sebenikela

I mentioned on tumblr that I'd gotten REAL FUCKING STUBBORN and spent 3 hours figuring out how to make the deDRM plugin for Calibre on linux work with stuff from Adobe Digital Editions. And sciatrix asked for the full how-to, which was good, because I'd written down just enough to remember where in my search history to go to reconstruct the details, but not enough that I'd actually have been able to repeat the process easily in 6 months or whatever when something inevitably breaks and I have to do it again.

So I'm putting the step-by-step instructions here for anyone else who wants it and also so I can find it again later.

How to use the de-DRM plugin for Calibre on linux with Adobe Digital Editions:

I think this is what eventually worked for me (on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, normal Calibre and deDRM plugin install)

Step 0: get wine and winetricks - sudo apt install wine-stable winetricks (or something like this)

Step 1: install ADE in wine (instructions from here):

create a new clean win32 wine prefix:
WINEPREFIX=“$HOME/.wineADE” WINEARCH=win32 wine wineboot
install some extra packages:
WINEPREFIX=“$HOME/.wineADE” winetricks corefonts dotnet40
Download ADE 4.5.0 – the latest 4.5.9 version refuses to install with “Adobe Digital Editions is already running :) :) :)” (which is infuriating) but you can get the 4.5.0 installer here
Install ADE:
WINEPREFIX=“$HOME/.wineADE” wine ADE_4.5_Installer.exe
(optional, i don’t think i did this) fix graphics glitches: WINEPREFIX=“$HOME/.wineADE” winetricks ddr=gdi

Step 2: install a 32-bit version of python 2.7 WITHIN THAT WINE PREFIX:

download x86 python installer from python.org
install python into wine:
WINEPREFIX=“$HOME/.wineADE/” msiexec /i python-2.7.8.msi
install pycrypto tools from here (I think it’s this one )
WINEPREFIX=“$HOME/.wineADE/” wine pycrypto[…versionstuff].exe

Step 3: Authorize ADE and download your stupid book

Open ADE and sign in with your Adobe ID
Open the .ascm or whatever ADE-format file you got, this downloads the actual pdf/epub
Close ADE

Step 4: generate a key thingy and put it in Calibre

The deDRM tools zipfile has an “other tools” folder with a bunch of scripts, one of which generates the key file you need. run that script from your wine directory, e.g.:
~/.wineADE/drive_c/Other_Tools/DRM_Key_Scripts/Adobe_Digital_Editions$ wine python adobekey.pyw
This will create a file in that directory that’s something like adobekey_1.der. Put that somewhere less awkward if you want.
Open Calibre preferences, go to the deDRM tools (under file types) and “customize plugins”, then click on the button for Adobe Digital Editions
You’ll get a window with a place for your WINEPREFIX path, and a place to load the keyfile, at which point you go find the adobekey_1.der file and put it there.

And now you should be able to add the ADE-downloaded PDF to Calibre and it will strip the DRM like with other formats.

Notes: - there's probably ways to avoid putting the WINEPREFIX= bit in every time but whatever - I am relatively new to linux so I probably can't answer a lot of questions but I can try - Adobe can get fucked with a chainsaw for making this so goddamn difficult

ETA: I fucked up my wine prefix and then I couldn't get ADE 4.5 to work, but this guy's instructions for ADE 2.0 seem to work