Instructions for patching firmware 4.19.14123 - Page 10

jackie_w · 12-15-2019, 02:12 PM

@tayseidel,

Feel free to ignore this, there's nothing wrong with what you're doing. However, you may be missing an opportunity to make it even easier for yourself at the next firmware or kobopatch update.

Using your customised 'Reduce new header/footer height' patch as a worked example ...

Copy the whole of the 'Reduce new header/footer height' patch from nickel.yaml and put it in a new file, e.g. src/nickel_tayseidel.yaml.
Make your personal customisations in nickel_tayseidel.yaml rather than nickel.yaml. In fact, don't edit nickel.yaml at all.

Change the name of the customised patch a bit in nickel_tayseidel.yaml, e.g.

Code:

Reduce new header/footer height - tayseidel:
  - Enabled: no
  - Description: <snip>
  - FindZlib: "ReadingFooter"
  - ReplaceZlibGroup:
      <snip>
      Replacements:
        # put your customised patch Find/Replaces here
        - Find: "..."
        - Replace: "..."

Make kobopatch.yaml aware that there are 2 files containing patches to nickel, e.g

Code:

<snip>
patches:
  <snip>
  src/nickel.yaml:           usr/local/Kobo/nickel
  src/nickel_tayseidel.yaml: usr/local/Kobo/nickel
  <snip>

## You can put lines in the following section to override the enabled state of patches.
overrides:
  <snip>
  src/nickel.yaml:
    #put your list of non-customised nickel patches here
    Reduce new header/footer height: no
    Reduce top/bottom page spacer: yes
    <snip>
  src/nickel_tayseidel.yaml:
    #put your list of tayseidel-customised nickel patches here
    Reduce new header/footer height - tayseidel: yes
    <snip>
<snip>

Repeat for all your other custom nickel patches. Put them all in src/nickel_tayseidel.yaml.
If you do it this way, when geek1011 releases a new set of master patches (like yesterday), you can just overwrite the old version of src/nickel.yaml with the new and your src/nickel_tayseidel.yaml survives with your customisations intact.

This is not 100% foolproof for all custom nickel patches, but many will survive fw/kobopatch updates without you needing to change src/nickel_tayseidel.yaml at all.

Whatever I've posted about nickel.yaml above is also true, in principle, for the other kobopatch src/*.yaml files.
However, there is a caveat, many patches in src/libnickel.so.1.0.0.yaml contain absolute offsets, e.g.

Code:

- ReplaceBytes: {Offset: 0x94B33A, FindH: 42 00, ReplaceH: 82 00}

These absolute offsets very rarely survive a firmware upgrade, so it's not a perfect solution for all custom patches.

pghaworth · 12-15-2019, 03:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by geek1011

That error is almost as if you deleted KoboRoot.tgz from the update zip. One thing you could try is to download https://github.com/geek1011/kobopatc...9.14123.tar.xz, and change the firmware path in kobopatch.yaml to point to it. Although, I think the issue is something to do with how you're doing it.

thanks. the first time around when it wouldn't run, that's the error message I got so I looked to make sure it was there and it was. so I deleted everything, redownloaded everything, and started the process again and it worked.

when I went to fix the left out font control modification to the package, it just wouldn't run at all, no bat window (no errors at all) and no log produced. so I reproduced what I did the first time. deleted it all and redownloaded everything. it still doesn't work, no bat action, no errors, no logs, nothing. at this point I'm not caring, I can live, but this is bizarre behavior in my world. I really think win10 doesn't like the bat file, especially me running it more than once.

JSWolf · 12-15-2019, 04:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pghaworth

thanks. the first time around when it wouldn't run, that's the error message I got so I looked to make sure it was there and it was. so I deleted everything, redownloaded everything, and started the process again and it worked.

when I went to fix the left out font control modification to the package, it just wouldn't run at all, no bat window (no errors at all) and no log produced. so I reproduced what I did the first time. deleted it all and redownloaded everything. it still doesn't work, no bat action, no errors, no logs, nothing. at this point I'm not caring, I can live, but this is bizarre behavior in my world. I really think win10 doesn't like the bat file, especially me running it more than once.

I've never had a problem in Win10 running that bat file multiple times. I was doing it when I was figuring out the correct values to use in the Set font scale factor patch for the second 4.18.x firmware.

JSWolf · 12-15-2019, 04:31 PM

The Set font scale factor patch needs to have new default values. The values of 8 are not good. If you want ot keep the same font size in ePub and use that same font size in KePub, use values of 4 as shows in the code block.

