Let's put Tailscale on a jailbroken Kindle

[Havoc]

> is available for all but the most up-to-date Kindles

Bought one from eBay to try it out. Silly me connected it to wifi and suddenly it’s up to date and no longer breakable

[jsheard]

If you want a cheap rooted eReader I think you're better off getting a Kobo instead, they don't officially support rooting but AFAICT they make basically no effort to prevent it.

[devilbunny]

Resell it, or wait six months. FWIW the 10th generation Kindle Paperwhite (the "PW4" in kindlemodding/mobileread lingo) doesn't have as large a screen as the newest models, but its maximum supported OS is currently 5.18.1 (and you can download that update directly from Amazon and transfer over USB), which is vulnerable to AdBreak. I just jailbroke and Tailscaled my PW4 this weekend after numerous failed attempts over a period of about a year to use the previous WinterBreak exploit.

I read mostly on my iPad; the Kindle is really just for reading outside, like at the beach/pool. But it was such a neat idea that I couldn't just pass it up.

[cyberax]

There is a new jailbreak, that is currently unpatched. You might need to make sure your Kindle doesn't get updated first by filling in all the disk space.

[ycombinatrix]

Been there before with the OG pixel.

[IAmBroom]

That's a (very) minor plotline in The Naked Gun (2025).

[switz]

I have tailscale running on my robot vacuum. It's my own little autonomous mesh vpn node that lets me connect back to my home network when I'm on the go.

[eyjafjallajokul]

Please share more details! This sounds so cool!

[wrxd]

That’s cool, and unexpected from a corporate blog.

Ma favourite e-reader setup still is the Kobo + Booklore combination. Editing a configuration file on the device I can have it connect to my Booklore library that adds my own ebooks seamlessly on top of the one I can get from the Kobo store.

I haven’t setup Tailscale on it yet but it’s possible.

[veverkap]

Do you have any more information about this?

[FlyingSnake]

Kindles are amazing devices for hacking and turning into cute little dashboards. The kindle modding community is wonderful and full of people experimenting with it. If you have an old kindle, give it a new lease!

Shameless plug: I wrote about my experience here

https://samkhawase.com/blog/hacking-kindle/

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43822251

[scary-size]

I love just how non-intrusive an e-ink dashboard is sitting in a room. Definitely can recommend it as a base device that gets you display, wonky Linux, a battery and networking in neat little package.

Also recently showed my dashboard here: https://franz.hamburg/writing/kindling-e-ink-dashboard.html

[vessenes]

I used Tailscale on my remarkable tablet for a while; synchronizing documents over ssh is a lot easier with a static IP. It's fairly hard to get stuff to start on boot on the RM, or at least it was at the time, so I eventually moved off that plan. But it was pretty awesome to be able to ssh in from anywhere in the world.

[svat]

Oh that sounds cool! What do you do now instead?

[sphars]

If you're looking for a good resource on jailbreaking and installing KOReader on your Kindle, I highly recommend the guides at https://kindlemodding.org/

[fodkodrasz]

This is pretty interesting write-up*, though I'm not sure my employer would be happy with me putting out EULA-violation instructions to our company homepage.

* - at least for me, as the bugs in the stock reader drive me nuts, and have been waiting for this opportunity for a while

[carlosjobim]

I heard that a lord two provinces to the North had seven of his serfs severely whipped when he found out that they had been talking about how to violate the EULA. These agreements have to be respected!

[_fzslm]

You can also run Syncthing on a jailbroken Kindle. That opens up a world of possibilities!

[epiccoleman]

Whoa, now that sounds like the use case I've been looking for since I jailbroke mine.

I have calibre set up to just email books to my Kindle, but that's an extra layer of indirection that I really don't need. I'll have to check that out.

[pidgeon_lover]

I've been experimenting with Syncthing on Kindle (https://github.com/Darthagnon/syncthing-kindle), but have had no luck seemingly because the Linux kernel included is too old and doesn't support network connections, or because the CPU is too weak.

Is there a project other than the one I forked?

[d1egoaz]

I thought this was a random blog post, but it's coming directly from Tailscale, https://tailscale.com/blog/tailscale-jailbroken-kindle

[jll29]

Kudos to all involved in freeing up Kindles around the world.

[citruscomputing]

Oh, this will be very useful. My current solution is incredibly hacky, I run an unauthenticated SSH server on the Kindle (key-based wasn't working), port scan to find it, and SFTP new files. At home, at least, I have a static IP. The whole system falls apart enough that I usually just connect to calibre's remote server and send books that way, though. I wonder what the battery impact of running tailscale on a Kindle is.

[marinhero]

Excellent. This plus OPDS will make for easier transfer of files locally.

[wkat4242]

Yes and with kavita there's now even progress sync with koreader! I use it on my kindles too.

[atrus]

Or even not locally!

[zaggynl]

Can someone correct me on this: Is using Tailscale effectively putting your firewall at someone else's PC?

[teejmya]

https://archive.is/QR3By

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

What kernel version is it running?

I wanted to add an old paperwhite to a kubernetes cluster and the ancient kernel held me back.

[humanfromearth9]

Same for me. I wanted to use it for HPC...

[beepbooptheory]

Love the splash Jameson quote in the first pic.

> If everything means something else, than so does technology

[yegle]

Now do Tesla! I had to resort to running an oauth-proxy to access my Plex on Tesla.

[skeptrune]

yes, let's definitely do that