kobopatch request thread

[mergen3107]

@DNSB
Thank you so much!

[Aleron Ives]

I added an "album" to my profile containing links to my typography and battery scripts in case anyone needs the links to them.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

I added an "album" to my profile containing links to my typography and battery scripts in case anyone needs the links to them.

Why not add them to your signature on your profile?

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Why not add them to your signature on your profile?

I disabled forum signatures, because I got tired of seeing "click here" advertisements after every post, so it would be rather hypocritical of me to add such an advertisement to my own signature.

People can opt in to seeing my projects by clicking on my profile, and then all the people to whom my projects don't apply -- such as Kindle users -- don't have to endure unsolicited, irrelevant signature advertisements every time they see a post from me.

[PeterT]

The only thing is that as you say the signature is in your face; the Album on profile I wouldn't even know to look there unless you rubbed it IIN my face!

Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk

[Aleron Ives]

Yes, but somehow people are finding out about my battery script, so perhaps if they know who wrote it, they'll know whose profile to check. At any rate, DNSB seems to have made a shortcut to paste in the post numbers every time somebody asks, so it may not matter.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

I disabled forum signatures, because I got tired of seeing "click here" advertisements after every post, so it would be rather hypocritical of me to add such an advertisement to my own signature.

People can opt in to seeing my projects by clicking on my profile, and then all the people to whom my projects don't apply -- such as Kindle users -- don't have to endure unsolicited, irrelevant signature advertisements every time they see a post from me.

It would be a good idea to edit the posts for these scripts to include the NickelMenu command to run these scripts. Not everyone will know how to do that.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It would be a good idea to edit the posts for these scripts to include the NickelMenu command to run these scripts. Not everyone will know how to do that.

Seems a bit of an odd request when two lines of the script in message #1337 in the NickelMenu thread are:

# You can use NickelMenu to invoke this script like so:
# menu_item :main :Battery :cmd_output :500 :/mnt/onboard/.adds/battcalc.sh

Even @Didier's modified script for the Libra Colour has those two lines though further down the script (see message #1353 in the NickelMenu thread for that script).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Seems a bit of an odd request when the first two lines of the script in message #1337 in the NickelMenu thread are:



Even @Didier's modified script for the Libra Colour has those two lines though further down the script (see message #1353 in the NickelMenu thread for that script).

I didn't read the comments. I just read around the code block.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I didn't read the comments. I just read around the code block.

Are you trying to say that you didn't bother to read the comments inside the code block or that you didn't read any comments external to the code block?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Are you trying to say that you didn't bother to read the comments inside the code block or that you didn't read any comments external to the code block?

I read the message outside of the code block but did not read the code in the code block.

[bopuc]

I was poking around the patches and patching system today (wow, great stuff!) and I'm wondering how one sees the target CSS ("qss") that is being find/replaced by KoboPatch? I've cracked open the firmware download and checked every corner so I am guessing its all compiled into .so or something?

I'd like to help make some patches but obviously would need to be able to see what I can search for and replace.

(Apologies for asking something that most likely has been answered before. I get overwhelmed easily by pages and pages of branching discussion.)

[Aleron Ives]

The QSS patches are part of nickel.yaml, which targets the file /usr/local/Kobo/nickel, which appears to be the ELF binary containing the ARM assembly for the Nickel OS. The QSS patches are using "FindZlib", which probably means that the QSS files are zipped before they are compiled into the binary; as such, you can't simply search for the strings you want to replace. You need to extract the zip contents, unzip it, edit the files, rezip them, and insert the modified zip into the ELF, ensuring that the new zip is not larger than the original one.

If you're serious about making patches, you could use Ghidra's ARM module to decompile Nickel and learn how things work, so you can start editing the binary and its associated libraries.

[bopuc]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

The QSS patches are part of nickel.yaml, which targets the file /usr/local/Kobo/nickel, which appears to be the ELF binary containing the ARM assembly for the Nickel OS. The QSS patches are using "FindZlib", which probably means that the QSS files are zipped before they are compiled into the binary; as such, you can't simply search for the strings you want to replace. You need to extract the zip contents, unzip it, edit the files, rezip them, and insert the modified zip into the ELF, ensuring that the new zip is not larger than the original one.

If you're serious about making patches, you could use Ghidra's ARM module to decompile Nickel and learn how things work, so you can start editing the binary and its associated libraries.

Thank you.

How precisely (I am looking for guidance here) did whoever made the existing patches in `nickel.yaml` figure out what strings of qss to find & replace in the firmware, e.g.:

{Find: "line-height: 1.35em;", Replace: "line-height: 1.3em;"}

My understanding is that KoboPatch does the "heavy lifting" of actually patching the firmware based on the configuration (and search/replace strings) in the YAML files. Somehow, we (patcher makers) need to be able to "see" what we searching for to replace it, right? How do I "get to seeing"?

I have unzipped the firmware bundle, TarUnzipped the "KoboRoot.tgz" contained within, and poked around in various bin files in /usr/local/Kobo with readelf but that's not showing me anything I can recognize. Maybe I'm not using the right flags?

Any and all pointers much appreciated!

[geek1011]

Originally Posted by bopuc

I was poking around the patches and patching system today (wow, great stuff!) and I'm wondering how one sees the target CSS ("qss") that is being find/replaced by KoboPatch? I've cracked open the firmware download and checked every corner so I am guessing its all compiled into .so or something?

I'd like to help make some patches but obviously would need to be able to see what I can search for and replace.

(Apologies for asking something that most likely has been answered before. I get overwhelmed easily by pages and pages of branching discussion.)

I wrote a tool for that, https://github.com/pgaskin/qrc. You can also find extracted firmware files here.