Glo Memory Upgrade Mod Guide (With Pictures)

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by levoz85

ciao avrei bisogno di un immagine per il mio kobo glo.
grazie mille

Hi I need an image for my kobo glo.
A thousand thanks

Please post requests for firmware images in the correct thread and not in multiple threads.

For your Glo N613, post in the Kobo Glo: Need SD card image thread.

[Henk Poley]

After overwriting an SD card with the ancient OS image, and resetting it to 'factory settings', I had issues connection to WiFi, or getting the macOS Kobo app to update the 'firm'ware.

This worked:

Again wrote the image to SD.

Downloaded Aura HD firmware update here: https://pgaskin.net/KoboStuff/kobofirmware.html

Extracted the files to /Volumes/KOBOeReader/.kobo, according to this thread:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=145177

The next boot sequence will looked messed up. A kind of ghostly sideways and repeated "don't turn off" (🚫+⏼) with the same repetition of three dots circling.

Your Kobo still updates to the latest OS, even though the update developer couldn't get the screen to work properly 😅.

Now you can reset your Kobo Aura HD, it will connect to WiFi, and will you can do the rest as expected.

[Henk Poley]

Ah, the Kobo Aura HD PCB is 'E606C0'.

So it wouldn't surprise me if you had to rename /Volumes/KOBOeReader/.kobo/upgrade/mx50-ntx/uImage-E606C0 to /Volumes/KOBOeReader/.kobo/upgrade/mx50-ntx/uImage and move the original out of the way, to make the update boot image look nice and clean.

[Henk Poley]

Ah, and you need to do the recent firmware update before a 'factory reset', because of the May 25th 2023 mandatory Kobo update (I think they added TLS 1.3 support or something, to talk with their webservers). Which would make it impossible to finish the enrolment wizard on the e-Reader with older firmware.

E.g. this Kobo FAQ: I got a message from Kobo about updates to my device. What should I do?

[Peter_Cordes]

Since nobody's mentioned this, if you're using a Linux desktop it's very simple: write the firmware .img to the raw device file for your MicroSD card. e.g. with
sudo dd bs=64k if=foo.img of=/dev/XYZ
or
cat foo.img > /dev/XYZ

Both require root, dd can be used with sudo since dd opens the output file. cat with a redirect can't, since the user shell would be trying to do the redirect before sudo runs.

I used this command to extract the zip straight to the microSD block device. (In a root shell from sudo -s, although I could have just used sudo on the dd part of this pipeline)


7z x -so Kobo_N249_Clara_HD_4_38_21908.zip | dd status=progress bs=64k of=/dev/sdXYZ


where /dev/sdXYZ was actually /dev/sdf, my microSD card in a USB adapter. Using a placeholder device filename to protect from overwriting the wrong device with a copy/paste. Make doubly sure you have the right device (check lsblk, and/or dmesg to make sure it's the USB device you just inserted, and run mount to make sure it didn't get automatically mounted).

I only used dd to get a progress indicator (which doesn't include the kernel's write buffers, so it will start fast then slow down as the buffer fills and it has to wait for the actual hardware. A tool like vmstat or iostat -x 5 or dool -D nvme0n1,sda,sdb,sdc,...,sdf 5 will show you actual device read/write MB/s.

I could have just redirected stdout of 7-zip into the device file. (The -so option tells it to extract to standard output)

The image is a full-disk image with a partition table, thus we write it to the whole device, not to a partition. (And not as a regular file into an existing filesystem.) In Windows you need special software for that; in Unix (macOS and Linux) the raw device is accessible as a file in /dev.

You can then use gparted /dev/sdf and use the GUI to resize the FAT32 partition to extend out to the end of the device so you can use all the space. Or apparently factory-reset will do that, too.

update: on my Kobo Clara HD, it locked up very soon after doing the initial setup with the FAT32 partition resized to fill the 32GiB microSD. (With the same failure screen as when the original microSD died).

Re-imaging the original 8GiB image onto it, it seems to be working. Using factory reset from the menu didn't grow the partition to fill the card like some users reported it would, maybe that's only a thing with the firmware for some other models. (The original card that came with the device is 16GiB. I don't know how it was partitioned before it died. Possibly it only used the first 8, as over-provisioning to make the wear-leveling in the microSD controller more efficient, or maybe the firmware image I was sent is different from what was originally on this device. For library books, we don't need a lot of storage so I'm just leaving it at 8G, not trying to grow the partition up to 16. It seems to be working, not locking up at the point it did before.)

----

Feel free to copy/paste this post into a section of one of the main posts for the benefit of Linux users.

(reposted with edits since there seems to be a deadline for editing my previous post? And I don't see a delete button on it.)

