Reviving a four year old reMarkable 2
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- A 2021 reMarkable 2 left unused for ~4 years surfaced with cloud sync failing on cryptic "error 0" and software updates refusing to run — the entry point was SSHing in via USB at 10.11.99.1 and setting the clock with timedatectl after disabling NTP.
- The first update only landed the tablet on version 3.11.2.5, which the reMarkable cloud then rejected with HTTP 400 and the message "Unable to sync. Please update this application to continue using the reMarkable cloud," blocking both sync and further updates.
- The chained updater broke on boot because swupdate.service launched before DNS was up — journalctl showed "Couldn't resolve host name" — and restarting swupdate.service and update-engine.service forced the next pull to 3.27.3.0.
- Starting in software version 3.22, SSH over WiFi is silently disabled and port 22 refuses on LAN; USB SSH at 10.11.99.1 still works, and
rm-ssh-over-wlan onor the rm_enable_ssh_wifi_marker file restores the LAN listener. - With cloud sync still broken after the update, the author enabled the tablet's built-in local web server by setting WebInterfaceEnabled=true in xochitl.conf and uploaded PDFs via curl at http://10.11.99.1, sidestepping the cloud entirely.
Why it matters: For any reMarkable 2 owner whose tablet has sat dormant long enough for its clock to drift past server tolerance, this is a documented escape path: manual clock fix, a chained updater that races DNS at boot, and a local-only web server that replaces the cloud when sync still refuses to cooperate. The 3.22 software change that silently kills SSH over WiFi is a new gotcha for anyone scripting remote tinkering against the device.
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