Firmware 4.1.7729 - Page 8

davidfor · 10-16-2016, 03:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rtiangha

OK, here's something weird. On my Glo HD, I can no longer open any pdfs at all, regardless of the size (I've tested files from 1MB to 50MB that had previously opened before on the older firmware). It'll get stuck for a bit and then automatically reboot (I assume that's sickel?).

Does this happen to anyone else, or is it just happening to me?

It's just you?

I have tested a few, including one that is 130MB with lots of images, with no problems. This is with my Glo HD.

Were these books that were on the device before the update? If so, can you try removing one of PDFs and adding it back? This shouldn't change anything, but, it is something to check.

If it is sickel doing the reboot, the device should hang for about a minute, then restart. The light will probably go off before go off a few seconds before the screen changes for the reboot. If something has crashed, there might be a stack log in the .kobo directory. If there is, it can give the Kobo developers a very good idea of what went wrong.

rtiangha · 10-16-2016, 06:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidfor

It's just you?

I have tested a few, including one that is 130MB with lots of images, with no problems. This is with my Glo HD.

Were these books that were on the device before the update? If so, can you try removing one of PDFs and adding it back? This shouldn't change anything, but, it is something to check.

If it is sickel doing the reboot, the device should hang for about a minute, then restart. The light will probably go off before go off a few seconds before the screen changes for the reboot. If something has crashed, there might be a stack log in the .kobo directory. If there is, it can give the Kobo developers a very good idea of what went wrong.

Lovely.

The majority of pdfs were ones that were there prior to the firmware upgrade, but I only noticed this behaviour when I initially tried to read one I had just loaded on so I don't think it matters.

That light thing does happen the way you say each time, so it probably is sickel.

I can't find anything like a log in .kobo, though. The only things in there are folders labeled certificates, dict, guide, kepub and Kobo (and no log files inside them either), as well as the affiliate.conf, BookReader.sqlite, device.salt.conf, KoboReader.sqlite and version files. Is there a specific directory where these log files would exist? I am open to pulling out the card and looking at rootfs if needed (I have access to a Linux machine too, although I just checked and /var/log is empty).

That said, my 64GB card is close to being full and my device database is just over 1GB. It could be that it just takes longer for pdfs to load now, but it can't finish before sickel kills it. Should I risk disabling sickel using one of the mods that were posted here a while back to see if that works?

rtiangha · 10-16-2016, 06:51 AM

Well, I answered my own question. While I had the card pulled, I decided to manually apply the disable sickel mod and it worked. It took about two minutes and five seconds for that first pdf to load. I never timed without the mod, but I assume the kill time is 1 minute?

And now loading each subsequent pdf is near instantaneous (or at least it seems to be the speed at what it used to be). However, it doesn't seem to survive a reboot (which makes sense, if it's a RAM thing). After rebooting, it again takes just a bit over two minutes for that first pdf to load. Once done, loading pdfs is fast again (it doesn't matter what the file size of that first pdf is). I assume that's because at that point, the pdf renderer is loaded into memory. I'd probably have to do the same thing again if it ever got paged out.

So not sure what I can do there to fix or improve that load time. I might just leave the disable sickel mod installed though, and try to keep it in mind when debugging things in the future.

davidfor · 10-16-2016, 07:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rtiangha

Lovely.

The majority of pdfs were ones that were there prior to the firmware upgrade, but I only noticed this behaviour when I initially tried to read one I had just loaded on so I don't think it matters.

OK, it doesn't matter when the PDF was added to the device.

Quote:

That light thing does happen the way you say each time, so it probably is sickel.

I can't find anything like a log in .kobo, though. The only things in there are folders labeled certificates, dict, guide, kepub and Kobo (and no log files inside them either), as well as the affiliate.conf, BookReader.sqlite, device.salt.conf, KoboReader.sqlite and version files. Is there a specific directory where these log files would exist? I am open to pulling out the card and looking at rootfs if needed (I have access to a Linux machine too, although I just checked and /var/log is empty).

