Which hacks/jailbreak to I have installed?

[jphphotography]

Forgive me if this is a dumb question, I've been away from the Kindle hack scene for a few years.

I picked up a Kindle Keyboard 3G when they were first released in Canada. As soon as I got it I jailbroke it and did the linkss screensaver hack. At the time I knew nothing about Linux, now I'm quite a bit more versed and want to start playing around a bit.

My issue is trying to figure out exactly what state my Kindle is in before attempting to apply new hacks like usbnetworking, LaunchPad, or a terminal program etc.

How can I tell what jailbreak I did back in 2010?
Since my Kindle has been updated OTA a few times since then do I need to update the jailbreak?

Right now I'm very interested in getting a terminal emulator going for use with my various raspberry pi projects (http://pi-fidelity.blogspot.ca).

Later I want to find a used non-3G Kindle Keyboard and wire into the serial port and make it a portable terminal I can use with any serial device (ie not just over wifi but direct connection).

Any info would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by jphphotography

Forgive me if this is a dumb question, I've been away from the Kindle hack scene for a few years.

I picked up a Kindle Keyboard 3G when they were first released in Canada. As soon as I got it I jailbroke it and did the linkss screensaver hack. At the time I knew nothing about Linux, now I'm quite a bit more versed and want to start playing around a bit.

My issue is trying to figure out exactly what state my Kindle is in before attempting to apply new hacks like usbnetworking, LaunchPad, or a terminal program etc.

How can I tell what jailbreak I did back in 2010?
Since my Kindle has been updated OTA a few times since then do I need to update the jailbreak?

Right now I'm very interested in getting a terminal emulator going for use with my various raspberry pi projects (http://pi-fidelity.blogspot.ca).

Later I want to find a used non-3G Kindle Keyboard and wire into the serial port and make it a portable terminal I can use with any serial device (ie not just over wifi but direct connection).

Any info would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

One suggestion:
You could start over.
Kubrick will re-flash a K3 system image.

Be **certain** your battery is in good condition (such as installing KUAL and the "Battery Report" button) and has a full charge before starting the Kubrick process.

On the K3, it takes 2 hours or more to re-write the flash chip.

[NiLuJe]

As for the state of your device, you mentioned linkss, there should be an info.txt file in there with the version number.

Checking if you have a linkjail folder is a good step to id the jailbreak, too, but if you really haven't touched it since 2010, yeah, you'll have to uninstall & then update the jailbreak.

[jphphotography]

Eeek, I'd really rather avoid completely re-flashing unless I actually did brick the device.

@NiLuJe After I posted I did see the info.txt file in the linkss folder, I don't have the Kindle here with me now but I think it was something like v0.13

I don't remember seeing a linkjail folder but I'll doublecheck, would it just be in the root of the device when I plug it into a PC?

According to this thread it says I could just install the update_*_install.bin updates?

Here are general update instructions for these hacks:

First of all, in most cases, there's no need to touch the jailbreak again. You already installed it the first time you installed hacks. Just forget about it now .
Next, no need to run the update_*_uninstall.bin updates, ever. (except in some specific cases, like if you're updating the jailbreak on a 3.x device, or from another font/ss hack [in which case you should use the original uninstaller for your hacks, and not the ones found here]).
Then, you can apply the latest update_*_install.bin updates, one by one. You can safely chain both hacks installs.
After that, to make sure everything's in order, do a full Restart of your Kindle ([HOME] -> [MENU] > Settings -> [MENU] > Restart), and you'll be good to go . Note that in some cases, especially for minor updates, this restart is not strictly necessary, but better be safe than sorry .

Is that accurate? If so should I update the linkss hack first or would it matter?

Thanks for the help everyone I appreciate it!

[NiLuJe]

@jphphotography: It's accurate, but you missed the bit I mentioned in my previous answer .

namely: you'll most likely have to uninstall & reinstall the jailbreak to update it first.

[jphphotography]

Oops, sorry I did read that but after skimming the other instructions I thought it said that wasn't necessary. Then I re-read and saw this line

"(except in some specific cases, like if you're updating the jailbreak on a 3.x device, or from another font/ss hack [in which case you should use the original uninstaller for your hacks, and not the ones found here])."

So then I'm back to needing to figure out which jailbreak I did and how to uninstall it. Now since I know I can find the version of the linkss hack I should be able to uninstall that, however I can't seem to find any uninstallers??? Would it be in the linkss folder already? Again I apologize that I don't have my device with me to test this (I'm at work).

Also just so I'm clear, is the linkss hack and the jailbreak separate entities or was it a sort of 2 in 1 deal back then?

