K5 FW 5.x ScreenSavers Hack

[viragored]

Hi - I hope someone can point me in the right direction. My Kindle Touch is on FW 5.3.7 (with 1,800 MB free) and is never connected to wifi. Ages ago I installed Jailbreak (from this file update_jailbreak_bridge_1.7.N_install.bin) and Kindlet Jailbreak (from this file update_kindlet-jailbreak-20121029_install.bin). Since then the "collection manager" and the "cover of the last book screensaver" had been working perfectly. Until.... a few days back, the Kindle crashed: on pressing the power off button, I got a completely blank screen and no response from the power button. I got it going again by holding the power button in for a minute, when the Kindle rebooted (I think, not sure, it started again anyway).

Since the crash, the cover of the book I was reading at the time always appears as the screensaver now. Changing books, and allowing the Kindle time to shut itself down, didn't make the cover of the current book show. At the time of the crash, I had Python version either 0.6 or 0.7 (sorry, I no longer know which) installed and screensaver 0.14 (from this file update_linkss_0.14.N_install.bin). They would have been installed from the links in post #1 of this thread back then.

Opening a book I had previously read with a known good structure and cover image made no difference. The cover at the time of the crash continued to show as the screensaver.

I have now installed Python 0.14, updated, installed linkss 0.24 and updated again. The install files were downloaded from the links in post #1 a couple of days ago. And still no change - that same cover remains showing. I also dropped a "pinfo" file into the linkss folder to see if any personal info would appear - but nothing changed, still the same book cover.

There were 221 items in the cover cache folder. The folders 'discarded', 'overflow' and 'staging' were all empty. I deleted nearly all the cached covers and tried again. Still the same book cover appears. And following the advice in the Q&As at the top of the thread, I tried to set the date and time on the Kindle Touch, but it seems I can set only the time; date must come from wifi. The time is right but I've no idea what date the Kindle thinks it is today!

Next I deleted all the .png files in the cover cache folder. The Kindle didn't like that: choosing a book, page turning, "go to" function all work OK; but press the power button to switch off and nothing happened except for the screen blanking momentarily and then returning to the current display. The Kindle doesn't turn itself off automatically now.

Any suggestions on where I should go next to get the Kindle working properly again, and the current cover showing again?

Update: I reinstalled the file "Update_linkss_0.24.N_install_touch_pw.bin", updated the Kindle and now have access to power off once more. But the screensaver has changed to showing this text: "The ScreenSavers Hack is currently in 'cover' mode, but hasn't yet successfully processed a book cover " I have also reinstalled Python, with no improvement. Changing books doesn't change the screensaver, but at least it's no longer the cover of the book I was reading when I had the Kindle crash!

[knc1]

use the ;st shortcut in the main screen search bar to set the time and date, as in:
;st
the semi-colon is part of the command.

You should be able to find a recent post giving the date-time formats that command accepts.

You should probably go ahead and update to the most recent K5 firmware now, since the update process may disturb what you have installed.
5.3.7.3 is the current firmware version.

Re-install the jailbreak - it has been changed a lot since the one you have installed (and it includes MKK now).
Once you have done that - install KUAL and the MrPI extension for KUAL.

Get copies all add-ins from Niluje's snapshot thread, put them in /mrpackages and let MrPI re-install them all at once.
See:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=225030

Do them all, all at once as a "batch job", that is a feature of using MrPI.

= = = =

As for the 'crash' -
You may be exceeding the number of books the Kindle can handle at one time.
(Specifically, running out of room on /var/local)

And your only choice will be to off-load some of them (be thinking: half of them).

[viragored]

Thanks for all the guidance @knc1

At first glance, some of that may be beyond me - I only know a little about *nix systems and tarballs sound like something fearsome! I'll spend some time with Google and searches on this site to see if I think I can cope with it all.

A quick search didn't come up with any help on ;st, but I'll put some time into that when we've another wet day that'll keep me indoors.

Meanwhile I'll get to weeding some books off the Kindle. It turns out I've currently got 1105 on there - lots of those can go!

Thanks once more

[knc1]

Originally Posted by viragored

Thanks for all the guidance @knc1

At first glance, some of that may be beyond me - I only know a little about *nix systems and tarballs sound like something fearsome! I'll spend some time with Google and searches on this site to see if I think I can cope with it all.

A quick search didn't come up with any help on ;st, but I'll put some time into that when we've another wet day that'll keep me indoors.

Meanwhile I'll get to weeding some books off the Kindle. It turns out I've currently got 1105 on there - lots of those can go!