The stack log will be in the .kobo directory and will have a name like "stack_01.log". If there are multiples, the number gets incremented.

Quote:

That said, my 64GB card is close to being full and my device database is just over 1GB.

How much space is left? There are several entries added or updated in the database whenever you open a book. If there isn't enough space to write the updates to the database properly, I'm sure some bad things will happen. Of course, these entries are also made for other book types, so if that was the cause, it should happen for the other books as well.

Quote:

It could be that it just takes longer for pdfs to load now, but it can't finish before sickel kills it. Should I risk disabling sickel using one of the mods that were posted here a while back to see if that works?

Looking at the file in the mod I think they should still be OK. I don't think it will be very dangerous. The problem with disabling sickel is knowing when to give up and do a reset. Hopefully you will get to see how long it actually does take to open the PDFs.

Is there anything common about the PDFs? Such as all images or use an unusual font. Any chance of seeing one of the PDFs? Or trying a PDF that we can download easily? Maybe one from the library here as that will be available to everyone.

davidfor · 10-16-2016, 07:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rtiangha

Well, I answered my own question. While I had the card pulled, I decided to manually apply the disable sickel mod and it worked. It took about two minutes and five seconds for that first pdf to load. I never timed without the mod, but I assume the kill time is 1 minute?

And now loading each subsequent pdf is near instantaneous (or at least it seems to be the speed at what it used to be). However, it doesn't seem to survive a reboot (which makes sense, if it's a RAM thing). After rebooting, it again takes just a bit over two minutes for that first pdf to load. Once done, loading pdfs is fast again (it doesn't matter what the file size of that first pdf is). I assume that's because at that point, the pdf renderer is loaded into memory. I'd probably have to do the same thing again if it ever got paged out.

So not sure what I can do there to fix or improve that load time. I might just leave the disable sickel mod installed though, and try to keep it in mind when debugging things in the future.

Ok, I just restarted and opened one of the more complicated PDFs. It took about 30-40 seconds. When I reopen it or most other PDFs, it is only taking a few seconds. But, some of them are still taking 30 seconds or so.

All this suggests there is a process being initialised for PDFs. Why it is taking so long for you is the question. It's probably something to do with the big SD card or the size of the database.

rtiangha · 10-16-2016, 07:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidfor

Ok, I just restarted and opened one of the more complicated PDFs. It took about 30-40 seconds. When I reopen it or most other PDFs, it is only taking a few seconds. But, some of them are still taking 30 seconds or so.

All this suggests there is a process being initialised for PDFs. Why it is taking so long for you is the question. It's probably something to do with the big SD card or the size of the database.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I've noticed that as that database gets bigger, various things just get slower over time, although not by much, just enough to be noticeable. I haven't tried to read a PDF in a while though, which is why this one caught me off guard.

In fact, I can't even compact the database through Calibre anymore as it eventually dies with an I/O error (the last time I tried it I had 2.0 GB free; now I'm down to 1.8). But I can do so using a copy on my hard drive and using an external SQL program, and I just manually copy the result to the card when it's done. I've observed it in progress though and the Wal file never grows larger than 1.7 GB, so it should at least work in theory? But a bigger card with more free space might be helpful.

But unless there's something that can be done on the back end to improve load times, I don't think there's much that can be done, except maybe to reduce the number of items in my library to see if database size is the issue (I'll upgrade to a 128GB card eventually which might help read performance if lack of free space or the fact that my card is almost full is actually the issue, but I won't get my hopes up either). I was thinking of pulling all my PDFs and sticking them in a hidden directory to use with koreader since Calibre can't transfer PDF metadata anyways so maybe this may act as motivation to do so if performance gets any worse. I really do like the Nickel interface though, so we'll see.

Also, for what it's worth, kepubs work just fine; I only have these issues with PDFs, although I haven't tried any other supported file types. And I wasn't able to find any stack logs at all.

