Month: January 2021

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

The ecosystem for third-party ReMarkable software has moved on a lot since I wrote this post originally. I’m working on a new guide that will hopefully be a lot more up-to-date. Various packages have been replaced and the toltec install method has changed.

I’d originally intended this to mostly be notes for myself to document what I’d did, but apparently various folks found it useful, so a new version is available here

The Original Post

I pre-ordered the ReMarkable 2 a long time ago, and now that I’ve had it for a few months, and have been very satisfied with it I took a look at the state of the hacking community that sealed the deal for me in the first place – ReMarkable provide out of the box SSH access.

After watching and monitoring several github issues for a while about reMarkable 2 support they eventually reached the point where I decided to give it a try, even if things weren’t going to work perfectly….. and it went totally smoothly!

Important caveats: A lot of this is still beta quality at best. This worked when I wrote it.

Here’s what I did

1. Ensure you are up to date with reMarkable software
   – Menu > Settings > Software Version > Check for Updates (As of this post the latest is 2.5.0.27)
2. Obtain the ReMarkables IP Address and SSH Password
   – Menu > Settings > Help > Copyrights and Licenses > General Information > Look at the bottom
   – WRITE THE SSH PASSWORD DOWN SOMEWHERE SAFE. In case you can’t get back to this screen should something go wrong.
3. SSH in.
   – ssh root@<ip> and provide the password
4. Install Toltec package repository
   – Run the three commands in the README
5. Install rm2fb – A shim for the ReMarkable display
   – opkg install rm2fb
6. Install remux – a GUI launcher to switch between apps
   – opkg install remux
7. Enable remux
   – systemctl enable --now remux
8. Test that remux is working
   – Swipe up from the bottom of the ReMarkable 2. You should see a menu appear with one entry in it.
9. Install koreader
   – opkg install koreader
10. Configure remux to know about koreader
    – Create a file /home/root/.config/draft/02-koreader with the following contents
    name=koreader
desc=Ebook reader
call=/opt/koreader/koreader.sh
term=;
11. Test that koreader is working
    – Swipe up from the bottom of the ReMarkable 2 and select koreader from the list.
    – For the app, use the ReMarkable pen to swipe down from the top to access the KOReader menu.
    – Note you can’t read your ReMarkable documents in KOReader as even ePubs appear to be converted in to an incompatible format (inside /home/root/.local/share/remarkable/xochitl for the curious)
12. Congratulations, you are done!

Note that when a ReMarkable system update occurs you will likely need to re-run the systemctl enable --now remux command. I think this should be the only command needed to re-run, but I don’t have a system update to install to validate that.

Addendum

It’s been mentioned to me privately that reMarkable software updates occasionally reset teh SSH password. For this reason it would be advisable to setup an SSH Key for the device, as there is apparently no known instance of the authorized_keys file being reset. Instructions to do this are out of scope, but are easily googleable as it works the same as any other device.

A final point was mentioned in the comments of this post which is that it might also be necessary to re-run /home/root/entware-reenable after a system update, just like you have to reru nthe remux enablement command.