Code:

Set font scale factor:
  - Enabled: yes
  - Description: |
      This patch sets the font scale factor for ePub and KePub readers.
      See also `ePub uniform font scale` and `Custom font sizes` patches.
  # Font scale factor is calculated as (font size slider) / (X+32)
  # Original value X=14, so original scale factor is (font size slider) / 46.
  # Allowed replacement values for X: 0-15 (smaller X --> larger scale factor)
  - ReplaceInt: {Offset: 0x52C522, Find: 14, Replace: 4} # ePub
  - ReplaceInt: {Offset: 0xAE9C80, Find: 14, Replace: 4} # KePub

pghaworth · 12-15-2019, 04:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I've never had a problem in Win10 running that bat file multiple times. I was doing it when I was figuring out something.

shrug. I feel even stronger that it is that now because I went to check for updates (it's a business machine and I don't let win10 have its way because it is so bad at trashing my business software). there were several pending and I have a feeling that once it finishes the bat file will work.

I've done this three times now. the first time it no problems running each time as I corrected my errors. same for the second, today, got my error log missing the KoboRoot.tgz, etc. but the next time it wouldn't run until I downloaded everything again. third time, also today, just wouldn't run and no logs.

I'll test my theory after the updates are finished. also, I am running win10 pro and its behavior is different than home version.

jackie_w · 12-15-2019, 04:42 PM

@pghaworth, It would be a lot easier to help you if we could see some error messages. Try opening kobopatch.bat in your text editor and putting this in it:

Code:

@echo off
cd /d "%~dp0"
erase "KoboRoot.tgz" >nul 2>&1
"./bin/koboptch-windows.exe"
PAUSE

When you double-click the .bat to run it, that PAUSE on the last line should stop the Windows CMD window closing before you get to see any error messages.

JSWolf · 12-15-2019, 04:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pghaworth

shrug. I feel even stronger that it is that now because I went to check for updates (it's a business machine and I don't let win10 have its way because it is so bad at trashing my business software). there were several pending and I have a feeling that once it finishes the bat file will work.

I've done this three times now. the first time it no problems running each time as I corrected my errors. same for the second, today, got my error log missing the KoboRoot.tgz, etc. but the next time it wouldn't run until I downloaded everything again. third time, also today, just wouldn't run and no logs.

I'll test my theory after the updates are finished. also, I am running win10 pro and its behavior is different than home version.

I've not tried the patches on Win10 Pro. I'm using Win10 Home 64-bit. My Surface Pro 2 has Win10 Pro 64-bit on it and I can try on that when I get time.

pghaworth · 12-15-2019, 04:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jackie_w

@pghaworth, It would be a lot easier to help you if we could see some error messages. Try opening kobopatch.bat in your text editor and putting this in it:

Code:

@echo off
cd /d "%~dp0"
erase "KoboRoot.tgz" >nul 2>&1
"./bin/koboptch-windows.exe"
PAUSE

When you double-click the .bat to run it, that PAUSE on the last line should stop the Windows CMD window closing before you get to see any error messages.

thanks.

tayseidel · 12-15-2019, 05:12 PM

I'd like to chime in here to see if I can help pghaworth.

Like pghaworth, I was having problems generating a koboroot file in the /out folder when I ran kobopatch.sh (.bat for you since you are on windows), and I was getting nothing in the /out folder.

So I put in a clean kobopatch.yaml file from the kobopatch .zip file. And ran the .sh file again, and it generated a koboroot file in the /out folder. Right then, I knew something was wrong in my kobopatch.yaml file.

Either it was the indentation, or the group order of the patches with the patch file paths on the top of the kobopatch.yaml file. So what I did was:

1. renamed the my custom kobopatch.yaml file to OLD.yaml
2. Copied one line of patch from the src/nickel.yaml category from the OLD.yaml file over to the new Kobopatch.yaml file
3. made sure the patch I copied was indented four times, as shown below:

Code:

overrides:
  src/nickel.yaml:
      Show all games: no

4. Ran the .sh file

Koboroot successfully generated in the /out folder. So I copied the rest of my patches over to the new kobopatch.yaml file, paying attention to indentation.

It also might be worth making sure that the patch groups align with the file path order shown in the kobopatch.yaml file as shown here:

Code:

patches:
  src/nickel.yaml: usr/local/Kobo/nickel
  src/libadobe.so.yaml: usr/local/Kobo/libadobe.so
  src/libnickel.so.1.0.0.yaml: usr/local/Kobo/libnickel.so.1.0.0
  src/librmsdk.so.1.0.0.yaml: usr/local/Kobo/librmsdk.so.1.0.0

What I mean is make sure the patch groups in the overrides: section match up with sequential order shown above. Not sure if this matters- geek1011 can chime in here.

But yeah, like you, I got nothing in the /out folder until I changed the order from DNSB's template to fix the order and the indentation.

