Strange behavior w/ SS hack

[twowheels]

I just had a really strange experience w/ my Kindle 3, pre special offers with jailbreak .10N and SS .25N... I've had this setup for a long time, but a few weeks ago I got tired of my screensavers and decided to simplify to just one. I deleted a bunch of unwanted screensavers (actually, moved them to another folder) and rebooted. For almost two weeks it has worked as expected, only showing the one image. I've not plugged it into a computer since, so nothing should have changed.

And then, today... suddenly it's showing all of my old screensavers again! I plugged it into the computer, and sure enough, they're back and the folder I'd moved them into is gone!!!

I've been having a lot of strange stuff going on lately... I wonder if they're related. I'm afraid that I'm starting to have filesystem corruption and failures as I've had images get corrupted as well. Looks like it's about time to uninstall my hacks, delete all of my books, do a full factory reset, and try again.


BTW, as an aside... is there a safe way to basically do a "format"? Does the factory reset do that?

[NiLuJe]

s/Whispernet/Skynet/ ?

Err, nope, unless you moved them to a directory *inside* the linkss/screensavers folder, it definitely shouldn't be doing any magic directory recovery, especially if you're not using the shuffle feature...

You might try a fsck on the Kindle USB drive, but I'm not sure if it's actually useful...

A factory reset would re-create the userstore partition, yes. Although if it really exhibits FS corruption, who's to say it won't also affect the system partition?

[twowheels]

Whooops... now my collections are suddenly all gone and I have NO screensaver image... I think my KK is nearly done...

[knc1]

Originally Posted by twowheels

Whooops... now my collections are suddenly all gone and I have NO screensaver image... I think my KK is nearly done...

Somebody has to get the eMMC chips on the very shortest end of the range of life-time specs, so that might be possible, although highly unlikely.

In general, not even Kindle serial number 1 is yet old enough for the eMMC to be "nearly gone".

This should be fixable.

Point 1: Stay away from that "Factory Reset" feature until your K3 is seconds away from its final trip to the trash can.

First, a couple of basic "get to know the customer" questions:

• Do you have ssh and/or serial port access?
• Do you have a computer that runs Linux or could run a Linux LiveCD?
• Do you feel comfortable using the Linux command line?

I am pretty sure I can walk you through the process, once I know the basics about the above recovery resources.

[twowheels]

Thanks for the offer, though I wouldn't have time for any such procedure for the next week -- will be away from computers for a while, making this a bad time for my Kindle to act up!

Yes on all counts, except for the RS-232 port, which -- no, wait, I do have one on a computer at work. :-) Been using Linux for 18 years, has been the primary OS on my personal computers most of that time. Haven't installed the usbnetwork hack.

So... if I return from vacation and decide to do this, I have some questions:

Would I need to build/buy a serial cable? What's your warning about factory reset about? (do you think that the system partition might also be corrupted, causing the reset to brick it?)

I might just decide to limp along until the front-lit Kindles are released (I know, big assumption), see if I like those, then jump to either the touch or the new lit version.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by twowheels

Would I need to build/buy a serial cable? What's your warning about factory reset about? (do you think that the system partition might also be corrupted, causing the reset to brick it?)

The "reset" seems to only remove your custom settings but I am not sure that is all it does.

The serial cable will not be needed unless I break it for you.
SSH over Wifi should be enough access, SSH over USBnet would probably be easier to use.

The process I have in mind:

Copy out all of mmcblk0p4 - -
That is the entire partition that contains the user data (that 3G of file space)

Repair any problems with that copy of the image on something non-Kindle. Doing file recovery as required. Keeping copies of the file system as we go.

Then, with a known good copy of what will do back onto p4, temporarily use p4 for our own purposes.
The major problem is that the main file system can not be checked and repaired while in use, so we need something else to use as the root filesystem while repairing the main file system.
Alternately...
Copy out the media that holds the main file system, do the check&repair off-kindle.

All of which would be much easier if we had the "K3 rescue system" mentioned in the "Damn shell reboot" thread.

Which we do not have (yet) but might have by the time you are ready to deal with this problem. It isn't that major a change from the "stock" K3 kernel + startup scripting.