[Awkgnu]

Still refer to main guide
1. POWER KOBO OFF NOT SLEEP MODE take back off, I used a knife to prise the back off between the crack
2. You see the sd slot? Push it left until it clicks and pop up, Take out the SD card
3. Plug it into your mac, also plug in the SD card you want to image I tried 32 gig but it didn't work so I settled with 16.
4. Use Balena Etcher - https://etcher.balena.io/ to clone the kobo 2gig to the new 16 gig one.
5. To do the partitions, disk utility was playing up so i used Ipartition - https://download.cnet.com/ipartition...8_4-50841.html activated with this - https://coriolis-systems.com/downloads/iPartition.png This Activation Png was given by the vendor as stated here - https://formulae.brew.sh/cask/ipartition
6. Use ipartition to drag the KOBOeReader Partiotion into all but about 10mb of unallocated space, press go
7. It should do some stuff and then say finished or somthing., eject it from your mac and take it out of the adaptor
8. Put it in the kobo, press the metal down and to your rightand it should stay down, Try turning it on, if the light at the top just stays blue, somthing has gone wrong, try repeating the process, and if that dosent work try an alternate sd card. If all else Fails I'm Afraid you will have to do your own Troubleshooting. OR you can just put the OG SD card back.
9. Enjoy your free space!

Disclaimer, use these links at your own risk, they are just the software that worked for me.

Also a BIG to the maker of this guide! Now i can read manga properly!

[LorPiro]

Guys just one quick question.
What happens if I have wrongly formatted the SD card?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by LorPiro

Guys just one quick question.
What happens if I have wrongly formatted the SD card?

It shouldn't matter. The USB image writer utility writes the format of the image to the card.

OTOH, I seriously recommend using a new µSD card to write the image to. µSD cards seem to have a lot shorter lifespans than expected.

[LorPiro]

Hello everyone,
I recently found an old KOBO GLO in my house and I wanted to start re-using it. After some troubles I managed to extend the memory (as seen in another thread) by using a new uSD card. Everything seems to work nice, the kobo starts up and I can see the WELCOME page. The problem is that I can't go further. When I try to connect the kobo via WI-FI it give me some errors, the device connects and then trow me back to the start page (?). If I try to set it up using a cable it seems to not be able to reach my computer.
Any thoughts?
Hope you'll help me

[LorPiro]

Ok guys I managed to fix my kobo glo.
I have another question, is it possible to insert an ebook file directly into the main SD card?

from file manager I see these 3 folder (in the attached photo)

do you think it's possible to do it? where should I put the files?

[PeterT]

Please don't multi post!

And content can go almost anywhere. Create your own folder called (for instance) books and copy content there

Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk

[piledrivegames]

Hey just wanted to say this tutorial is still working in 2024!

Thanks a lot, I was able to save my wife's Kobo, and she is very happy with me

[cowchair]

Thanks for the guide, it helped me unbrick my Kobo Libra 2 N418 I'll leave some notes here for future googlers.

- My original issue was that when I connected to a new wifi network, it seems to have tried to download a new update and then bricked itself (I had sideloaded NickelMenu a year or so ago and forgotten all about it). The white light at the front would flash/blink and I'd get a white screen. If I tried to reset the Libra 2, maybe it would go to a white screen with three dots, but it would always revert to the blinking light and white screen.

- Opening the case was easy with a very thin tool. I attach photos of the markings on the main PCB of my unit, the markings on the battery, and the markings on the little power button break-out board.

- My MicroSD card was glued in with a very thin (and very clear!) coating. I got it out by grabbing the sides of the chip with tweezers and wiggling it out (photo attached).

- The MicroSD card from my unit was completely corrupted, it refused to delete partitions and format no matter what software I used. A full replacement was needed. I prepared the new MicroSD card by deleting all partitions from it and adding a new lettered partition (with MiniTool Partition Wizard), and then formatting that new lettered partition with the SD Association's SD Card Formatter tool. I used Balena Etcher Portable to flash the image onto the card.

- I flashed the first revision image, but this didn't work. After the unit booted up and got to the language selection screen, it immediately turned off with a screen telling me that it needed to be charged. Since DNSB's message said that one of the changes between revisions was to the battery management chip, I reflashed with the Revision E image and that works fine.

- The unit's serial number no longer matches mine in the 'About' section. I don't know where to change this; I tried changing it in the .kobo/version file, but the change doesn't stick.

- The firmware wrongly announced that it was up-to-date. I updated it manually by extracting the latest firmware .zip to the .kobo folder and restarting the unit.

[adnclara]

The contents of the memory card in my Kobo got corrupted. When it stopped working, I reset the memory card. I would like to install it from scratch using the software you provided. Is it possible to install it this way? I have the "N249 Clara HD 4.38.21908" image file. How can I load this onto a new blank SD card? Are the steps you explained suitable for this?

[DNSB]

Yes, the steps will work for any Kobo with removable internal storage in the form of a µSD card. My recommendation is to use a new µSD card to write the image to since all too often the old µSD card has reached it's write limit and is failing.