Font, ScreenSaver & USBNetwork Hacks for Kindle 2.x, 3.x & 4.x

[Hollow Man]

Originally Posted by HughFace

Yeah, I know that, but i use the screensaver to change the screen. Isn't it this app's function?

No. It is for people who bought the Kindle without ads. You paid a cheaper price for your Kindle to provide advertising to you. Removing those ads, which is what you aim to do by changing the screensavers, is not this thread's intent.

-HM

[HughFace]

Originally Posted by Hollow Man

Read the first post in this thread carefully:

"This doesn't, and won't ever, help you bypass something you agreed to (screensaver ads), so please stop asking."

-HM

Sorry, my fault. I know what you mean.

[tigran]

Unfortunately, I had to remove the screensaver hack, because CoolReader became 7 times slower. Specifically, opening Plato's Dialogues (10M fb2 file, 2.8M zip --- don't unzip it!) from cache changed from 6 seconds to 42 seconds which is not tolerable. Of course I tested it properly, i.e. rebooted the Kindle before each open and I repeat --- these are opens from cache, not the FIRST time. I.e. this is the sequence of steps:

0. Install screensaver hack.
1. Open the Plato Dialogues (from litmir.net or any other VERY large fb2) file in CoolReader.
2. Open some other file in CoolReader (so Plato goes to the history list accessible by pressing "l").
3. Exit CoolReader
4. Reboot Kindle
5. Start CoolReader (it will open the small file as it was the last)
6. Press "l" and open Plato from history and measure the time it takes to get to the page.
7. Open some small file (so Plato goes to the history again)
8. Exit CoolReader
9. Reboot the Kindle.
10. Uninstall screensaver hack.
11. Reboot the Kindle again.
12. Go to step 5. above.

With screensaver hack installed the time is 42 seconds. Without it, the time is back to the usual 6 seconds.

I don't know what screensaver hack does (presumably binds some mount points to fool the framework into displaying custom images), but it seems to adversely affect the speed of reading files mapped in via mmap(2) system call (I assume CoolReader still mmaps cache files as it did a few years ago when I played with it while developing djvu viewer for Hanlin V3).

Anyway, something to think about for the brave hacker NiLuJe who wrote this hack.

In the meantime, I will say temporary goodbye to those beautiful pictures of Walther P-38 (my favourite gun) and try to make do with those "poissons" (fishes in french and silly faces on the standard Amazon screensavers...

Oh btw, can I delete the "linkss" subdirectory in /mnt/us after uninstalling screensaver hack? It is left in there but I like my device clean and tidy with no unnecessary files...

[NiLuJe]

@tigran:

Yep, you can safely delete the linkss folder once it's uninstalled .

On the other hand, that *really* shouldn't happen, because, as you guessed, at the core, it's only a simple bind mount, and nothing else.
The only thing that runs in the background is the USB watchdog, and it might very well be going wonky on some (broken?) setups, and end up in an infinite loop churning the CPU; I've tried to avoid/workaround it, but it's still quite possible. I'd need a bunch of logs, and even better, a top/ps output while experiencing the slowdowns, to investigate this further, though .
One 'quick' way to check if it's indeed the source of the issue would be to disable the 'autoreboot' feature, and restart you Kindle.

[slack]

Hi. I have bought a used Kindle Keyboard 3G + Wi-Fi (B006). There was 3.1 firmware and i don't know was it jailbroken or not...
I've updated it to 3.3 version, and now when I'm trying to jailbreak it's hanging on "Software Update" screen with empty progress bar...

I've used "Update_kindle_3.3_B006.bin" to update, and "update_jailbreak_0.10.N_k3g-3.2.1_install.bin" for jailbreak.

I don't know what to do, it's my first Kindle, please help.

[NiLuJe]

@slack: Shouldn't happen. I'm assuming you haven't touched it since it froze?

If it froze during the *jailbreak* install, it should be more or less safe to do a hard reboot, and check the logs (;dumpMessages) to understand what happened.

If it froze during any parts of the 3.3 update, it's another story, and you might be screwed.

[slack]

It hangs on jailbreak progress... I've tried it many times and waited a few hours with no luck.

After hard reboot it shows error 3, and prompt to press R to boot. Then it boot up normally.

How do I can figure out is it jailbroken or not? And where can I find this logs?

[NiLuJe]

@slack: Yep, you would get an error 3 after a hard reboot during a frozen custom install, don't worry about it .

Now, to check the logs, and understand why it is stalling, just type

;dumpMessages

in the search bar (you can bring it up just by hitting the 'Del' key, for example). It should create an all_logs_<timestamp>.txt text file in the documents folder. Attach/Compress it in a reply, and I'll take a look at it.

[slack]

Here it is.

[NiLuJe]

@slack. Grmbl, can't see any update process logs, but then, there's a lot of chopped off stuff, probably from the the hard reboots... At what time did you last try to install the jailbreak?

[slack]

I've tried again few minutes ago...

Here's my steps:
1. I've connected it to pc and copied jailbreak file
2. disconnected it and started an update from settings
3. waited for 5 minutes seeing update screen with empty progress bar
4. hard rebooted it and pressed R for continue booting
5. created log file

By the way, how it is constantly rebooting... I mean it's loading to home screen and after 2-3 minutes rebooting again.

Here's log:

[slack]

*now it is constantly rebooting...

Why I can't edit my previous message?

[NiLuJe]

@slack: Still no update logs, except from a bit of official OTA update...

It's indeed constantly rebooting, apparently because it's half (un)registered, and fails miserably to communicate with Amazon, which then asks it to restart to 'help' ^^.

Register it properly after a factory reset, or don't register it and kill the wifi, but an unregistered/broken Kindle with wifi on == potential trouble.

[slack]

Have you any assumption why in log file there is nothing about jailbreak process?

I've disabled wi-fi, but it still freezes and then reboots...

The registration it is my second problem...
Amazon says that it's registered to another account, but in Kindle settings there is no information about it. There is no Deregister button, only Register...

When I'm trying to register over wi-fi it shows me a connection error, but browser is working fine...

I've asked Amazon's support about it, but they didn't respond...

Here's screenshots:
http://flic.kr/s/aHsjzpdUgR

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by slack

...
The registration it is my second problem...
Amazon says that it's registered to another account, but in Kindle settings there is no information about it. There is no Deregister button, only Register...

When I'm trying to register over wi-fi it shows me a connection error, but browser is working fine...

I've asked Amazon's support about it, but they didn't respond...

Did you buy this kindle used? If so, you may need to contact the previous owner and ask him to login to his amazon account and deregister your kindle serial number so that you can register it to your amazon account.

The browser may be working on the previous owner's account. Do not purchase any books with it that could be charged to another person's credit card, which could potentially result in difficult explanations to legal authorities if such a transaction attempt was successful.