Now that I've confirmed successful output of the KoboRoot.tgz file in the /out folder, I am going to work on making my own paths to my own patch files as explained by Jackie_w. Thank you for the excellent suggestion jackie_w!

pghaworth · 12-15-2019, 05:15 PM

I'm fine everyone. thank you. it was windows. after it updated and I restarted my pc the bat ran flawlessly.

geek1011 · 12-15-2019, 05:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pghaworth

I'm fine everyone. thank you. it was windows. after it updated and I restarted my pc the bat ran flawlessly.

It's good that it works, but I do find it quite hard to believe the updates were the cause.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tayseidel

What I mean is make sure the patch groups in the overrides: section match up with sequential order shown above. Not sure if this matters- geek1011 can chime in here.

The order doesn't matter, but the indentation must be spaces (not tabs) and be at least 2 spaces for each level (and be the same for every line on the same level). I think I'm going to add warnings to kobopatch if there are common indentation issues
(tabs vs spaces, 1 space indentation, etc) and automatically convert tabs to 8 spaces. I never expected this many issues with indentation though...

P.S. if anyone has further comments on indentation, please reply in the kobopatch thread.

JSWolf · 12-15-2019, 05:39 PM

Question about the sickel patch. Should there be more in log.txt other then

Code:

  |         "src/sickel.yaml": {
  |             "sickel reboot timeout (20 sec)": false,
  |             "sickel reboot timeout (30 sec)": true

That's all I see.

pghaworth · 12-15-2019, 05:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by geek1011

It's good that it works, but I do find it quite hard to believe the updates were the cause.

I understand, but if you had lived with my version as long as I have you would understand. if I don't let it update it shuts me down. literally. it won't let me do normal things until I update, which is why I loathe it.

really need to move to server version, but... so many reasons. I think the pro version, even though I have a lot of things configured so that it shouldn't be able to take control like that, has more stringent controls because it is geared more toward a small business type environment.

pghaworth · 12-15-2019, 06:02 PM

when I created my kobopatch.yaml I used the template that was provided by @DNSB (thank you so much!) so it was pretty hard to muck that up since I just went down the list. the bat file not running was what gave it away for me. windows was protecting me, and I get that, but I just don't like that much protection.

@jackie_w thank you for the mod to the bat file. the PAUSE gave me what I was wishing for and didn't know how to get. I'll be incorporating that into future bat files so I get to see what's going on. takes longer to finish up, but I'm okay with the trade-off.

geek1011 · 12-15-2019, 06:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Question about the sickel patch. Should there be more in log.txt other then

Code:

  |         "src/sickel.yaml": {
  |             "sickel reboot timeout (20 sec)": false,
  |             "sickel reboot timeout (30 sec)": true

That's all I see.

You need to add the patches themselves to a new sickel.yaml file. What you are seeing is just the overrides section of the config.

12-15-2019, 02:12 PM	#136
jackie_w Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,252 Karma: 16544692 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: UK Device: ClaraHD, Forma, Libra2, Clara2E, LibraCol, PBTouchHD3	@tayseidel, Feel free to ignore this, there's nothing wrong with what you're doing. However, you may be missing an opportunity to make it even easier for yourself at the next firmware or kobopatch update. Using your customised 'Reduce new header/footer height' patch as a worked example ... Copy the whole of the 'Reduce new header/footer height' patch from nickel.yaml and put it in a new file, e.g. src/nickel_tayseidel.yaml. Make your personal customisations in nickel_tayseidel.yaml rather than nickel.yaml. In fact, don't edit nickel.yaml at all. Change the name of the customised patch a bit in nickel_tayseidel.yaml, e.g. Code: Reduce new header/footer height - tayseidel: - Enabled: no - Description: <snip> - FindZlib: "ReadingFooter" - ReplaceZlibGroup: <snip> Replacements: # put your customised patch Find/Replaces here - Find: "..." - Replace: "..." Make kobopatch.yaml aware that there are 2 files containing patches to nickel, e.g Code: <snip> patches: <snip> src/nickel.yaml: usr/local/Kobo/nickel src/nickel_tayseidel.yaml: usr/local/Kobo/nickel <snip> ## You can put lines in the following section to override the enabled state of patches. overrides: <snip> src/nickel.yaml: #put your list of non-customised nickel patches here Reduce new header/footer height: no Reduce top/bottom page spacer: yes <snip> src/nickel_tayseidel.yaml: #put your list of tayseidel-customised nickel patches here Reduce new header/footer height - tayseidel: yes <snip> <snip> Repeat for all your other custom nickel patches. Put them all in src/nickel_tayseidel.yaml. If you do it this way, when geek1011 releases a new set of master patches (like yesterday), you can just overwrite the old version of src/nickel.yaml with the new and your src/nickel_tayseidel.yaml survives with your customisations intact. This is not 100% foolproof for all custom nickel patches, but many will survive fw/kobopatch updates without you needing to change src/nickel_tayseidel.yaml at all. Whatever I've posted about nickel.yaml above is also true, in principle, for the other kobopatch src/*.yaml files. However, there is a caveat, many patches in src/libnickel.so.1.0.0.yaml contain absolute offsets, e.g. Code: - ReplaceBytes: {Offset: 0x94B33A, FindH: 42 00, ReplaceH: 82 00} These absolute offsets very rarely survive a firmware upgrade, so it's not a perfect solution for all custom patches.