Thanks once more

Search the full text of the posts made by myself within the past few weeks.
Finding things here (including how to find the 'advanced search') are in the FGA:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=237083

Skip that, I found it - in the home page search bar, enter:
;st YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss
the ':ss' is optional, no access to setting the timezone.
the letters should be obvious, I.E:
;st 2016-04-09 07:50
would work for me, now.

Install this updated firmware:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...deId=200790650

Then consider pushing some of those books to the cloud storage of your Amazon account (upper left of Kindle's screen).

A K5 (a.k.a: KT) on 5.3.7.3 can still be jailbroken, so don't be concerned about losing that.

Each entry on NiLuJe's snapshots page has a link to the subject thread and the first post of the subject thread will always have full directions.

Archive tools such as 7-zip can handle the *.tar.xz format compressed archives.

[NiLuJe]

I concur with everything @knc1 just said, the date/time most likely got thrashed with the crash and/or the hard-reboot, which is confusing the cover mode.

Usually, the easiest way to get a sane date/time is to to an Amazon sync over WiFi, but since that may not be an option here, yeeep, ;st it is .

Random dumb idea @knc1: Does adding an off-line button that sets a sane-ish date (say, somewhere in January 2016) to your KUAL ntp set of buttons sound like a good idea?

[knc1]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

I concur with everything @knc1 just said, the date/time most likely got thrashed with the crash and/or the hard-reboot, which is confusing the cover mode.

Usually, the easiest way to get a sane date/time is to to an Amazon sync over WiFi, but since that may not be an option here, yeeep, ;st it is .

Random dumb idea @knc1: Does adding an off-line button that sets a sane-ish date (say, somewhere in January 2016) to your KUAL ntp set of buttons sound like a good idea?

If using a fixed (hardcoded) date -
Then the second time it was used everything added between the first and second use would be in the future.

But wait -
Maybe scan the files in user storage, set current time two days after oldest?

I have never used zsh but didn't someone recently post a way to use it to take input?

That is about the only thing that was never added to KUAL - to bring up the keyboard and accept input.

If USBnetwork where running, we might be able to ask the PC at the other end of the cable.

[NiLuJe]

@knc1: Yeah, looking for the most recent file in the userstore might not be a bad idea... .

[viragored]

Skip that, I found it - in the home page search bar, enter:
;st YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss
the ':ss' is optional, no access to setting the timezone.
the letters should be obvious, I.E:
;st 2016-04-09 07:50
would work for me, now.

@NiLuJe and @knc1 - you guys are just the best! Since your first reply as well as the Q & A give a good clue that date and time might be the root cause, I reset the date and time using ;st And - hey presto! - the cover screensaver is back and working.

In case anyone's interested, I use Calibre to manage my books, never use wifi with the Kindle, and am happy to store spare books on the PC. There are several thousand there and backed up to another PC! I have got the Amazon firmware 5.3.7.3 update ready to install, if I need to. But being back to a fully functioning Kindle Touch means I can postpone that till the next thing comes along. Also, learning about tarballs, 7-Zip and various other things has been a good experience.

And I'll archive the ;st syntax for future reference Again, heartfelt thanks!

UPDATE: Today turned into a rainy afternoon so I sat down with Google, Kindle and the forum. Long story short - 5.3.7.3 installed, updated JailBreak, KUAL in and reloaded Python and ScreenSavers Hack. Plus updated Collections. And all within my ability to follow instructions, even if I've only a vague idea of what's going on. Top marks all round!

[knc1]

Your welcome.

[topquark]

I need help with an issue I've come across. Everything else works fine -- I use the cover hack and the covers of the other books show up fine. There is one book though that I couldn't get to work. When I open it up, it is the cover of the book I've opened before this one that shows up. If I do a restart, I get the no cover yet message from Niluje. It is just this one book. I've tried shifting from jpg to png, and tried changing image sizes but still no go. My current cover is 518x640. I have other books with this resolution and they show up. Any ideas?

[NiLuJe]

@topquark: In which format is that book?

[topquark]

AZW3. It's in my PW2 where all the other AZW3s are and they work fine. I mean, their covers show up. It's just this one book that won't work.

[topquark]

The cover shows up on the PW2 and in the code when I checked in Calibre. It just won't show up as the screensaver.

[NiLuJe]

Huh. If you can PM me the file (as-is, filename & eventual drm included), I'll check if there's something peculiar about it.

[topquark]

Hi Niluje. PM sent with the file(s), as per your request.