Looking to root an old kindle fire

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scottjge
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Looking to root an old kindle fire

Post by scottjge »

Just looking for some information and thought that this might be a good place to try. If it is not, please accept my apology.

I was wondering if anyone know anything about rooting a kindle fire ? I have an old generation one. and would like to root it and see if I can;t put linux on it. So far no progress on the rooting aspect. I have tried 3 different computers and 3 different OS's and nothing seem to work. Maybe the thing is too old to root.

If anyone knows how to root the old kindle fire, I would appreciate you advise on how you did it.

Thanks,

scottjge
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MrBob22
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Re: Looking for informations

Post by MrBob22 »

Here is a link, but use at your own risk. Rooting is tricky at best. Devices like a Kindle Fire have code for using the screen, the buttons etc that may not be found in a "normal" Linux distribution, hence why they use Android.
http://www.gizmag.com/how-to-root-kindl ... hdx/30513/
You can do a further google search at your leasure....
MrBob22
scottjge
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Re: Looking for informations

Post by scottjge »

Hello MrBob22, thank you for taking the time and effort to reply. I checked out the link that you gave me but unfortunately that was the rooting instructions for the Kindle Fire HD.
Mine is the first generation kindle fire that used gingerbread. But it has recieved OTA updates , so I don't know what you would call it but it has version 6.3.3 which is very hard to find any instructions for. I have been searching Google for well over three months and tried everything that I could find but nothing has worked. So I hope that I could find someone that has one of these old tablets.

Thanks again for you reply, I truly appreciate it.

Scottjge
scryan

Re: Looking for informations

Post by scryan »

scottjge wrote:Hello MrBob22, thank you for taking the time and effort to reply. I checked out the link that you gave me but unfortunately that was the rooting instructions for the Kindle Fire HD.
Mine is the first generation kindle fire that used gingerbread. But it has recieved OTA updates , so I don't know what you would call it but it has version 6.3.3 which is very hard to find any instructions for. I have been searching Google for well over three months and tried everything that I could find but nothing has worked. So I hope that I could find someone that has one of these old tablets.

Thanks again for you reply, I truly appreciate it.

Scottjge
You probably want an android forum...
Just be aware, rooting android devices generally involves a bit of risk. Mostly because these devices were not designed for you to be able to re-install things like bootloaders, in fact most often for security your not supposed to do any installing or un-installing of OS's or system stuff, just apply updates with out going backwards... So typically a decent bit of code is there to STOP you from being able to modify the system stuff.
This means that if mistakes are made you can "brick" the devices, leaving it un-usable. If you just mess up the system portion you can usually get it to boot into one of a few different recovery modes where with a computer you can push a new system image onto the device... However mistakes at a lower level when working with bootloader or recovery stuff can leave the device "hard bricked", or basically an unusable piece of trash.

Its not actually that hard. You just have to know what your doing, know what exact device and version you have, know exactly what your downloading and applying and know that it is confirmed working from a trusted sources (sources). It's a little worrisome your trying to figure out how to do this... I don't mean this as offensive but it will involve troubleshooting, which while I have never found it that much or that hard... it will be harder to find then instructions on "rooting a kindle fire", which as a search term on google yeild page after page of relevant information, instructions and tutorials. If you didn't find those, your WON'T find the solution to what ever issues you had during one step of them, and then your device will be left unusable.

I don't know a ton about kindle, but the fact that you have an older version is good, and hopefully you have not updated it in a while. If you are planning on rooting, and especially if ONCE your rooted DON'T take official updates until you research them and know they are safe to take. Most likely you will not be taking the official update, rather manually backing up your data wiping the system and flashing a community tweaked image of the new update.
There MAY be a way to run a version of linux that supports arm devices on it, your best bets are Ubuntu or Gentoo... But more likely you will just find information on installing linux ALONGSIDE android, where it is basically run headless in a virtual machine... This means you then use it by command line only or run a vnc program on android to connect to it like it was a local computer you were trying to view the desktop of (performance is generally bad to unusable, Its not a realist everyday system more a proof of concept/capability.)

You probably want to look up XDA. Not sure which kindle it was, but I believe that was the original device Hashc0de was making safestrap for? Probably want to look up safestrap and if there are alternatives now.
scottjge
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Re: Looking to root an old kindle fire

Post by scottjge »

Thank you for your input and thoughts scryan. Well appreciated. I already have rooted the kindle fire and upgraded to Jelly Bean 4.2 and things are running smooth as silk, as a matter of fact it runs better now then it did when it was new.

thanks again for your input and advice,

scottjge
mxs173

Re: Looking to root an old kindle fire

Post by mxs173 »

Thank you for your input and thoughts scryan. Well appreciated. I already have rooted the kindle fire and upgraded to Jelly Bean 4.2 and things are running smooth as silk, as a matter of fact it runs better now then it did when it was new.

thanks again for your input and advice,

scottjge
Please could you point me to some instructions on how to accomplish this? I too have a 1st gen Kindle Fire and would like to install Jelly Bean 4.2, but I am struggling to find instructions detailing how this is done for those running linux mint on their computers.

Any help or advice would be most appreciated!
scottjge
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Re: Looking to root an old kindle fire

Post by scottjge »

This is the link that I used. Use at your own risk.

http://liliputing.com/2012/07/how-to-in ... -fire.html
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