[question] Standalone Koreader on Kindle

[squelch]

Hi, just today I did a jailbreak and installed KUAL and then Koreader on my KT2, everything works great, thank you so much to all contributors for your great work!

I went poking around the files and found out that the kindle firmware is mostly just linux (no big surprise) and this gave me an idea.

I greatly prefer my devices to run freedom software as much as possible so I was wondering how far fetched it would be to completely do away with the proprietary amazon software and instead use an alternative reader like Koreader on it's own?

Is there anything preventing this or posing an obstacle? For instance, is Koreader just a regular GUI program or does it interface with daemons/services provided by the amazon software?

[NiLuJe]

Somewhat harder to achieve on a Kindle, and not necessarily straight forward (or a good idea) on more recent devices, but it has been done on other platforms (e.g., Cervantes or Kobo).

[squelch]

That's interesting, I assume it would take some programming work and a new build? Or is it just a matter of setting it up?

[NiLuJe]

Mostly just a matter of setting it up without breaking anything (on both sides of the fence).

EDIT: Except on Kindle, where it would require writing code for basically all the non-eInk bits of the HAL (device & powerd), as that currently relies on stock deamons.

[squelch]

That sounds like a ton of work, and after reading through this:
https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kin...g#Architecture
I'm even more impressed with the developers on this forum for figuring out this giant mess!

For now I'll just keep it as is and hope the spooky amazon demons will have mercy on me

[mergen3107]

@squelch
If you would like to stop Kindle sending stuff to Amazon, here is how you can do it:

Warning! Before firmware update, restore usr/bin/showlog binary, otherwise the update's gonna fail.


How to disable logging:
1) Backup files
/usr/sbin:
syslog-ng (syslog server and logging daemon)
loginfo (pulls specific info from syslog)
tinyrot (rotates log files to be pulled from remote servers)
/usr/bin:
showlog (specifies which log file to send)

2) Link log files to null location:

mntroot rw
ln -s -b /dev/null /usr/sbin/syslog-ng
ln -s -b /dev/null /usr/sbin/loginfo
ln -s -b /dev/null /usr/sbin/tinyrot
ln -s -b /dev/null /usr/bin/showlog
mntroot ro

How to Revert back:

mntroot rw
mv /usr/sbin/syslog-ng~ /usr/sbin/syslog-ng
mv /usr/sbin/loginfo~ /usr/sbin/loginfo
mv /usr/sbin/tinyrot~ /usr/sbin/tinyrot
mv /usr/bin/showlog~ /usr/bin/showlog
mntroot ro

Disable user store reset and shipping mode:

mntroot rw
ln -s -b /dev/null /usr/sbin/userstore_reset
ln -s -b /dev/null /usr/sbin/userstore_clean
ln -s -b /dev/null /usr/sbin/shipping_mode
mntroot ro

Restore:

mntroot rw
mv /usr/sbin/userstore_reset~ /usr/sbin/userstore_reset
mv /usr/sbin/userstore_clean~ /usr/sbin/userstore_clean
mv /usr/sbin/shipping_mode~ /usr/sbin/shipping_mode
mntroot ro

[squelch]

@mergen3107
Hey, thanks, now I feel more confident in using it while connected to wifi!
btw does disabling user store reset mean I could unregister the device and not lose my files?

[mergen3107]

No, user store reset just doesn’t allow to factory reset anymore. Although I didn’t test it so be careful.

[squelch]

I see, thanks!