Disable Kindle Indexing Without Jailbreaking

[plutonium]

Hi everybody!
And thank you all for this useful board

I wanted to share this trick with you, that I'm not the first one to find out but anyway...

The book indexing on the kindle refer to the process of registering words of each book on the device in database to be used by the search function. You need this if you intend to search for words in your books, be it from the home screen search box of from inside a book. This process consume quite a lot of CPU and battery. It happens each time you load new books on the device, and refresh every 6 months. If you put a lot of books at once, you can expect two different things:

- With an older version of the software, the device may freeze or become difficult to use until indexing is done
- With newer versions of the software, indexing process is more soft but take longer

In both cases you end up with you battery going down quicker than usual. Also indexing datas take a bit of space (like 10Mb for 100 books).

After loading the kindle with a lot of books, some peoples let it plug on the computer until indexing is finish. You'll have to eject the device in your operating system to make it quit the usb mode and go back to normal mode. This way the software can go on with indexing without trying to save energy (for newer versions). I think it can takes as long as few days if you have a lot of books. You can check how much stay to be indexed: search for a word that won't be found, like "tttt", and look for result in books. It will tell you if some books are still to be indexed.

Anyway you may want to skip this step and go with you e-reader without loosing energy for this function. Or maybe you don't care about this search stuff and just want to disable it for good.

The simple solution is to plug your device on a computer and move the directory "system/Search Indexes" somewhere else or delete it. This directory contain the search indexes datas, as you can guess. If you put it back later search function and indexing will be back. Note that the device doesn't loose the record of which book have been indexed and which have not, which sound strange to me but anyway... Without this directory it won't feed index anymore.

I guess most of users here don't need this trick because they have another option on jailbreaked device; but maybe someone will reach this post from a search engine and find it useful.

Hope this help.

[encol]

Thanks for sharing!
Some time ago i tried to make a KUAL extension to control the indexing but i wasn't able to suspend the indexer.
I'll try your method when i'll have some time

[nasser]

There is already a known hack to stop indexing(jailbreaking not required):
- Delete the /mnt/us/system/Search Indexes folder
- Create an empty file named "Search Indexes" in the /mnt/us/system folder. This step is important. If you only delete the folder, it will get created again

What I'm not yet clear is:
1. With indexing on, what happens when you delete an existing book? Does the associated index file also get removed? If not, we need to remove it manually. How do we find the index file? The index file names all start with y and are a meaningless jumble of around 32 characters.
2. In the /mnt/us/system folder there is another folder called "kf8". This too seems to contain index files - presumably of only azw3/kf8 format books. If so, Do kf8/azw3 format books also have an index file in the other folder?

You can watch the indexing in action from kterm:
cd /mnt/us/system/Search Indexes
Then either: watch ls -lst
Or: watch du -k

Overall I've found indexing to be useful. Only, I keep buying some "complete works" which are 20-30MB in size. Indexing for these takes a long time and the associated index files are huge!

[miguelm75]

Originally Posted by nasser

There is already a known hack to stop indexing(jailbreaking not required):
- Delete the /mnt/us/system/Search Indexes folder
- Create an empty file named "Search Indexes" in the /mnt/us/system folder. This step is important. If you only delete the folder, it will get created again

What I'm not yet clear is:
1. With indexing on, what happens when you delete an existing book? Does the associated index file also get removed? If not, we need to remove it manually. How do we find the index file? The index file names all start with y and are a meaningless jumble of around 32 characters.
2. In the /mnt/us/system folder there is another folder called "kf8". This too seems to contain index files - presumably of only azw3/kf8 format books. If so, Do kf8/azw3 format books also have an index file in the other folder?

You can watch the indexing in action from kterm:
cd /mnt/us/system/Search Indexes
Then either: watch ls -lst
Or: watch du -k

Overall I've found indexing to be useful. Only, I keep buying some "complete works" which are 20-30MB in size. Indexing for these takes a long time and the associated index files are huge!

hi, i just want to confirm - it's working on my Kindle 8 gen. (KT3). thank you very much

[Mr.Samuel]

Originally Posted by nasser

There is already a known hack to stop indexing(jailbreaking not required):
- Delete the /mnt/us/system/Search Indexes folder
- Create an empty file named "Search Indexes" in the /mnt/us/system folder. This step is important. If you only delete the folder, it will get created again

What I'm not yet clear is:
1. With indexing on, what happens when you delete an existing book? Does the associated index file also get removed? If not, we need to remove it manually. How do we find the index file? The index file names all start with y and are a meaningless jumble of around 32 characters.
2. In the /mnt/us/system folder there is another folder called "kf8". This too seems to contain index files - presumably of only azw3/kf8 format books. If so, Do kf8/azw3 format books also have an index file in the other folder?

You can watch the indexing in action from kterm:
cd /mnt/us/system/Search Indexes
Then either: watch ls -lst
Or: watch du -k

Overall I've found indexing to be useful. Only, I keep buying some "complete works" which are 20-30MB in size. Indexing for these takes a long time and the associated index files are huge!

Can this method stop the indexing thread or simply stop the indexing files to be created?

[knc1]

Main page, search function, search for:
;dm
then review the dump'd message documents.

This procedure reads as if it will just put the indexer into a loop on the induced error.
But the indexer may be smart enough to bail out in such a case, but then, maybe not ....

[Mr.Samuel]

This is my * guess *

Open the /var/local/appreg.db in DB Browser for SQLite and found the associations of the indexer. (Post in the attachment.)

Then modify the database file or the prereg.db in /opt/var/local.sqsh and remove the associations or delete the kafindexer.jar file from the root file system.

I think the first method has more possibility to success.

Because my Kindle is waiting for rescue, I will verify for it after my Kindle is debricked.

EDIT: These ways makes Kindle show repair screen, so do not use these ways.

We should think out another methods.

[Mr.Samuel]

Now I come up with a way for disable indexing .
Unzip the kafindexer.jar file and modify the class file named IndexerThread.class with JBE.
This class defines some conditions for disabling the indexer such as low battery ,high temperature,etc .What we need to do is changing the values of the condition.
So far , I can disable the indexing thread when the kindle is not charging.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Mr.Samuel

Now I come up with a way for disable indexing .
Unzip the kafindexer.jar file and modify the class file named IndexerThread.class with JBE.
This class defines some conditions for disabling the indexer such as low battery ,high temperature,etc .What we need to do is changing the values of the condition.
So far , I can disable the indexing thread when the kindle is not charging.

That actually sounds like a 'good thing'.

If your side loading a new book, the Kindle is on external power, so let it index.

If your downloading a new book, the Kindle might not be on external power, so don't index it (yet).

[Mr.Samuel]

What I am trying to achieve is disable the indexing thread in any condition.
If I made it, I'll make a new post about it.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Mr.Samuel

What I am trying to achieve is disable the indexing thread in any condition.
If I made it, I'll make a new post about it.

I know that.
I was only suggesting not to throw away what you have found, it might be a 'good thing' for some users.

[Mr.Samuel]

It is useful for the people who think that the indexing function is not very useful and it is a waste of memory space and power.
If I cannot get more progress on it, I will post my current version of the jar file and the way of modification .
My firmware is 5.8.7