Patches for 5.0.175773

[pgaskin]

This one might be tolino-specific, or future Kobo releases may also be 5.x.

TODO

[pgaskin]

This one is much more complex since:

• Dev mode telnet is gone.
• Updates might be served from somewhere else (it may just be for tolinos though... time will tell)?
• KoboRoot.tgz might not work (MR:post-4421911)?
• Due to the above, we don't have the files for it yet.

I don't have a tolino, so I can't really experiment much with this directly right now.

[pgaskin]

Okay, so I've managed to get ahold of the firmware files... the API checks that the original version is >5.0.111111.

https://ereaderfiles.kobo.com/firmwares/kobo12/May2024/tolino-qt6-recovery-5.0.175773.zip

Also note that Tolino serial numbers start with T rather than N, but that's irrelevant.

I'll need to update kfwproxy to track the 5.x updates separately.

[pgaskin]

Some random preliminary notes:

• For other people reading this, don't play with this update package if you don't know what you're doing... you don't want to mess up bl2 (or even uboot at this point, since we don't know how to recover it).
• Qt6? "legacy qt5"?
• Recovery mechanism is completely different.
• Update package seems to resemble what I remember of the old tolino format, will need to look into this more.
• Is this being served for kobo11?
• rootfs is zstd-compressed in the zstd-compressed recoveryfs.
• rootfs/recoveryfs is 1 GiB each.
• Should take a look at bl2 and uboot later for potential recovery, ram-boot, and netboot stuff.
• There's finally a /usr/libexec/platform/nickel-env.sh with everything required to start nickel...
• Now uses modern chromium... makes me wonder if they'll port it to the older devices or not...
• Still using common 32-bit ARM EABI5 nickel binaries.
• They're now shipping python...
• Still /mnt/onboard.
• They're now shipping a modernish kernel... if they do end up porting it to other devices, it'll make it nicer to do stuff like dual-boot mods and so on.
• Kobo serial numbers are ^SN-[TN][0-9]{4}[1-9A-C][0-9]{7},[0-9a-f]{32}$, T for tolino, N for Kobo.
• OTA updates are loaded from /mnt/onboard/.kobo/update.tar (generic update package powered by an update script, seems inspired by the android ota updater-script mechanism) and /mnt/onboard/.kobo/Kobo.tgz (same as before -- extracted into /usr/local/Kobo).
• Overall boot process seems much more polished than the old one.
• Now it's clear what Kobo's been working on over the last year, and why the tolino stuff in 4.39 seemed half-baked... lol
• nickel-hardware-status fifo stuff is mostly the same.
• There's a /usr/local/Kobo/branch file containing release/v5.0.0. Does this mean they'll maintain the v4 firmware for some devices? (I'll probably modify kfwproxy and my firmware page to keep track of latest versions grouped by the first version component)
• All variants of the pickel binaries no longer check for KoboRoot.tgz... this implies that all devices on v5 will use the new update mechanism
• /usr/local/Kobo/memorylogger columns are DateTime,Timestamp, Device memory, Nickel memory, Peak virtual memory,Current virtual memory,Peak physical memory,Current physical memory,None file physical memory,File mapped physical memory,Data virtual memory,Stack virtual memory,Exe virtual memory,Library virtual memory
• They seem to have dropped support for some of the lesser-used ebook formats like zim (wikipedia dumps), possibly also mobipocket, cb(z). Need to look at nickel to confirm.
• Some interesting paths: .kobo/SOFT_RESET, .kobo/logs/log/umounterr.log, .kobo/sickel_frozen, .kobo/db_integrity.log.
• Now using an updated ct-ng 8.5.0 gcc 11.3.0 toolchain... I'll need to update kobopatch to deal with some of the new optimizations (e.g., while parsing the plt) as a result of this... might also need to implement extending/adding elf sections to have room for the bigger patches.
• libnickel symbol diff from 22861: https://gist.github.com/pgaskin/3d74c11fa44a954da18de38fd4e18dc1
• there's rust (rustc 1.77.2) in libnickel... if it's used for core nickel functionality, it'll make kobopatch stuff slightly more painful to work with... at a glance it seems like it's mostly being used for stuff where the existing cpp libraries suck
• KoboReader.db schema: https://gist.github.com/pgaskin/8e06142892a8b8d7e7d693010aef3ee9
• did they rework dictionaries again? will need to take a closer look at libnickel... edit: no, marisa is just compiled better
• chrome devtools protocol support is a dev option!

