New problem, old Touch

[TechniSol]

They may have borked some code dealing with the uSDHD, we know they've been playing around with generating covers for books on card the last couple versions of firmware.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by taming

Folks do pass these issues on--though it is one of those problems that can't be addressed very well unless it can be replicated. That is not always an easy thing to do. FWIW (and it might not be worth anything at all) the beta group got a build that killed Touch devices. Killed dead. First time that has happened in beta. Kobo very quickly fixed this. This fix may also have addressed the issue you are having in .5.2.

And no, I have no idea when a new FW will be released.

So far I can replicate it every time, by resetting the Aura wit h the SD card in, which I know is a different reader. Can only get it working again with SD card by plugging into computer.

Helen

[Corpsegoddess]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

So far I can replicate it every time, by resetting the Aura wit h the SD card in, which I know is a different reader. Can only get it working again with SD card by plugging into computer.

Helen

That was exactly my experience as well, Helen--both with the Touch and now the Aura.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Corpsegoddess

Awesome, I'm glad to hear you still like it.

When I was a kid, I actually remember saying to my parents, "I wish I had a magic book, that would be, like, all the books in the world. But it would still be book-shaped and not get any heavier"; this was after having to decide how many and which books to bring along on a trip. It was also around 1978.

I am amazed that I now have my "magic book", and so I keep all my books on it--because I can. And because I love having them all in one place. I can DJ my reading now, just like iPod let me DJ what I wanted to listen to when I was on the go.

I might ask my husband to try and read my SD card for me when he gets home, but I don't think it's humanly possible without magnification. I do know this one looks exactly like it:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16820171454

Edit: Okay, my Aura processed everything on my SD card with no problem, but when I powered it down and back up again, I'm getting the same thing--it's frozen on the square dancing. The Aura also has firmware 2.5.2 running on it.

If I can get it hooked up to my PC, I might dump everything on the card and start over--see if that does anything.

With my Aura I have been able to get it working by removing card, resetting without card, plugging into PC and inserting card. Then it may not reset for weeks.

[Corpsegoddess]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

With my Aura I have been able to get it working by removing card, resetting without card, plugging into PC and inserting card. Then it may not reset for weeks.

I can get that, too--but then as soon as it powers down and I have to turn it on again, that's where the problem comes in.

[MrDoug]

Wow.. some of you folks are crazy.. LOL.. I don't get it.. Dah..

[Skydog]

Originally Posted by MrDoug

Wow.. some of you folks are crazy.. LOL.. I don't get it.. Dah..

Do you ever have anything positive to contribute or are you only capable of idiotic comments?

[MrDoug]

[QUOTE=Skydog;2529399]Do you ever have anything positive to contribute or are you only capable of idiotic comments?[/QUO
Only capable of idiotic comments..

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Corpsegoddess

I can get that, too--but then as soon as it powers down and I have to turn it on again, that's where the problem comes in.

One solution is to not have it power off. I haven't seen exactly what you are reporting, but, as I rarely power off either of my to Kobo's, this doesn't really come up. I let them automatically sleep, but have the power-off option set at never.

But, I have noticed something different recently with the SD card. The Touch has a 1GB Sandisk with about 1200 books on it. The Glo has a 16GB Patriot with less than 20 books on it. If I eject or insert the card in the Glo, the screen flashes and updates the books within a few seconds. But, I just ejected the card from the Touch it took at least 30 minutes before it responded.

From my observations, what I think happens when you insert the SD card is:

1. Card is recognised and added to device.
2. Card is scanned for changes.
3. Removed or changed books are deleted from the database.
4. New and changed books are processed and added to the database. The black processing screen is displayed for this step.

I don't know if the second and third steps are actually separate. They are logical steps, but could easily be done in one go.

In the past, the device would not respond for a short period of time, then it would respond and you could use it for a bit. Then the black processing would be displayed if there were new or changed books. If there were no new/changed books, the screen just flashed at the end and maybe the message about using the card for extra storage would be displayed.

I always assumed the freeze was during the first step. And then I could keep reading while the second and third steps ran. But, the freeze has extended. I suspect it is all the first three steps.

While I have been writing this and getting distracted by work, I have done the following with the Touch and its 1200 book card:

- Ejected the card - more than 30 minutes
- Inserted the card - more than 40 minutes
- Powered off and on - at least 10 minutes.

The one thing I didn't do was to add some books to the card while it was out of the device. That would tell me if the device does start responding before it finishes all the processing steps.

[Corpsegoddess]

So, update--I managed to shift my entire library over to the Kobo Aura itself (gotta love that 4gig storage), and it's responding just fine.

For anyone doing comparisons, that's around 1500 books.

[TechniSol]

Well, you've proven it was not due to an iffy ebook not processing correctly from the sdhc card!

[Corpsegoddess]

Originally Posted by TechniSol

Well, you've proven it was not due to an iffy ebook not processing correctly from the sdhc card!

Yep, that's exactly what I thought, and one of the reasons I wanted to do that. Like I mentioned to Taming, I like to go by Occam's Razor in these sort of situations. And the more variables I can eliminate from my list, the happier I am.

[tehmul]

I too have precisely the same problem with the 2.5.2 update and a 16G microsd. I've resorted to not powering down the Touch, and letting it sleep instead. It would be nice to have this fixed.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Corpsegoddess

Yep, that's exactly what I thought, and one of the reasons I wanted to do that. Like I mentioned to Taming, I like to go by Occam's Razor in these sort of situations. And the more variables I can eliminate from my list, the happier I am.

After some mucking around, what appears to be happening is on power up, a file system check (dosfsck) is being run on the uSD card. If I power up with the SD card removed, dosfsck is run when the card is inserted. The larger the card, the more time it takes for the check which seems to indicate it is being run with the -t option so it is scanning for bad clusters after checking the files.

With my book collection on the internal card, the power up is normal. Now to have the fun of modifying the boot scripts to allow me to use ext3 on the external card just to see how it behaves.

What pointed in the direction of an fsck is that after I deleted and replaced an ebook using Calibre and did a power cycle, I noted that I had two fsckxxxx.rec files generated which were the medium and small thumbnails from the deleted book.

Regards,
David

[davidfor]

Interesting idea. I had a look in the firmware. In etc/init.d/rcS, I find:

dosfsck -a -w /dev/mmcblk0p3
mount -t vfat -o iocharset=utf8 /dev/mmcblk0p3 /mnt/onboard
rm -rf /mnt/onboard/fsck*
rm -rf /mnt/onboard/FSCK*
rm -rf /usr/local/Kobo/db.tgz

And in /usr/local/Kobo/udev/sd:

dosfsck -a -w $DEVNAME
mount -r -t vfat -o shortname=mixed $DEVNAME /mnt/sd

But, these are unchanged since at least FW2.4.0. So that doesn't explain why the change in behaviour with FW2.5.2.

Removing these lines would be a good test. As would changing to ext3. Someone has done that recently, so it is possible.