Jetbook's Hourglass of Death [Orig. & Lite]

[gr8npwrfl]

I think several of us have narrowed down the hourglass of death problem on the jetbook.

It appears to be when you have too many levels of directories on your jetbook

You can test this by making the following test:

note: book.txt is the name of any ebook you want to test with

put a copy of book.txt in the root directory of your SD card

put the same book in the /calibre/book.txt

put the same book in the /calibre/author/book.txt

put the same book in the /calibre/author/test1/book.txt

put the same book in the /calibre/author/test1/test2/book.txt

What you will find is the deeper in the directory structure your book is the longer it takes to open it. It will appear that your jetbook will lock up with an hourglass.

Jetbook has a bug in their parsing routine for directories.

Solutions until they fix the problem.

1. keep your directories no more than 3 levels deep.

Jetbook also has a problem flushing the cache memory

1. Always have the jetbook powered up when installing and removing the SD card and do not continue until the message about the card appears and goes away.

Note: doing a hardware reset does not flush the cache correctly.

Any time the jetbook gives you the hourglass of death:

Remove the SD card, wait till the card message goes away, then reinsert the card. This will break you out of the hourglass loop and flush the directory cache so you can read your ebook.

If you follow these recommendations you will have a lot fewer problems.

I hope this helps you

[Dr. Drib]

Excellent suggestions. I, too, have experienced the "Hourglass of Death."

Thank you!



Don

[Not_A_Crook]

HoD, now everyone will make jokes about this.

Thanks for the info.

[GhostHawk]

I have noticed that books on the SD card, (1 folder deep) seem to load faster than books on the internal memory (2 folders deep).

Personally I've never seen the Jetbook lock up, but then I've always just used one layer of folders, never 2 or more. Just lucky or something.

Thanks for the warning!

[LS650]

Thanks for the warning: I haven't seen that problem yet either but now I know what to watch for.

[kirbinster]

Are we talking about Jetbook (orig) or Jetbook Lite -- or both????

[gr8npwrfl]

Yes,

As far as I can tell the rules apply to both units. The recovery mode of removing and reinstalling applies to both also.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by gr8npwrfl

Yes,

As far as I can tell the rules apply to both units. The recovery mode of removing and reinstalling applies to both also.

I slightly edited your Title. Let me know if that's ok, or if you would like it changed to something you prefer.

Thanks.


Don
(Moderator)

[gr8npwrfl]

Thats good saves questions

Might make it a sticky until they repair the problem

[Jack Tingle]

Thanks for the good tips. Those help. I'm afraid they don't completey cure it, but with your tips the hourglass only seems to hang up on a few troublesome files. I suspect cyberbrain sclerosis.

Thanks,
Jack Tingle

[wackywalt]

Ah, that is good to know. Will try this next time it happens.

[infi]

Originally Posted by gr8npwrfl

I think several of us have narrowed down the hourglass of death problem on the jetbook.

Thanks for making this a separate post; I think it'll help centralize the information, and maybe ectaco can easily take a look. I agree, it does seem to be a caching issue.

Since this appears to be not isolated, but both intermittent and almost non-deterministic, here are my experiences:

* Firmware 0.34c (pre-installed on JB-5 li-ion ordered 12/28/2009)
* Maximum 2 directories deep on SDHC 4Gb card (also tried with 512MB SD card with same results)

- Ejecting and changing any file on the card while the device is on, whether it be the book I was reading (for e.g. reformatting) or another in an entirely different directory, will result in a previously opened book suddenly becoming unreadable, even with clearing the Recent Readings list. Hourglass of death. Once that happens, all other books also become unreadable.
- Have tried placing a plaintext file with 1 line of text in the root directory, and under each of \Books\ and \Books\Last, First\. Hourglass of death on all of them.
- Reset never clears the hourglass of death once this state is entered.
- PDF files still load, sometimes. Other times, not. Neither plaintext nor any other format loading is the usual case.

The *only* way I have found to clear it once this happens is to Reset the device, leave it off for several hours, and then plug it into the computer using the USB cable, while on, until it appears as an external disk, then eject it and load the \plaintext.txt file for viewing, which comes up slowly the first time in about 30 seconds, and thereafter, all book formats work quickly like normal.

This is clearly a ridiculous set of steps, and I'm at risk of embarrassment for cargo-culting, but having gone through it several times now and trying different steps, if I exclude any one of the above including leaving the device alone, it simply hangs.

I seem to have the worst of it, as when it's in this state, it's not usable for hours at a time. Thankfully, right now I have a ton of books on it, enough to keep me going for quite a while, so it's not a major issue, but I really hope Ectaco looks at it. I'm willing to stick with it, because it is a great reader, aside from the whole "not being able to read books for several hours" thing :-)

Some other collected information on this problem from other threads:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ight=hourglass
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ight=hourglass
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ight=hourglass
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ight=hourglass
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ight=hourglass

[infi]

Accidental double-post.

[Kralik]

Is this an issue only of the Lite and jetBook 0.34b/c firmware? I had 0.33g and no such issues, with at least 3 layers of directories.

[gr8npwrfl]

It seems the more complex your directory structure is the more prevalent the problem.

And it only appears to happen to certain people.

I would like people that experience this problem to post here the directory structure they are using on their SD cards so we can see if we can nail down the problems.