Kobo Glo

The Kobo Glo is an e-book reader.

Running Kobo Glo without registering

After unwrapping the Kobo Glo, I had to find out that the device will refuse to work until I create an account on the Kobo web site. What the ….? Does this mean that the reader will cease to work once Kobo goes bankrupt? Will I have to throw it away when Kobo switches off their servers, because they decide that everybody should buy the new generation? I hate that, because it means that Kobo still “owns” the hardware I bought.

What now? I decided to create the account. I entered a throw-away email address to avoid getting spammed by Kobo. Doesn’t work, the Glo insists that my email address is invalid. Maybe because the Kobo devs are not educated well enough to know that the plus is a valid character in email addresses. That made me even more unhappy.

I was about to refund the Kobo Glo, when I found the following trick:

• plug the Kobo Glo into the computer, mount it
• open the database: sqlite3 /media/sdc/.kobo/KoboReader.sqlite
• create a new user record: INSERT INTO user(UserID,UserKey,UserDisplayName,UserEmail,___DeviceID,HasMadePurchase) VALUES(‘5b8b0d65-b50f-4460-b6df-aca5e64f4882’,’626d73ed-8382-4c1d-9750-cfe741c6e773’,’a_name’,’an_email_address’,’01:23:45:67:89:ab’,’TRUE’);
• on newer Kobo Glo firmware, use this instead (thanks, Dirk): INSERT INTO user VALUES(‘Linux User’,’Linux User’,NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL,’false’,’false’,’false’,NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL);
• close sqlite, unmount, unplug

I generated the two UUIDs with the program “uuidgen” (Debian package “uuid-runtime”). I used the MAC address of Glo’s Wifi (taken from my DHCP server log) as “___DeviceID”, but I don’t know if that is important.

After this procedure, I was able to use the Kobo Glo without a Kobo account.