[NiLuJe]

@jphphotography: Separate entities. And you only need to uninstall the jailbreak.

You can use the uninstaller from the latest version of the jailbreak, it should handle most cases fine, except if you were using yifan's jb.

[ixtab]

If you had simply used Kubrick, you'd be done by now

It only reflashes the main system, and doesn't touch your settings or content. And, it comes with the latest 3.4 firmware with the jailbreak included. Much less hassle than trying to figure out what the current configuration is, uninstall things one after the other etc.

Of course, that's just my personal opinion.

[jphphotography]

Is there any way I could find out if I did use yifan's jailbreak? That name does ring a bell, I'm worried that might be what I installed.

@ixtab Lol ok I get it I'm actually and electronic's tech and I work in a warranty dept, if you only knew how many systems we get back from customer's messing up FW updates you'd know why I'm apprehensive to touch the flash. Also, I'm just curious since mine is a 3G international version how does that work, I'd need to make sure I flashed it with the right image or my 3G would be messed up right? I don't care about losing my content, I can reload that easily enough.

Is there anything I can do, possibly via the debug commands so I can actually get in and view the linux folders etc?

I checked and when connected to a PC I have no linkjail folder, just the following:

music
audible
.active-content-data
pictures
linkss
documents


Also the info.txt file in the linkss folder is as follows:

$Id: info.txt 6805 2010-09-21 18:15:08Z NiLuJe $

Hello! If you're wondering what all this weird stuff on your Kindle is,
I'm a screen savers hack! There's a good chance that I came from here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88004

I'm at version 0.13.N, so, if you wish to uninstall me, you'll at least need
the uninstaller from that version.

-- NiLuJe

Thanks again for trying to help, and @ixtab I'm sorry I keep avoiding your suggestion That's last resort territory for me. I will read up on it a little more though.

[jphphotography]

Oops, just noticed this too which may help.

Inside the linkss folder there are .bin files

Update_515460094-529960105.bin
Update_529960105_558700031.bin
Update_558700031_611680021.bin
Update_611680021_1725970040.bin
Update_kindle_3.0.2_B006.bin

Also just FYI my kindle is currently running 3.4 (1725970040)

[NiLuJe]

@jphphotography: Besides taking a look over SSH, no, no way to tell. That said, I don't think it would hurt to launch both uninstallers (yifan's, then mine), reboot, then install the latest jailbreak. If you suddenly can't uninstall/install anything, you probably got it. (The reboot part is key, there are slightly broken uninstallers out there).

As for the .bin files, yep, that was a 'feature' of the hack, it backuped every OTA update you got. You can safely delete them.

EDIT: That said, these OTA updates backup do give us a nice timeframe. IIRC, 515460094 was 3.0, so if you never touched the jailbreak after having installed the screen savers hack, that tells us that you used a 3.0 JB, which was nice, simple & dumb. They started getting more complex later.
That's a good news. That means you don't have anything to uninstall, you should simply be able to install the latest jailbreak on top of it.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by jphphotography

@ixtab Lol ok I get it I'm actually and electronic's tech and I work in a warranty dept, if you only knew how many systems we get back from customer's messing up FW updates you'd know why I'm apprehensive to touch the flash.

Understandable, you wouldn't want your co-workers to learn that you have become a client of someone else's warranty department.

But the developers here take pride in the quality of the software made available on this forum.
Plus
Our moderators here are also experienced developers. "Junk" would not last very long if it ever got posted.

[jphphotography]

Thank you very much for the replies! I really appreciate it.

@NiLuJe That sounds about right, I did the jailbreak right when I got it and all I really wanted was the screensaver hack (I put "Don't Panic" on the cover
Ever since it's just been OTA updates. That is cool that it backed up each update bin, I didn't know about that feature.

@knc1 LOL No it's not that at all, I didn't mean any insult to the developers and I'm sure their code is great. Still any complete reflashing has inherent risk etc. As for my dept, we just get back a lot of stuff that is truly bricked because somehow despite all the warning against it people still shut stuff down in the middle of a firmware update and the flash gets corrupted. The only way to fix them then is to directly connect (JTAG etc) and re-flash. Exactly what I was hoping to avoid especially since the Kubrick method takes up to 2HR. Since my device is pretty old I didn't want to trust that the battery would last through the update (just being safe) in case that process is very cpu hungry.

I actually like dealing with other warranty dept's provided I get through to people who actually know what their talking about, I know what they go through

I'm actually heading on holidays this weekend for two weeks so I'm thinking I'll play it safe so I have a working Kindle for the trip, when I get back I'll try as NiLuJe suggests and run the current jailbreak. Thanks again everyone!