12-15-2019, 04:42 PM	#141
jackie_w Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,252 Karma: 16544692 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: UK Device: ClaraHD, Forma, Libra2, Clara2E, LibraCol, PBTouchHD3	@pghaworth, It would be a lot easier to help you if we could see some error messages. Try opening kobopatch.bat in your text editor and putting this in it: Code: @echo off cd /d "%~dp0" erase "KoboRoot.tgz" >nul 2>&1 "./bin/koboptch-windows.exe" PAUSE When you double-click the .bat to run it, that PAUSE on the last line should stop the Windows CMD window closing before you get to see any error messages.

12-15-2019, 05:12 PM	#144
tayseidel Zealot Posts: 146 Karma: 189664 Join Date: Feb 2009 Device: Glo HD, Aura H20, PRS-T1	I'd like to chime in here to see if I can help pghaworth. Like pghaworth, I was having problems generating a koboroot file in the /out folder when I ran kobopatch.sh (.bat for you since you are on windows), and I was getting nothing in the /out folder. So I put in a clean kobopatch.yaml file from the kobopatch .zip file. And ran the .sh file again, and it generated a koboroot file in the /out folder. Right then, I knew something was wrong in my kobopatch.yaml file. Either it was the indentation, or the group order of the patches with the patch file paths on the top of the kobopatch.yaml file. So what I did was: 1. renamed the my custom kobopatch.yaml file to OLD.yaml 2. Copied one line of patch from the src/nickel.yaml category from the OLD.yaml file over to the new Kobopatch.yaml file 3. made sure the patch I copied was indented four times, as shown below: Code: overrides: src/nickel.yaml: Show all games: no 4. Ran the .sh file Koboroot successfully generated in the /out folder. So I copied the rest of my patches over to the new kobopatch.yaml file, paying attention to indentation. It also might be worth making sure that the patch groups align with the file path order shown in the kobopatch.yaml file as shown here: Code: patches: src/nickel.yaml: usr/local/Kobo/nickel src/libadobe.so.yaml: usr/local/Kobo/libadobe.so src/libnickel.so.1.0.0.yaml: usr/local/Kobo/libnickel.so.1.0.0 src/librmsdk.so.1.0.0.yaml: usr/local/Kobo/librmsdk.so.1.0.0 What I mean is make sure the patch groups in the overrides: section match up with sequential order shown above. Not sure if this matters- geek1011 can chime in here. But yeah, like you, I got nothing in the /out folder until I changed the order from DNSB's template to fix the order and the indentation. Now that I've confirmed successful output of the KoboRoot.tgz file in the /out folder, I am going to work on making my own paths to my own patch files as explained by Jackie_w. Thank you for the excellent suggestion jackie_w!

12-15-2019, 05:39 PM	#147
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 79,827 Karma: 146918083 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	Question about the sickel patch. Should there be more in log.txt other then Code: \| "src/sickel.yaml": { \| "sickel reboot timeout (20 sec)": false, \| "sickel reboot timeout (30 sec)": true That's all I see.

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12-15-2019, 05:15 PM	#145
pghaworth Fervent Pleasure Seeker Posts: 1,224 Karma: 712073 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: The Windmills of My Mind Device: Clara HD	I'm fine everyone. thank you. it was windows. after it updated and I restarted my pc the bat ran flawlessly.

12-15-2019, 06:02 PM	#149
pghaworth Fervent Pleasure Seeker Posts: 1,224 Karma: 712073 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: The Windmills of My Mind Device: Clara HD	when I created my kobopatch.yaml I used the template that was provided by @DNSB (thank you so much!) so it was pretty hard to muck that up since I just went down the list. the bat file not running was what gave it away for me. windows was protecting me, and I get that, but I just don't like that much protection. @jackie_w thank you for the mod to the bat file. the PAUSE gave me what I was wishing for and didn't know how to get. I'll be incorporating that into future bat files so I get to see what's going on. takes longer to finish up, but I'm okay with the trade-off.