Arc Original Arc Wants a System Update

[JD Gumby]

Just woke up to find my original Kobo Arc wants to update itself. Any word on what the update might be?

Me, I'm not updating it 'til I find out because, frankly, the update to Jelly Bean was a horrible experience that took ages to recover from. Hopefully someone braver than me can take the risk first... :P

EDIT: Main issue is that I haven't updated most of my apps in forever (due to massive permissions overreach), but a system update would almost certainly force me to, so knowing if it's worth it or not is kind of important.

EDIT2: Oh, and hello, folks. Long time, no see. :P

[Brisen]

Posting here because the same thing happened to me last night, and before I even thought about it I tapped OK, then later was kicking myself because I knew there had been issues with new updates in the past. This morning, I turned the kobo on and opened facebook, which crashed three times. Restarted the kobo, signed in, did nothing, and it has already randomly restarted. Sigh. Now, my Arc was already running slowly (one kid threw it at another in a fit of anger and frustration... last time I let them use it, and it has run slowly ever since), and apps would take long enough to load that I would get the "not responding" message, but they would load right after that, but it never crashed like this.

[JD Gumby]

For that sort of instability, first thing you should do is power it down - then power it on again by holding the power & volume up for about 10s, then clearing the cache and rebooting from the menu. Cleared things up just fine after the move to Jelly Bean.

[Brisen]

Thanks for the suggestion. (I'm assuming the menu you mean is the little menu on the screen that you navigate with the volume buttons? It said wipe cache partition?) I tried it, but it's still crashing: I uninstalled a couple of apps, then opened facebook, which crashed, then it rebooted when I tried to go to settings again to see if uninstalling facebook would help.

I just did a quick search and I'm not finding anything from Kobo about this update.

I'm using GO Launcher instead of Tapestries; I don't know if that makes any kind of difference.

[brynet]

I also got the update notice, which I haven't installed yet. But here is what it was trying to download:

http://download2.kobobooks.com/zeus/update-781.zip
SHA1: 117d3551dfe3e0f70303bb5ff44d79423f54ac92

Files with new modification dates, however, many more files have the same date but different sizes. These are NOT the only changes.
2014-06-24 17:17 system/data/srsmodels.lic
2014-06-24 17:17 system/etc/security/otacerts.zip
2014-06-24 17:17 system/lib/egl/egl.cfg
2014-06-24 17:17 system/lib/libbcc.so.sha1
2014-06-24 17:17 system/media/bootanimation.zip
2014-06-24 17:17 system/usr/share/zoneinfo/zoneinfo.version

* Many system .apk files now include optimized .odex counterparts.
* A user on GitHub suggests this update disables OpenSSL Heartbeats.
* It's still Android Jellybean 4.1.1. It's NOT KitKat or JB 4.2.
* It seems to be "safe" to update rooted devices, install Arctic.apk/SuperSU again

Unified diff: http://slexy.org/view/s2ZjqyJKxX

The previous Jellybean firmware update was, from May 2013:

http://download2.kobobooks.com/zeus/update-773.zip
SHA1: f4351bf79741e2d30bb68eb030d3d717e950d28d

And here's the final ICS version (Android 4.0):

http://download2.kobobooks.com/zeus/update-613.zip
SHA1: f8574885b2736fe38c4ffa56f680e674f2e4a965

I think you can just copy this into /sdcard as "update.zip" and reboot, although you may need to wipe the user data partition and cache if you go backwards.

[JD Gumby]

Originally Posted by Brisen

Thanks for the suggestion. (I'm assuming the menu you mean is the little menu on the screen that you navigate with the volume buttons? It said wipe cache partition?) I tried it, but it's still crashing:

Damn.

I'm using GO Launcher instead of Tapestries; I don't know if that makes any kind of difference.

Might want to update that first, then. If that doesn't help, then go to its info page and tap the 'reset default' (or whatever) button. When you go back to the home page it'll ask you what launcher you want to use - choose Tapestries and see if that works right. Or install a different launcher (I use Nova, personally).

[teija]

Just noticed the "System Update" notification on my new (to me) Arc... will wait until I hear more from other users and/or Kobo on this one as I have a perfectly working tablet right now and don't want to ruin that!

I wonder if this update will mean that Minion Rush will finally work without that annoying graphical glitch...

[ediaz1963]

I updated my Kobo Arc today hoping it would be KitKat, but no, it's still Jelly Bean.

I haven't found any issue with this version, but I just verified the version and went directly to my eReader (FBReader at the moment).

[teija]

I'm still wondering why they'd update it but then not bother with KitKat....boo!

[Brisen]

Originally Posted by JD Gumby

Might want to update that first, then. If that doesn't help, then go to its info page and tap the 'reset default' (or whatever) button. When you go back to the home page it'll ask you what launcher you want to use - choose Tapestries and see if that works right. Or install a different launcher (I use Nova, personally).

Updating Go seems to have done the trick. Thanks so much for taking the time to help me with this!

[slate]

This is more than likely a heartbleed patch or at least it should be. Seeing kobo update to kitkat would make no sense at all considering the last update was in May 2013. They want to sell their new stuff, not the old.

[brynet]

I updated to the newest firmware, root breaks.. but, Arctic.apk still works. You need to make sure you use the native Android package installer and not Google's "verify" one!

[brynet]

I confirmed that this update does disable OpenSSL heartbeat feature that led to the popular Heartbleed attack. Unfortunately, Apps can bundle their own version which may still be vulnerable.. so, still be careful.

[Cacho]

Root breaks.
After installing the update Arctic.apk no longer works, can somebody help with some alternative way to root the Kobo ARC


Thanks! :-)

[brynet]

Originally Posted by Cacho

Root breaks.
After installing the update Arctic.apk no longer works, can somebody help with some alternative way to root the Kobo ARC


Thanks! :-)

Arctic.apk worked fine me, like I mentioned, when prompted how to install the .apk choose the Android native package installer, which should be the button display on the left. Do not use Google's "verify" installer.

If you already had Arctic.apk installed, uninstall it and download the .apk from the original location and try again.