Download ACSM files in Linux - without using Adobe Digital Editions!

After my rant the other day about Adobe Digital Editions, I discovered libgourou by Grégory Soutadé

libgourou is a free implementation of Adobe's ADEPT protocol used to add DRM on ePub files. It overcome the lacks of Adobe support for Linux platforms.

There are a few limitations, but nothing too serious:

• Only ePub is supported. No PDF
• Command line only
• Alpha quality software. It works - but is a bit finickity

You can compile the code yourself, but I just downloaded the pre-built binaries.

On Ubuntu / Pop I needed to sudo apt install libzip-dev.

Once you've unzipped the download, cd into it and run:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$PWD

Then

./adept_activate -u youremail@example.com -p SuperStrongPassword

Use the same credentials as you do in Adobe Digital Editions. You can just use the -u flag and type your password in at the prompt - but I couldn't get that to work. The -p flag worked fine.

After a few seconds, you'll see:
youremail@example.com fully signed and device activated in /home/you/libgourou_utils_0.3.1/./.adept

Then run:
./acsmdownloader -f whatever.acsm

After a few moments, you'll see:
Created whatever.epub

That's it! Your file is downloaded and you can read the ePub.

Note: If you try to download a PDF, you'll get an error saying:
Exception code : 0x5007
Message : whatever.epub

You can rename the file back to .pdf, but it will still be encrypted.

---