[benhaotang]

from the tolino shine color that I just bought yesterday(it just launched yesterday in Germany), this is the 0-day update that I got when setting up the device. In the webbrowser the UA determine itself as qt 6.5.5

[pgaskin]

They added the tolino equivalents of the Clara HD and Forma.

codename	family	id	name
loki	dragon	00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000676	tolino Shine 3
freya	dragon	00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000677	tolino Epos 2

[NiLuJe]

• They're now shipping a modernish kernel... if they do end up porting it to other devices, it'll make it nicer to do stuff like dual-boot mods and so on.

That's just the MTK kernel, it's the exact same build as found on 4.39 for those devices. (And the same base branch as used by other MTK implementations, e.g., lab126).

[pgaskin]

Wrote a tool to extract the basic device info from the firmware: pgaskin/koboutils@cea683a

ID	Codename	Family	Name
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000310	trilogy	trilogy	Kobo Touch
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000320	trilogy	trilogy	Kobo Touch
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000330	kraken	phoenix	Kobo Glo
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000340	pixie	trilogy	Kobo Mini
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000350	dragon	dragon	Kobo Aura HD
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000360	phoenix	phoenix	Kobo Aura
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000370	dahlia	dragon	Kobo Aura H2O
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000371	alyssum	dragon	Kobo Glo HD
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000372	pika	trilogy	Kobo Touch 2.0
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000373	daylight	daylight	Kobo Aura ONE
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000374	snow	dragon	Kobo Aura H2O Edition 2
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000375	star	phoenix	Kobo Aura
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000376	nova	dragon	Kobo Clara HD
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000377	frost	daylight	Kobo Forma
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000378	snow	dragon	Kobo Aura H2O Edition 2
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000379	star	phoenix	Kobo Aura
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000380	frost	daylight	Kobo Forma
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000381	daylight	daylight	Kobo Aura ONE
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000382	luna	phoenix	Kobo Nia
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000383	cadmus	daylight	Kobo Sage
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000384	storm	dragon	Kobo Libra H2O
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000386	goldfinch	dragon	Kobo Clara 2E
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000387	europa	dragon	Kobo Elipsa
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000388	io	dragon	Kobo Libra 2
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000389	condor	dragon	Kobo Elipsa 2E
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000676	loki	dragon	tolino Shine 3
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000677	freya	daylight	tolino Epos 2
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000390	monzaKobo	dragon	Kobo Libra Colour
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000690	monzaTolino	dragon	tolino vision color
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000391	spaKoboBW	dragon	Kobo Clara BW
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000393	spaKoboColour	dragon	Kobo Clara Colour
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000691	spaTolinoBW	dragon	tolino shine 5
00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000693	spaTolinoColour	dragon	tolino shine color

[pgaskin]

Also wrote a tool to extract firmware version info from the current kinds of update packages: pgaskin/koboutils@633a819

$ kobo-fwinfo kobo6-update-4.22.15190.zip kobo11-update-* tolino-qt6-recovery-5.0.175773.zip
kobo6-update-4.22.15190.zip: KoboRoot.tgz package { version=4.22.15190 date=2020-06-22 revision=efcb227b40228eba2d7cd9565e892f19332faf16 }
kobo11-update-4.36.21095.zip: KoboRoot.tgz package { version=4.36.21095 date=2023-04-14 revision=c59487fff360719e3b65b3171e88cadf7e77b9de }
kobo11-update-4.38.21908.zip: KoboRoot.tgz package { version=4.38.21908 date=2023-08-22 revision=fac580f37d610f9f83589746b785a7650532b3cf }
kobo11-update-4.39.22801.zip: KoboRoot.tgz package { version=4.39.22801 date=2024-04-02 revision=8099118e783964c8b8959136e505ee8202d8a4dc }
kobo11-update-4.39.22861.zip: KoboRoot.tgz package { version=4.39.22861 date=2024-04-24 revision=8c51b352bd251a102a10deb46c9e0c7eb5192f16 }
tolino-qt6-recovery-5.0.175773.zip: generic update.tar package { version=5.0.175773 date=2024-05-06 branch=release/v5.0.0 revision=499b0d432806417a26b4d7c44ff793839f7ba85f }