Firmware 3.19.5613 discussion

[rashkae]

I feel like my comments already derailed this discussion, about the firmware, and for that I apologize.

It's true that, despite my vehemence, I can't really blame Kobo. As a self-activated device, the update would never have installed itself, so testing out a new firmware is entirely at my own risk. That I did so without making a full backup first is my own fault.

Apparently, if reports are accurate, activating with a blank user account still works just fine. If I had simply left Start Menu installed, I would probably have been fine and able to continue using the device without any great effort. I do appreciate that Kobo is, at least, an open device, without attempts to lock it.

Nevertheless, I feel nothing but apathy at having to play more tricks to restore it, when my other devices, (ie: Kindles) have kept on working with no interruption for the past several years.

At least I can restore my own Kobo whenever I decide to spend time with it. (Since mine has been factory reset, that also includes reloading all the books I want as TRB as well, also a very time consuming task.)

I gave my elderly aunt a Kobo Aura a couple of years ago. So far, I've had to make 3 2hr drive trips to restore her Kobo after she's managed to muck it up by accident. (signed out, deleted all books, deleted dictionaries.) She has no Internet of any kind. I think Kobo should be working on making their software more stable, rather a chorus of "just play along with the silly registration and cloud sync that you have no interest in."

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by the.Mtn.Man

Wanting to use third-party "hacks" on a device you own is fine. Complaining that those "hacks" are not officially supported is not.

So... what you're saying is that no one has a right to be anything but a fanboi over anything Kobo does.
Despite that one of the big draws of a Kobo is the fact that you don't need to jailbreak it to hack it.

People should be accustomed to and accepting of any time Kobo closes a loophole that allowed you to do something you wanted to do. Because after all, official support is everything -- and the end of all things.

Oh well, the forum was fun while it lasted, but I guess there's no real point now that only the official firmware is allowed to matter to users.


Feeling entitled to have Kobo at your beck and call to fix anything you say needs fixing is one thing.
Saying "Kobo changed something in a way that breaks my unofficial workflow, and I no longer have the patience to modify my Kobo to match my needs", is another thing.


I think there is a difference in those mindsets. And I am pretty sure @rashkae meant the latter.



...

Personally, I am not sure why Kobo needed to implement something that doesn't help them and throws up barriers to using a hack. It's almost like they were deliberately trying to break fake registration.
Which is certainly their right.
But I think it is eminently reasonable for someone who will specifically only use a fake-registered Kobo to be frustrated.
And I don't see why they should be shouted down for expressing that frustration.

[the.Mtn.Man]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

So... what you're saying is that no one has a right to be anything but a fanboi over anything Kobo does.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. What I am saying is that it's not reasonable to expect Kobo to be able to account for unknown changes that users may have made to their devices. If the firmware fails because of a third-party modification, that's hardly Kobo's fault.

[rashkae]

I can understand why the dialogue I complain about was added. I have no doubt it was to fix problems people had with devices not synching. I don't think it was maliciously to block my use of the device.

It was also incredibly amateurish and ham fisted. Even at first glance, 2 things should have been obvious. 1. The error should have happened only on sync, not on boot with wifi off. 2. There should have been a cancel button, rather than immediately rendering the reader non-operable.

[frostschutz]

Originally Posted by chrisridd

Can someone post how to correctly self register their device, or is that verboten by the mods?

I don't know a "correct" way, but all empty entries ('' for all values) works halfway (device hangs and requires reset when going to settings->accounts, but everything else seemed to work).

Using arbitrary values instead of empty ones causes the 'critical error'.

I'll keep it registered for now.

[tshering]

Originally Posted by frostschutz

I don't know a "correct" way, but all empty entries ('' for all values) works halfway (device hangs and requires reset when going to settings->accounts, but everything else seemed to work).

It only hangs if wifi is on.

