Disable indexing (search) = longer battery life!

[statethatiamin]

Hi all,

This is my first post/thread w/e.
I have a ton of books on my Kindle and I was having major trouble with the indexing/re-indexing of all my books causing dramatic battery loss and lock-ups. Personally, I think maybe the Kindle deliberately indexes books from sources other than the kindle bookstore improperly as a disincentive for people to use those sources.

Anyway, I found a way to disable the indexing all together! I'm really happy with it and my Kindle doesn't lock-up so often. It also dramatically increases my battery life.

The indexing is controlled by a flag in the file /opt/amazon/ebook/bin/start.sh on line 176:
-DENABLE_SEARCH_INDEXING_THREAD=true \

I hope some of you guys will find it useful.

Cheers!

[Tiersten]

Originally Posted by statethatiamin

I have a ton of books on my Kindle and I was having major trouble with the indexing/re-indexing of all my books causing dramatic battery loss and lock-ups.

Once an item has been indexed then it doesn't do it again. If it is constantly reindexing then something is wrong with a file or you're running an old buggy version of the firmware.

Originally Posted by statethatiamin

Personally, I think maybe the Kindle deliberately indexes books from sources other than the kindle bookstore improperly as a disincentive for people to use those sources.

No. There isn't any penalty for using your own files whilst reading or indexing. Indexing works fine for most people except when they've got a corrupt or malformed file. 90% of the content on my Kindle isn't from the Kindle store yet I've never had any issues with indexing or battery life. Its all a mixture of PDFs and Mobipocket files which I generated with Calibre.

Good to know that you can disable indexing completely however. Some people load in several hundred or even thousand files at a time and not actually require the ability to search.

[statethatiamin]

Originally Posted by Tiersten

Once an item has been indexed then it doesn't do it again. If it is constantly reindexing then something is wrong with a file or you're running an old buggy version of the firmware.

Are you positive that the Kindle never re-indexes the files? Because I know of quite a few people that have said that, like me, they've actually caught the kindle start to do it.

[Tiersten]

Originally Posted by statethatiamin

Are you positive that the Kindle never re-indexes the files? Because I know of quite a few people that have said that, like me, they've actually caught the kindle start to do it.

Its not supposed to unless its unable to create the index files or it gets interrupted during indexing for some reason. The two Kindles I've got here never reindex. All the Kindles that my family/friends have also don't do this to my knowledge. You know its indexing because the battery life is awful whilst its doing this so I'd expect everybody to have noticed this happening if it really did do this for non Kindle store content.

Its a bit of a jump to go from it reindexes your content all the time to saying that its a ploy by Amazon to punish/discourage people from using non Kindle store content on their Kindles.

If the Kindle isn't indexing and I've got wireless disabled then I get what the stated battery life is for a Kindle 3 which is 1 month.

[statethatiamin]

Originally Posted by Tiersten

Its a bit of a jump to go from it reindexes your content all the time to saying that its a ploy by Amazon to punish/discourage people from using non Kindle store content on their Kindles.

I was being half-facetious about the conspiracy to dissuade users from personal documents because I mentioned that personal documents tended to be the ones that are indexed incorrectly or cause the indexer to hang.

But to say that is doesn't isn't very accurate; I'm watching the processes right now, and I can demonstrate it.

Additionally, it seems like I'm not the only one....
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=107788

[Tiersten]

Originally Posted by statethatiamin

But to say that is doesn't isn't very accurate; I'm watching the processes right now, and I can demonstrate it.

Additionally, it seems like I'm not the only one....
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=107788

I never said that it never ever reindexes. I said that during normal operation with correctly formed files which aren't corrupt or malformed then it shouldn't ever reindex unless there is a problem.

If there was such a widespread issue with indexing then I'd expect everybody who has any personal documents on the Kindle to be complaining.

You need to find out what file(s) are actually causing this issue for your Kindle. Load in small batches of files at a time so you can narrow it down.

If you know that every single file is valid then plug it into the charger and leave it indexing. You can plug it into a computer but you can't leave it in USB drive mode. It won't power off if its being charged so the indexing process should be significantly quicker. Once it has completed the index, it shouldn't restart. If it does then there is something wrong.

[Tiersten]

Let me rephrase since my post does seem a bit confrontational.

Its not normal that its constantly reindexing. There isn't any specific punishment or penalty for using personal documents. Myself along with many others have personal documents on their Kindle without this issue with constant reindexing.

[kranu]

Isn't there something like ;debugOn ~pauseIndexing??

Are you saying that Amazon purchased books don't need to be indexed?

[statethatiamin]

Originally Posted by kranu

Isn't there something like ;debugOn ~pauseIndexing??

Are you saying that Amazon purchased books don't need to be indexed?

No, I didn't mean to imply that amazon books don't need to be indexed, but there is rarely, if ever, an indexing problem with amazon's books.

Also, yea, I used to use ;debugOn ~disableIndexing but that would only last until the next time it restarted

[kranu]

Originally Posted by statethatiamin

No, I didn't mean to imply that amazon books don't need to be indexed, but there is rarely, if ever, an indexing problem with amazon's books.

Also, yea, I used to use ;debugOn ~disableIndexing but that would only last until the next time it restarted

In that case, you probably just have badly formatted files that you've loaded onto your Kindle.

And I rarely restart my Kindle ^_^

[statethatiamin]

Originally Posted by kranu

And I rarely restart my Kindle ^_^

Wow, really?! I have to force restart my kindle all the time I don't know why it locks up so frequently.

[kranu]

Originally Posted by statethatiamin

Wow, really?! I have to force restart my kindle all the time I don't know why it locks up so frequently.

Huh, that's odd.

Are you using the K3 Unlighted case? Because that case is known to cause lockups.

If not, what are you doing when it locks up? (internet/reading/etc)

[statethatiamin]

[QUOTE=kranu;1345095]

Are you using the K3 Unlighted case? )/QUOTE]

Yep, you got it! I am using an unlighted case.
I just realized that earlier today.
I called amazon cs and they gave me a refund. I hope this fixes the problem.

Thanks!

[JeanC]

I'm really interested in -DENABLE_SEARCH_INDEXING_THREAD=false

But since I only have this machine (K3) for a few days I'd like to read some more opinions. Can it harm? I've read that ~stopIndexing can be harmfull, can someone confirm?.

I don't need indexing. After I had copied my ~600 books to the kindle it took 24 hours for the indexing to complete, requiring me to let it recharge twice, and since I don't need it..

What happens if you have disabled indexing by any of these methods and you try a global search?

[statethatiamin]

Originally Posted by JeanC

What happens if you have disabled indexing by any of these methods and you try a global search?

I just tried it. It only searches book titles or authors. For example, I just search "bovary" and all it returned is "madame bovary -flaubert"

I don't think its harmful to turn off the indexing, and its reversible. I wonder what other people think.
Hope that helps!