Reviving a four year old reMarkable 2

I found my old reMarkable 2 paper tablet, bought in 2021, it had sat unused for ~4 years or so. The device was in a sorry state:

• Cloud sync failing. The only thing showing was a cryptic error 0.

• Software update didn’t work.

This post details how you might be able to bring your tablet back to working order if you find yourself in a similar situation.

The clock

Googling the error I found a forum post with what its author called “the fast solution”, SSH in, set the clock:

ssh root@10.11.99.1          # USB. over wifi: the tablet's LAN IP
# password: on the tablet, Settings → Help → Copyrights and licenses → General info
# (username root, password, IPs all listed there)

timedatectl                  # confirm how far off it is
timedatectl set-ntp 0        # disable auto time first, or set-time errors out
timedatectl set-time '2026-07-15'
timedatectl set-ntp 1

After setting the time, I was able to download a software update.

Update: This failure mode is also documented in an official support article: an out-of-sync device clock can prevent software updates.

Software update

After the first software update, cloud sync now gave me a different error: HTTP 400. I found the actual error message in the journal: “Unable to sync. Please update this application to continue using the reMarkable cloud.”

journalctl -u rm-sync.service --since '-45 min'

The cloud was rejecting my obsolete system version. Turns out the first update only brought the tablet to 3.11.2.5 and wouldn’t update further.

journalctl for swupdate.service showed Couldn't resolve host name (after the post-update reboot, the updater had started before wifi/DNS was up and never retried). Restarting the update services made the Settings screen offer 3.27.3.0, and a second update brought the tablet to the latest available software version.

systemctl restart swupdate.service update-engine.service
systemctl is-active swupdate.service update-engine.service
journalctl --since '-1 min' -u swupdate.service -u update-engine.service

Starting with version 3.22 of the software, SSH over wifi is now silently disabled by the update, so port 22 refuses on the LAN.

SSH in to the tablet via USB (e.g. 10.11.99.1) instead. Re-enable network SSH with rm-ssh-over-wlan on, or drop the marker file rm_enable_ssh_wifi_marker (the dropbear-wlan.socket unit is already enabled, just inactive)

rm-ssh-over-wlan on
systemctl is-active dropbear-wlan.socket
systemctl is-enabled dropbear-wlan.socket
test -e /home/root/.config/remarkable/rm_enable_ssh_wifi_marker && echo present
ip -4 -brief address show wlan0
ss -lntp | grep ':22 ' || true

Importing files over SSH

For whatever reason, cloud sync still appeared to be broken, it wouldn’t pull any of my new uploads.

Instead of debugging this further (by now I was done dealing with the cloud sync), I found that the tablet has an optional web server that can be turned on, to allow you to upload and export files from the device. I backed up the xochitl config before toggling it on (WebInterfaceEnabled=true):

conf=/home/root/.config/remarkable/xochitl.conf
cp -p "$conf" "$conf.backup-before-usb-web"
if grep -q '^WebInterfaceEnabled=' "$conf"; then
  sed -i 's/^WebInterfaceEnabled=.*/WebInterfaceEnabled=true/' "$conf"
else
  sed -i '/^\[General\]$/a WebInterfaceEnabled=true' "$conf"
fi
systemctl restart xochitl.service
grep '^WebInterfaceEnabled=' "$conf"
systemctl is-active xochitl.service

Update: The web server can also be enabled in the device UI, go to Settings → General settings → Storage → USB web interface.

Inspect and upload PDFs:

curl --max-time 30 -sS http://10.11.99.1/documents/ | jq -r '.[].VisibleName'

set -e
for file in ./my-pdf-files/*.pdf; do
  name=${file##*/}
  status=$(curl --max-time 300 -sS -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}' \
    -F "file=@${file};type=application/pdf" http://10.11.99.1/upload)
  printf '%s\t%s\n' "$status" "$name"
  test "$status" = 201
done

After this, you should be able to find and read the new files in the My Files view. I never did fix the cloud sync, I find uploading files over SSH to be more convenient anyway.