Kobo released a new firmware for their e-readers a little while back, and I just got around to installing it. On the surface, it looks like just a bug fix update. That was till I looked a little deeper.

SSH

Turns out, this update makes it super easy to enable ssh. All you have to do is rm this file .kobo/ssh-disabled, touch this file .kobo/ssh-enabled, and reboot. You’ll log in as the root user, and it will ask for a new password, simple.

So, what can we do here. Not a whole lot. The fist thing I did was start looking around, see what programs where installed. But then I had an idea. What if I could build my website on here.

My site is built using Hugo, that should make it pretty easy, as Hugo ships as a static bin file. A quick run of uname -m told me the Kobo is a 32-bit system. So I know what version of Hugo I need.

After copying my site files over, and wget-ing Hugo, I gave it a spin… And it just worked. My e-reader just built my website.

Not the result I was expecting, but damn, I’ll take it.

–Update–

I found out the alternative interface KOReader has a built in terminal emulator. So I installed it and did this again, just without going over SSH.