Firmware 3.16.10 Discussion

[anacreon]

Originally Posted by davidfor

I'm not sure if see either the "disaster" or "humongous bug". There are bugs, but they aren't that big.

The first bug I see is that "English-Español (México)" and "Español (México)-English" are listed twice. Kobo have announced a deal with some Mexican book stores, so are adding the Mexican version of Spanish to the interface. It looks like they have messed up the list here and have the Mexican translation twice instead of the two different versions.

The other bug is caused by the licenses for the French and Dutch dictionaries. The license Kobo have for these means they can do a lookup, but not a search. This is unchanged from previous firmware, but the changes to the dictionary search is causing a problem. In the past, you could change it when doing a lookup from the dictionary popup. Now it uses the new search and that doesn't allow these dictionaries.

I'll pass this on to Kobo via the beta list.

Well, I do think it is a very annoying bug that I can't access the full page French dictionary from a French book, but that it goes to English: a French person prejudice??? Of course it is my problem that I put in the Littré as Nederlands and that Nederlands dictionary isn't accessible either apparently (somebody with Nederlands mother tongue might confirm or infirm this, and whether they are annoyed...).

I do wonder about Kobo's English predominance considering they were originally a Canadian (English/French bilinguals) company, and they gave up US distribution. Also, I had the impression they had a good French client base. I am extremely annoyed that not only do Kobo refuse to pay for an accessible French dictionary, but they prevent me from accessing a public domain dictionary like Littré, or buying a decent modern one.

I'm on my 5th kobo, but I do wish they had the equivalent to what I've read about Kindle dictionaries. Lucky them I refuse to enter the Amazon system and I know no other satisfying reader. I miss the Sony dictionaries, but they gave up too and my eyes can't tolerate the PRS-T2 low definition anymore.

[frostschutz]

In 3.15/3.16 the browser seemed to hold the wifi connection indefinitely for me, in 3.16.10 it's back to a very quick timeout so if you spend some time reading a wikipedia article or what and then click the next link it says sorry, no connection, retry?

Oh well. It was nice not having to work around wifi timeouts while it lasted.

[Nick Payne]

I put 3.16 on my Aura HD to see if it fixed the long press bug introduced with 3.15. It does to some extent, but is still worse than older versions of firmware. When I long press on a word, the highlight and dictionary definition doesn't come up until a couple of seconds after I remove my finger from the word.

Other than that, everything I've tried on the Aura HD with 3.16 seems to be working ok.

[davidfor]

This was in the 3.16.0 thread, but it and the reply belongs here.

Originally Posted by frostschutz

Did it really hang? Or did it reboot just in case? With forced reboots, you never know.

Right now I have a reproducible reboot: Browsing a collection with 47 books in it, and the books did not have their thumbnails created yet, causes sickel to reboot.

After killing/stopping sickel, I can browse the collection. It takes a bit longer to flip the page and you can watch the cover thumbnails being created, but it works.

Now, in my case my collections were created programmatically. Maybe the problem would not exist if you created them the normal way (book thumbnails would unlikely to be missing then).

But I still think it's a valid example that such a watchdog system is a double edged blade: In this case it caused a problem, rather than solve one.

It could display a confirmation dialog instead, what browsers do when JavaScript seems to be stuck in an endless loop. Just because nickel died doesn't mean the screen won't work anymore. It could tell you about pinhole reset method the same way. And it could be less aggressive, 5 seconds is not much.

It's complaining on a high level for sure, lets wait and see if other users have issues with it or not.

When I tried this yesterday, I couldn't reproduce it. But, I started the setup to get closer to what I think you are doing. Then I started having a reboot that I blamed on something else I was testing. This morning I realised the reboot was probably sickel doing its thing but the other testing I was doing was causing the hang. I also decided to test the collection because part of the other testing meant the library lists were showing as cover only lists. And yes, the collection I created yesterday with about 200 books caused the restart. But, a similar one on the Aura HD didn't.

Looking at it, it isn't the size of collection but the particular books displayed. It just happened that the first page of the collection I was using on the Glo HD had some larger books on it including some PDFs. When I sorted the working collection on the Aura H2O by file type and paged back from first page to the last, it hung and then restarted.

And this isn't just the collections, it is the main library list as well. The reboot I was getting was because the main library list was using the cover view and it had a couple of PDFs that didn't have a cover generated for them. When I managed to get back to the list view, it didn't reboot until I went to page two. And turning off the cover display stopped it completely.

So, there is a problem with the auto rebooting. It is probably on the tuning side of things or making it a bit more aware of what nickel is doing and allowing more time. Prompting to wait or restart like Windows does would be good, but I can see a problem with that. As nickel is the user interface, any attempt to get it to prompt the user would fail. That would mean interface function would need to be added elsewhere that showed over nickel. Probably not hard, but it does raise the complexity of this.

