KUAL: Kindle Unified Application Launcher (v2.7)

[shul]

Hi,
I just bought a PW2 with a serial starting with 9060. I get the same behaviour as in this post: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...postcount=1306

What is the status on this? how can I help?

Thanks :-)

[knc1]

Originally Posted by shul

Hi,
I just bought a PW2 with a serial starting with 9060. I get the same behaviour as in this post: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...postcount=1306

What is the status on this? how can I help?

Thanks :-)

What firmware version do you have installed?
That is an expected result on some versions of the Amazon firmware.

[eschwartz]

That is one of the 4GB PW2's, which means due to an Amazon snafu you must upgrade to fw>=5.4.5 for kindlets to work.

[shul]

Hi
Thank you for the info! Should i upgrade my pw2 now, after i jailbroken it on 5.4.3.2?

Thanks!

[eschwartz]

Yes. The jailbreak is the only thing that needs to be done before upgrading.

[shul]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Yes. The jailbreak is the only thing that needs to be done before upgrading.

Can I upgrade to the 5.6.# Firmware?
(I don't know what the benefits are, but newer is better;-))

[eschwartz]

Yes you can, and everything will continue to work (critical updates to KUAL and the jailbreak infrastructure were long since applied) but do take note of the new requirement to apply hacks using the MR Package Installer KUAL extensions -- not via the traditional Update Your Kindle method.

[shul]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Yes you can, and everything will continue to work (critical updates to KUAL and the jailbreak infrastructure were long since applied) but do take note of the new requirement to apply hacks using the MR Package Installer KUAL extensions -- not via the traditional Update Your Kindle method.

Hi, I confirm that installing 5.4.5.1 solved the problem. I got KUAL working. Thanks!

[kindleBunny]

Hello.

I have a PW2 with serial nr. starting with B0D4 (not sure if relevant) that has just upgraded to 5.6.1.0.4. It was jailbroken with JB 1.14, but now the screensavers don't work and when I copy the SS .bin file the Update your Kindle is greyed out and I tried to install KUAL and I get the error "This device is not authorized as a test Kindle by the developer of this item. Please contact the developer."

Have I just lost my jailbreak and is there anything I can do to regain it? Are there any other details that I have to offer?

Thanks so much for any help.

[NiLuJe]

@kindleBunny: Check the FW 5.6 section of the JB thread. (In short: there's a dedicated package to restore the JB, and new tools to install stuff).

[knc1]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

@kindleBunny: Check the FW 5.6 section of the JB thread. (In short: there's a dedicated package to restore the JB, and new tools to install stuff).

Maybe - see:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...postcount=1820

[kindleBunny]

Thanks, guys. I will try the hotfix when I get home and get back to you. I appreciate your suggestions.

L.E. Thanks so much, guys. You rock.

[Ruskie_it]

I noticed a problem with KUAL on my Kindle PW2. Since I know the workaround I never posted it here but I decided to let you know - maybe this is known.
Actually I am on fw 5.6.1.0.5, but it happened with .0.2 and with 5.6.1 as well. With the latest KUAL and with the previous version.
The problem is that each and every time I reboot the kindle (long button press or restart via menu or mrplugin or whatever), KUAL never works... the first two times I try to start it.
I get the usual error "The selected application could not be started. Please try again" etc.
The third time I start it, it works.
The jailbreak works just fine - for example the screensaver hack still works even if KUAL can not be launched, so I wonder what could be the problem.
Let me know if I can give you more info

[NiLuJe]

@Ruskie_it: That's a known side-effect of a couple of different things, and isn't limited to the PW2/FW5.6.

First, there's a race condition that might bork the Kindlet jailbreak. Granted, that one should lead to a failed startup no matter what, but I personally only very rarely experienced it at other times than a cold boot.
Second, there's a hard-limit on the amount of time allotted to a Kindlet to start-up.
Third, the Kindlet framework is lazy-loaded.
Fourth, depending on the device/amount of books/collections, the framework might be crunching numbers for a while after a cold boot (or a framework restart).
Five, a cold boot means cold caches, which exacerbates nearly all of the issues above.

All of this means that the first startup of KUAL has a greater likelihood to fail, especially if the framework is busy crunching numbers (bootup/indexing), which gets worse the more books/collections you have, or if the KUAL extensions folder is large/complex (takes more time to refresh the cache).

The second point can be alleviated by the use of the gawk extension, since that makes the parser faster, but it's by no means a silver bullet.

(And before someone asks, no, the bootstrapping process of KUAL is already slimmed down and deferred as much as reasonably possible to try to fit inside said window of time, so we can't really do better, we kinda have to parse the extensions at some point when the cache is cold to show something, and that's a mostly blocking process on a cold cache).

[Ruskie_it]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

First, there's a race condition
[...]

Yeah, I supposed there was some sort of a timeout, and also that it was reached due to the fact there were resources loading slowly because of the reboot... but your explanation made it clearer.
Thanks for that, and for clarifying I didn't mess KUAL up!