PW3 4GB Serial Debrick and Jailbreak Assistance Requested

[pins]

Good Day, Respected Kindle Devs!

First, a heartfelt thank you for all your work. My jailbroken KT5 is literally the favorite device in a house full of geekery. Owe you guys for all your hard work.

Second, apologies in advance for any poor forum etiquette...no intention to offend.

Third: In my excitement to get a PW3 (G090G105XXX, FW 5.8.11, Rev 3243010037) jailbroken I bricked my device foolishly attempting a downgrade after disregarding the warnings on this thread:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=294964

Had to wait for a year or so until my brilliant Dad was able to get me serial port access to the device, but now I'm able to "diag>exit login" to root on what I assume is the /dev/mmcblk0p2 partition.

We used the great information posted in this thread:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=267541

I failed to backup my device because I didn't study enough and only found knc1's backup thread after the kindle was bricked.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=289690

Since I have already proven my stupidity I'd like to avoid doing further damage by *precisely* following any directions or advice you'd be kind enough to give.

I've attached the serial logs. I'm using minicom and Ubuntu 18.04 live CD across a TTL-232GRG-VREG1V8-WE cable. Unable to get USBnet working (appears dropbear is broken). Also unable to mount /dev/mmcblkp4, the other partitions (except boot0) appear okay.

Goal: Jailbroken PW3 with all the goodies your brilliant minds have developed.

Thank you very much in advance, and THANK YOU for all the great work you have done and continue to do here!

[NiLuJe]

What exactly did you initially do to bork it?

If that's simply a broken main after an update, just put an official update package in the userstore, install it via the diags menu (U. Update using update*.bin file on FAT partition).

If you want to avoid doing the JB over serial, make sure it's a FW version >= your currently installed one, while *still* being JB'able.

(You can start with a factory update package directly, no need to go through a production update first).

[pins]

Thank you for the reply! Tried to downgrade to factory 5.7.4 (this was a long while back) but result was error message at the boot screen. Unfortunately now I am not able to access the user store. As far as I can tell the file structure of /dev/mmcblk0p1 is intact, however fdisk -l reports that boot0 has an invalid partition table. I also get an error message when I attempt to mount /dev/mmcblk0p4 ("bogus" message).

Is there a command in the recovery menu or diags menu that would allow me to re-initialize the user store, then install the updated*.bin as you recommend?

with great respect.

[NiLuJe]

O. Format and overwrite FAT partition

then

E. Export FAT partition

*should* lead to a sane userstore exported over USBMS.

Emphasis on *should* .

(Don't fat-finger this, as there's a couple *very* nasty entries in that menu ).

(I. *might* be needed if the partition table is utterly screwed, but I have no idea of the potentially harmful side-effects it could have, so, let's table that one until someone wih actual experience with it gets back to you).

[pins]

Thank you sir. Believe you are referring to the RECOVERY menu. Will do the exact steps you indicate and report back.

respectfully.

[pins]

Executed "O" and "E" from the Recovery Menu. New message on boot as follows:

Press [ENTER] for recovery menu... 0 //dev/mmcblk0p4:
CHS=4/16/99776 size=3269459968 bytes
flag type first last lba first lba size
Partition p1:
0x00 0x0b 16 <large> 16 6385648
CHS: 0/1/1 - <large>
Partition p2:
Partition p3:
Partition p4:

diag>USB EXPORT: RESULT <NONE>

I then rebooted using "diag> exit reboot" and landed at the "kindle login:" on the serial terminal. The main device screen still displays the bricked error message. On my PC I got the following in dmesg:

[180967.173032] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 21 using ehci-pci
[180967.672952] usb 1-1.2: device not accepting address 21, error -71

I can try restart Ubuntu or switch to windows if that might make a difference.

very respectfully.

[pins]

Additional Info:

Booted back to diag>exit login and was able to access /dev/mmcblkp4 which was automounted as /mnt/base-us.

[root@[192_168_15_244] system]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 3959 MB, 3959422976 bytes
4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 120832 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 64 * 512 = 32768 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/mmcblk0p1 * 1025 15424 460800 83 Linux
/dev/mmcblk0p2 15425 17472 65536 83 Linux
/dev/mmcblk0p3 17473 19520 65536 83 Linux
/dev/mmcblk0p4 19521 119296 3192832 b Win95 FAT32

Disk /dev/mmcblk0boot0: 2 MB, 2097152 bytes
4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 64 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 64 * 512 = 32768 bytes

Disk /dev/mmcblk0boot0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

*and*

[root@[192_168_15_244] system]# cat /mnt/base-us/system/version.txt
Kindle 5.8.9.0.1 (317597 011)

So it looks like I borked it by trying to load FW 5.8.9.0.1 rather than 5.7.4

respectfully.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by pins

So it looks like I borked it by trying to load FW 5.8.9.0.1 rather than 5.7.4

On the bright side, it likely would've borked with 5.7.4 as well. Being a later version, I expect 5.8.9.0.1 supported more mainboard versions than 5.7.4.

Now that you have userstore, probably safest to use 5.9.6.1.

[pins]

Thank you very much, acknowledge 5.9.6.1. Will definitely follow that advice and carefully study your related jb thread once I'm able to get USBMS going. For now still no contact with the device from the PC though.

[NiLuJe]

You do need to explicitly export the userstore over USBMS, either via the recovery menu, or the diags menu, depending on whether you've let it boot to diags or not (and/or if the diags menu is actually usable).

Check dmesg on both sides, and try unplugging/replugging it.

[pins]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

Check dmesg on both sides, and try unplugging/replugging it.

Thank You!

dmesg on ubuntu PC side is mute when I unplug / replug
dmesg via serial root on PW3 side is as follows after unplug / replug:

[ 5296.116279] otg udc vbus rising wakeup
[ 5296.120745] try_wake_up_udc: udc out low power mode

respectfully.

UPDATE: Tried to explicitly enable USB via RECOVERY "Export" command and via DIAGS "USB EXPORT" but must be doing something wrong, PC still will not detect the PW3 via USBMS. I tried detecting USBMS on Ubuntu, Win7 Pro, and OS X but no luck. After commanding "Export" on recovery menu I saw the following during the boot sequence:


USB0: MAC xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
USB0: HOST MAC xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
g_ether gadget


very respectfully.