Arch Linux on your Kindle

Proof

More images

Warning: this "mod" breaks the USB file transfer - but you can use scp to transfer ebooks via WiFi (which i find even better).

Instruction

Prerequisites

• Root your Kindle: tutorial
• Install an application launcher KUAL
• Install a terminal emulator
• Enable USBNetworking for SSH access (or just use the terminal emulator)
• Check your Kindle's CPU architecture (Armv6/Armv7?)
• Format your /dev/mmcblk0p4 to ext3 (or ext4, i've only tried ext3 because that's how Kindle's root partition was formatted by default)
• Modify your /etc/fstab file to look like this - so the ext3 partition will mount.

Downloads

• Get proot onto your Kindle (put it into /usr/bin/)
• Get ArchLinuxArm build for your CPU (i went with this for my PaperWhite 3)

Optional but useful: allow SSH via WiFi

• Edit /etc/sysconfig/iptables (you have vi installed by default)
• Append -A INPUT -i wlan0 -j ACCEPT before the last line of the file:

# ICMP. Allow only responses to local connections
-A INPUT -p icmp -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

# The line from the Arch tutorial you have to append
-A INPUT -i wlan0 -j ACCEPT
COMMIT

Installation

• Extract the system (preferably into /mnt/base-us/arch, but the choice is yours. Be careful not to extract the system to /mnt/base-us/documents as it will make your kindle try to index the system files as ebooks)
• Copy this script into your ebook (preferably to /usr/bin)
• Run the script (change the proot directory in the script, if you've extracted the system to a custom location)

Post-install

• Fix the keyring (pacman won't work otherwise):
  • pacman-key -u
  • pacman-key --populate

Other stuff that might be useful

• Scripts to control various functions of your Kindle