Kubrick: Live CD to debrick Kindle 3, 4, and Touch

[tubular]

Thanks a lot for developing this application. I used it to downgrade my K4 from 4.1.4 to 4.1.1 firmware, because I was receiving the "This device is not authorized as a test Kindle by the developer of this item" error.

For future reference: on recent systems, the live USB refused to boot. Even a 2015 laptop didn't work. However, it worked flawlessly on a 2010 ThinkPad (T410s).

[ton4eff]

Also had to downgrade to 3.4 (K3 WiFi) because of the same "...test Kindle..." message. It was popping after every switch on of the WiFi and screwing my CoolReader installation. Thanks to Kubrick everything works flawlessly now. The workaround would be to prevent the Kindle to connect to internet while the WiFi is on, but I didn't know how to do it...
And yes, I can confirm that USB also refused to boot Kubrick on my old Acer Aspire E1-531, but I did it using the CD image instead...

[PaigheTurn]

I booted the USB and Im stuck at "Kubrick starting up, please wait..."

Can someone give me advice? Im on an AMD Ryzen laptop in case that matters.

[tenko]

i recently screwed up, had a working kindle with duokan but stupidly decided to uninstall it just because windows didnt see my kindle (probably because as it turned out later it wont unless you use original cable...).

ever since kindle is stuck at loading screen (progress bar loads till full but then nothing happens again after that, jsut stuck like that forever).

so i wanted to install the firmware anew with kubrick. made the usb stick bootable drive according to the instruction. restarting windows to make it select bootable usb stick as boot - getting black screen with "checking for bootable device... no device detected" or similar same meaning text. just doesn't see this usb as a bootable drive.

you sure this works for win11? i guess it would expect a windows or OS bootable drive, and this usb stick is not an OS bootable drive, maybe that's why this error? are people using kubrick with win11? i mean, with success right? i wonder what went wrong in my case.

(i know how to make bootable usb sticks, reinstalled my system many times with usb stick bootables, but i never used that particular win32 program you suggested)

[XenGi]

I tried booting kubrick 3.6 on several notebooks now but with no luck. Does this even work anymore on modern hardware? Has any one tried it in recent days?

[Frogm4n]

Kubrick is based on SliTaz 3.0, from ca. 2010. It's not going to have hardware support for modern hardware. You might be able to run it in a VM, but that's going to have its own kettle of fish to deal with.

[orev]

I've tried to get Kubrick to boot on hardware, however BIOS boot is being removed from many devices now, and I can only use UEFI. The kubrick ISO doesn't support this, so I've been trying with VirtualBox (on Windows 11 host). My device is a Kindle Touch.

Does anyone have the steps needed to get that working? I have setup a blank USB filter, so it should be catching any new USB device as they connect. I'm able to have it recognized and the USB downloader mode works, but then nothing happens on the Fastboot screen ("Waiting for device").

Are there other configs that need to be done on the VM? Anything with network devices, etc? I think it's going to be the reality soon for many people that they're going to need a BIOS based VM to get this to work.

Or maybe some way to separate the kubrick programs from the Linux distro, so the distro could be upgraded to work with UEFI?

[Frogm4n]

Kubrick is written in Java that's just as old as the distro it's running on. I don't think there's a lot of interest in it, but it might be less work overall to update it to a newer Java or rewrite it in a modern and more portable language.

[Satyr118]

I hope someone makes this useable on newer hardware. I bought a second K4T after the first one bricked from trying a factory reset, and now the other one is bricked as well. I would love for these to not become more e-waste.

[viiiwonder]

Originally Posted by kmc76

I couldn't find a way to edit the previous post, so I'm stuck making a second one.

I was trying again with Kubrick, this time with a flash drive I made using Rufus instead of Win32DI. The same error came up. But it was late, and I was not paying attention. So instead of "POWEROFF" I typed "EXIT" and lo and behold Kubrick started, and I successfully unbricked the KT.

As always, try this at your own risk. But it worked for me.

Quoting this, as I ran into the same issue, and was starting to tear into autostart.sh, and happened on this post, and sure enough exiting bash took me to the Kubrick wizard and I fixed my k4. Hopefully people running into this recently will see this.

[jojojo8359]

Hi,

I have found myself with a bricked K4NT, and was going to use this tool (since all other methods I tried haven't worked), but all of the download and mirror links are currently dead. Is there any way they can be updated?

[shamanNS]

All download link by @ixtab are alive. All point to https://disk.yandex.ru hoster, so maybe / probably your Internet provider is blocking access to that russian website?
Mirrors are indeed dead.

[a2xchip]

Originally Posted by XenGi

I tried booting kubrick 3.6 on several notebooks now but with no luck. Does this even work anymore on modern hardware? Has any one tried it in recent days?

Same... And I have no idea why not distributing it as a separate java app with documentation and instructions but as a linux distro.

[jojojo8359]

Originally Posted by shamanNS

All download link by @ixtab are alive. All point to https://disk.yandex.ru hoster, so maybe / probably your Internet provider is blocking access to that russian website?
Mirrors are indeed dead.

Yes, this was exactly it! For some reason, this didn't even cross my mind when trying the links.

I'll try to run it on some of my devices and see if I can get it to work.