on my and another test Kindle; please don't blame me if it bricks/disables homebrew on yours.

Merging developer keystores on the Kindle

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 03:18:31 GMT

It is obvious that more than one person will want to write homebrew for the Kindle. However, with my (now defunct) adqdevkeys-0.1 package, it just copies the file over whatever is already there, so we can only have one set on a device at one time. Annoying!

Therefore, I've just written a small Java program which can merge two keystores together. The source is available here. I've also just released a new key package for my keys using it here; I hope others will do the same!

For non-developers: there's no real need to upgrade to my new keystore release as the keys are the same and provides no new functionality to my apps.

For developers: It assumes the keystore and keys all have a password of "password". The command syntax is:


mergekeystores <dest keystore> <merge keystore>

This will merge keys in <merge keystore> with those already in <dest keystore>, or create a new <dest keystore> if one does not already exist. All you need to do is create a keystore of your own, with your own unique alias string, and create an update package for them.

Huffington post article on kindle hacking

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 09:20:42 GMT

See here.

jrename 0.2

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 21:27:00 GMT

Hi, just created a new release (0.2) of jrename, available here.

This has a couple of user submitted patches, one to fix a NullPointerException when processing interfaces, and one to fix method/field renaming.

KIF 0.5

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 23:07:15 GMT

Finally got some time to update this a bit:

Get timed events working - freefall and z-life should now work properly.
Add about page.
Sort out licensing.

It is available from here. If you've already rooted+installed my developer keys, all you need to do is unzip it onto your kindle over USB. If you're installing for the first time, please see here for instructions.

KIF: an infocom text adventure interpreter for the kindle

Sat, 09 Oct 2010 00:44:34 GMT

Wow, this sort of thing seems to be in the news these days!

Note: I've updated these instructions for KIF 0.5; please see here for the release notes..

My app is different however: it isn't web hosted, it runs natively on the kindle using the KDK APIs. As I don't have the official KDK, you'll need to jailbreak your kindle and install my developer keys; this is easy, but if it goes wrong, I can't accept any responsibility.

So, lets jailbreak: The kindle jailbreaking was developed over at the mobiread forums, here. The following is a very quick summary, see the mobiread thread for more information:

Download kindle-jailbreak-0.3.N.zip from that thread.
Extract it on your computer.
Copy the correct update_*_install.bin to the root of the kindle over USB. See the thread for information on which. (For my UK Kindle 3 with 3g, I use update_jailbreak_k3gb_install.bin).
Safely remove and disconnect the kindle.
Go to [HOME] -> [MENU] > Settings -> [MENU] > Update Your Kindle.
It'll take a wee while, and the update will fail with a U004 or a U006 error (this is expected).

tada, your kindle is rooted. Now, normally at this point you'd wonder what to do now... well, lets move on to stage 2:

Download kindle-adqdevkeys-0.2.zip from here.
Extract it on your computer.
Copy the correct update_adqdevkeys_*_install.bin to the root of the kindle over USB. It'll be the same code as for the rooting.
Safely remove and disconnect the kindle.
Go to [HOME] -> [MENU] > Settings -> [MENU] > Update Your Kindle.
This time, the update will succeed, and will install my developer keys into /var/local/java/keystore/developer.keystore. In case you already are an official KDK developer, any existing developer.keystore file will be backed up into that directory.

At this point you should have escaped the maze of twisty updates; installing KIF can be done entirely by copying files over usb:

Download KIF-0.5.zip from here.
Extract it to your computer with the full directory structure.
Copy the extracted directory structure onto the root of the kindle USB drive. (e.g. "kif.azw2 should end up in your kindle documents folder).
Disconnect, and wait for the home screen to refresh.
"KIF" should appear as an option... click it!

I still have a fair amount of work to do on it (e.g. styled text, lots of GUI improvements, auto-persistence when going to HOME....); consider this an alpha quality release. However, games should be playable, and I've implemented savegame support.

I have only tested this with the minizork and curses games (which will be installed when you decompressed KIF-0.1.zip). Others will very likely work, but I have been concentrating on getting the basics up and running first rather than game testing. Also, I've only tried it on a UK Kindle 3. YMMV.

I'm using the excellent zmpp as the infocom virtual machine. I must get in touch with the author and contribute my patches back once I have the source in a more stable form.
I also use the KWT for the items in the save menu.
Finally, all code is available here.

By the way, you can get many more Infocom adventures over at the IF archive. And of course there's the yearly Interactive Fiction competition.