[Nick_1964]

Originally Posted by davidfor

So, there is a problem with the auto rebooting. It is probably on the tuning side of things or making it a bit more aware of what nickel is doing and allowing more time. Prompting to wait or restart like Windows does would be good, but I can see a problem with that. As nickel is the user interface, any attempt to get it to prompt the user would fail. That would mean interface function would need to be added elsewhere that showed over nickel. Probably not hard, but it does raise the complexity of this.

I know mine is a long story, but in my case it happens during reading.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...1&postcount=15

Two readers (both Glo HD) and it never happens on the same book or page twice, I don't access any settings during reading,can't reproduce it.
On each reader are about 20 books,both epub and kepub.
I hope the developers remove this auto option,or make it switchable to off.
When my device hangs,I can use the paperclip (i use a injection needle with the point filed off) but when it restarts by itself there is nothing I can do.
Imagine you are on a nice warm summer beach and the device is a bit slower like always in the sun.. and then imagine it starts rebooting,then what?
Without an option to stop this auto reset,you can't use it.
I really hope they put it out,or that it is patchable.
Maybe you can share my experience with the beta team people.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Nick_1964

Sorry, was posting this in the wrong topic.
I sideloaded this firmware to both of my Glo HD (with no other readers then the default ones for epub and kepub) and had 3 spontanious reboots. (device where responsive at that time)

I think the "self reboot" option is dangerous and I hope it can be patched so it doesn't work or that an option comes there in the setup option page to disable it,or Kobo doesn't implement it in new firmwares.

So far, 3.16.10 is on my test Glo and not on my "production" H2O so a lot fewer ebooks since the Glo has ~30 loaded on it's uSD card.

I'm not sure if I would call spontaneous reboots dangerous but when highlighting, if it takes more than 15-20 seconds to bring up the highlight popup, you get a reboot. Not that annoying in itself, however wiping all but the current book, reading books/time and library tile from the home page and losing the current reading position is on the annoying side. As is not saving the error log file -- at least I don't see any stack_nn.log files.

I also managed an immediate reboot when attempting to highlight the last line on a page but that one did not reproduce after the reboot.

[GERGE]

If I know my Linux, rebooting when encountering a problem would only be possible by software supported by kernel modifications. And kernel is the core of the device that holds the drivers, hardware information and such.

Therefore instaling this firmware to an unsupported device is just begging problems to occur. So, don't. It might seem to work, but don't install this to the old Glo, the Auras. Wait for Kobo to release a Glo and Aura version, I am sure soon they would.

Just don't install this.

[frostschutz]

Originally Posted by GERGE

If I know my Linux, rebooting when encountering a problem would only be possible by software supported by kernel modifications.

It depends what kind of problem we are talking about.

Problem within the kernel, making the kernel itself panic - yes, the reboot feature must be in the kernel itself. Current kernels have a CONFIG_PANIC_TIMEOUT setting that makes it reboot automatically.

Problem in Kobo's own software - not so much. The kernel is not having issues here, it's all in user space so user space can watch after itself.

[Maida]

Originally Posted by GERGE

If I know my Linux, rebooting when encountering a problem would only be possible by software supported by kernel modifications. And kernel is the core of the device that holds the drivers, hardware information and such.

Therefore instaling this firmware to an unsupported device is just begging problems to occur. So, don't. It might seem to work, but don't install this to the old Glo, the Auras. Wait for Kobo to release a Glo and Aura version, I am sure soon they would.

Just don't install this.

I can't understand why you are bothering about other people's concern. It works flawlessly on Aura and people are happy with it.

[murg]

Kobo: Hiding one problem by introducing a bigger problem.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by Maida

I can't understand why you are bothering about other people's concern. Since it works flawlessly on Aura and people are happy with it, you should mind your own business.
The only thing we can be sure of is that we will be dead, sooner or later.

Moderator Notice

Maida
Mobileread considers your post unnecessarily rude, and you are now advised to stop.

The next time you feel an urge to make such a comment, you are advised to click the 'REPORT' button.

[DNSB]

On a somewhat brighter note, I've been testing GeoffR's 3.16.10 patch for the last couple of hours and so far, all the patches I've enabled seem to be working as they should.

[frostschutz]

small hack to disable automatic reboots by sickel

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by frostschutz

small hack to disable automatic reboots by sickel

Will this be an issue if we decide we want to go back to an earlier firmware or when a new firmware comes out?

[PeterT]

I doubt it seeing each f/w release replaces all files. All that patch does is ochange the string reboot in the sickel executable.