Can't change RD mode, flasher says "suitable USB device not found"
 

I bought a second-hand N900 whose previous owner turned on RD mode. I'm annoyed at the side keyboard lights flashing and staying on wasting battery power, so I want to disable it. The wiki article says this about the flasher tool:
I ran it from the terminal on the N900, and it says "Suitable USB device not found, waiting.", then does nothing (yes, I did it as root). I downloaded the flasher on a Linux PC, connected the N900, tried again from there, and got the exact same result.

I read about pressing the u key to enable flashing mode, but I'm not actually trying to flash any firmware or image, I just want to disable RD mode. Besides, if I understand correctly, when the N900 is in flashing mode it doesn't actually load the system, so you couldn't use the flasher from its terminal.

Where am I going wrong?

Thanks.

Re: Can't change RD mode, flasher says "suitable USB device not found"
 

wiki.maemo.org/Reflash
http://wiki.maemo.org/R%26D_mode

Re: Can't change RD mode, flasher says "suitable USB device not found"
 

Huh. Apparently I did need to put it in flashing mode. Still not clear how one would do it from the device itself, then. Oh well.