Sent from my GT-N5110 using Tapatalk

rtiangha · 10-16-2016, 10:55 PM

I just noticed that the ability to search a ZIM file (like Wikipedia) was removed, or at the very least, no longer appears in the Reading Menu. You can still open a ZIM file, but it seems like you can no longer search it, either in the ZIM file itself, or by pulling it up while inside a book. And because internal links in a ZIM file never really worked, the usefulness of having an offline copy of Wikipedia is greatly reduced, unless there's a hidden FeatureSettings .conf setting to restore that menu item like there is for enabling the BookSpecificStats menu item for every book (if so, I don't know what it is). It worked (somewhat) in 3.19 (and in 4.0; I just tested).

artjermyn · 10-18-2016, 08:09 AM

Has kobo actually started to roll out these updates yet? i try syncing every day or so and it hasn't found any updates.

frostschutz · 10-18-2016, 08:45 AM

Not for affiliate kobo (and others). Set your affiliate to bestbuyca.

larrywhite · 10-18-2016, 07:37 PM

I hit Sync on my Aura about noon and it downloaded and installed 4.1.7729. The only thing it mentioned in the Update Note was that OverDrive support was improved but I can't find the Note to re-read it.

DNSB · 10-18-2016, 07:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by larrywhite

I hit Sync on my Aura about noon and it downloaded and installed 4.1.7729. The only thing it mentioned in the Update Note was that OverDrive support was improved but I can't find the Note to re-read it.

That is pretty much usual for a Kobo what's new in an update. Check davidfor's Post #7 earlier in this thread for a somewhat more detailed what's new.

10-16-2016, 06:51 AM	#108
rtiangha Evangelist Posts: 495 Karma: 356531 Join Date: Jul 2016 Location: 'burta, Canada Device: Kobo Glo HD	Well, I answered my own question. While I had the card pulled, I decided to manually apply the disable sickel mod and it worked. It took about two minutes and five seconds for that first pdf to load. I never timed without the mod, but I assume the kill time is 1 minute? And now loading each subsequent pdf is near instantaneous (or at least it seems to be the speed at what it used to be). However, it doesn't seem to survive a reboot (which makes sense, if it's a RAM thing). After rebooting, it again takes just a bit over two minutes for that first pdf to load. Once done, loading pdfs is fast again (it doesn't matter what the file size of that first pdf is). I assume that's because at that point, the pdf renderer is loaded into memory. I'd probably have to do the same thing again if it ever got paged out. So not sure what I can do there to fix or improve that load time. I might just leave the disable sickel mod installed though, and try to keep it in mind when debugging things in the future. Last edited by rtiangha; 10-16-2016 at 07:11 AM.

10-16-2016, 10:55 PM	#112
rtiangha Evangelist Posts: 495 Karma: 356531 Join Date: Jul 2016 Location: 'burta, Canada Device: Kobo Glo HD	I just noticed that the ability to search a ZIM file (like Wikipedia) was removed, or at the very least, no longer appears in the Reading Menu. You can still open a ZIM file, but it seems like you can no longer search it, either in the ZIM file itself, or by pulling it up while inside a book. And because internal links in a ZIM file never really worked, the usefulness of having an offline copy of Wikipedia is greatly reduced, unless there's a hidden FeatureSettings .conf setting to restore that menu item like there is for enabling the BookSpecificStats menu item for every book (if so, I don't know what it is). It worked (somewhat) in 3.19 (and in 4.0; I just tested). Last edited by rtiangha; 10-17-2016 at 12:22 AM.

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10-18-2016, 08:09 AM	#113
artjermyn Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2013 Device: nook	Has kobo actually started to roll out these updates yet? i try syncing every day or so and it hasn't found any updates.

10-18-2016, 08:45 AM	#114
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10-18-2016, 07:37 PM	#115
larrywhite Junior Member Posts: 4 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2007 Device: eBOOKWISE 1150	I hit Sync on my Aura about noon and it downloaded and installed 4.1.7729. The only thing it mentioned in the Update Note was that OverDrive support was improved but I can't find the Note to re-read it.

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