Direct Firmware Loader mode

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Kobo Glo running DFL mode

Direct Firmware Loader mode is a special boot mode that allows, under a rooted kernel, exporting the whole MMC of an eReader device running InkBox OS to a computer.

Accessing DFL mode

  • On devices with more than one physical button, pressing this button and the power button simultaneously will trigger DFL mode.
  • On devices with only one physical button, you can write to the DFL flag (see Boot flags) with the value true in it.

Usage

On a standard Linux computer, when you plug in the eReader in DFL mode to it, you should see something similar to the following appearing when you invoke fdisk -l from the command-line:

Disk /dev/sdx: 3.69 GiB, 3965190144 bytes, 7744512 sectors
Disk model: File-CD Gadget  
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x161f4874

Device     Boot   Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdx1         40959   79871   38913   19M 83 Linux
/dev/sdx2        104448 1128447 1024000  500M 83 Linux
/dev/sdx3       1128448 1390591  262144  128M 83 Linux
/dev/sdx4       1390592 7549747 6159156  2.9G 83 Linux

From that point, you can perform recovery operations or just look around the device's MMC contents.