[icallaci]

So I'm about to upgrade manually, but after reading through these posts, I want to make sure that I don't have a problem with the fake info I put into the database to bypass the registration procedure. Here is what I originally used:

INSERT INTO "user" VALUES('aaaaaaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaa','aaaaaaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaa','xxxx@xxxx.xxx','xxxx@xxxx.xxx','a', 'a','FALSE','FALSE','FALSE');

Am I correct in assuming that this will not work? Should I change this to:

INSERT OR REPLACE INTO "user" VALUES('','','','','', '','','',''); Or something else? The first two fields I believe have a NOT NULL requirement, so I would think I need to set them to something other than ''. Sorry--I am confused. If someone could elaborate on what actually works to bypass the registration for firmware 3.19.5613, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

[II2II]

Originally Posted by rashkae

I feel like my comments already derailed this discussion, about the firmware, and for that I apologize.

I'm more privacy-minded than most and appreciate the information about circumventing registration. It doesn't change my opinion of Kobo devices, but it means that I won't be applying this update.

[frostschutz]

Originally Posted by icallaci

The first two fields I believe have a NOT NULL requirement, so I would think I need to set them to something other than ''.

'' is not NULL.

I don't know if there are values that work better than '', sorry. '' just happens to be what I used to use for fake registration, and it just happened to (semi-)work with 3.19.x. Maybe someone else will be able to investigate / experiment in more detail...

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by DNSB

You might want to delete the books from your Kobo account after downloading them. They are still available unless you select them in the trash view and click on delete forever so if you ever want to redownload the ebook, you can undelete them. This prevents them from syncing to your ereader and giving you the two copies in Calibre. The recommendations are a bit annoying but a simple long press/dismiss tile gets rid of them. I can't remember if that is one of the tiles that DavidFor's Kobo Utilities automates the removal of.

You can also remove them from the device and then set the option in the Library settings to only show downloaded books. A sync won't bring these books down, but it will bring any new books. This has the advantage if you have multiple devices connected to the same account that you can choose on the device (my son reads the kepubs, I usually read the sideloaded). Deleting in the store has the advantage it does all devices in one go.

[icallaci]

Originally Posted by frostschutz

'' is not NULL.

Oh, sorry, I thought ' ' (with a space between) isn't NULL but '' (with no space) is. My bad. It's been a while since I worked with SQL. I'll give '' a try unless someone else chimes in with a better experience-based solution. (But I don't plan to upgrade until the patches are ready, so it may be a day or two.) Thanks.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by icallaci

Oh, sorry, I thought ' ' (with a space between) isn't NULL but '' (with no space) is. My bad. It's been a while since I worked with SQL. I'll give '' a try unless someone else chimes in with a better experience-based solution. (But I don't plan to upgrade until the patches are ready, so it may be a day or two.) Thanks.

No, '' is a zero length string or an empty string and is in many cases a valid value. NULL means it does not have a value at all.

Your current setting is more likely to work than setting all the values to empty strings. It's possible the problem is that the other values don't pass a check. There are two UUIDs, two email addresses, and id for the device (a 64 character hexadecimal number) and two keys or tokens of some sort (605 characters, looks like the last character is an equals sign). Filling these fields with something that matches might work. But, syncing to get the firmware updated will probably produce the results rashkae reported.

[icallaci]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Your current setting is more likely to work than setting all the values to empty strings. It's possible the problem is that the other values don't pass a check. There are two UUIDs, two email addresses, and id for the device (a 64 character hexadecimal number) and two keys or tokens of some sort (605 characters, looks like the last character is an equals sign). Filling these fields with something that matches might work. But, syncing to get the firmware updated will probably produce the results rashkae reported.

OK, then I will give it a try with my current settings (as soon as the patches are available). I will report back on my success or failure.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by icallaci

OK, then I will give it a try with my current settings (as soon as the patches are available). I will report back on my success or failure.

What I would suggest is taking a full copy of the user drive. That way, if it doesn't work, you can reset to 3.18.0 and restore the data back to where you are now.

[icallaci]

Originally Posted by davidfor

What I would suggest is taking a full copy of the user drive. That way, if it doesn't work, you can reset to 3.18.0 and restore the data back to where you are now.

Will do. Thanks.