Koreader running on Kobos (all of them, hopefully!)

[pazos]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

OK tried "mount -o remount,rw /" a number of different ways but no result, still not able to delete a file on the external uSD...

Ken you should type:

mount -o remount,rw /mnt/sd

instead of

mount -o remount,rw /

Sdcard is mounted on /mnt/sd, you are mounting rootfs as rw (which is the default behaviour)

To look for changes please use:

mount | grep /mnt

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by pazos

Ken you should type:

mount -o remount,rw /mnt/sd

instead of

mount -o remount,rw /

Sdcard is mounted on /mnt/sd, you are mounting rootfs as rw (which is the default behaviour)

To look for changes please use:

mount | grep /mnt

I did actually, in fact I tried a number of arguments, including the mount point.

It looks like a better way has been found, and I am about to try it.

Luck;
Ken

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

I did actually, in fact I tried a number of arguments, including the mount point.

It looks like a better way has been found, and I am about to try it.

I tried to change how it was mounted but I can't be sure the changes I made on the rootfs partition, in Notepad++, ever got saved. I retried with the mount statement as you posted also. So I am not sure which worked. Since I use tshering's Kobo Start Menu, both changes will be persistent over koreader updates.

Adding the remount line to the koreader_kobo.sh in the .kobo/kbmenu/onstart directory, is certainly the easiest to do.

Luck;
Ken

[tshering]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

I tried to change how it was mounted but I can't be sure the changes I made on the rootfs partition, in Notepad++, ever got saved.

In KSM you can "browse" to these files and "read" them in order to verify the changes. (Take care to choose "read" from among info/read/delete.).

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Adding the remount line to the koreader_kobo.sh in the .kobo/kbmenu/onstart directory, is certainly the easiest to do.

I think this is true. However, I feel that it would be better, if koreader could remount the external sd card, whenever it needs to write to it. By doing so, it would enable the user to remove or exchange the sd card, while koreader is running. (Edit: Maybe this is not correct.)

[HaoZeke]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

I did actually, in fact I tried a number of arguments, including the mount point.

It looks like a better way has been found, and I am about to try it.

Luck;
Ken

There's a flag to the mount command which is something like
mount -r
this needs to be changed to mount -w keeping all the other arguments the same.
I have the .tgz which works like a charm on my aura HD (3.5) keeping the start menu. (the modified files) but I can't seem to upload it. o.O

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by HaoZeke

There's a flag to the mount command which is something like
mount -r
this needs to be changed to mount -w keeping all the other arguments the same.
I have the .tgz which works like a charm on my aura HD (3.5) keeping the start menu. (the modified files) but I can't seem to upload it. o.O

I guess I could do it the old way and extract those two files from the .tgz and make the changes then add them back into the archive. I had a way to make the changes in situ, on my windows machine, but I must have messed that up somehow. The changes are easy, my problem was saving the files back to the rootfs partition. Don't worry about it, I can certainly make the changes. But it is working now from one or the other approaches as I stupidly did both at the same time, so I am not sure which or if both worked.
Edit: checking with the Browser, as tshering suggested, they are still -r, so it must be the remount line added to koreader_kobo.sh that is making it work for me now.

Luck;
Ken

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by tshering

In KSM you can "browse" to these files and "read" them in order to verify the changes. (Take care to choose "read" from among info/read/delete.).


I think this is true. However, I feel that it would be better, if koreader could remount the external sd card, whenever it needs to write to it. By doing so, it would enable the user to remove or exchange the sd card, while koreader is running. (Edit: Maybe this is not correct.)

I guess I have been doing this too long, and suffer from some old habits, but the thought of removing any storage device while a program that uses it is still active, just would not be acceptable to me. Plug&play in the OS still scares me a little. Starting Koreader with the external uSD remounted as read/write is turning out to be easy enough. Kobo's database structure seems to be so easily corrupted that, if you use Nickel a lot, you might not want to risk it. I think though, that if you don't let Nickel manage any files on the external uSD,
it would not be an issue.

Luck;
Ken

[xor_]

Looking for the value that controls the inactivity timout for sending the device to suspend. Comes a bit too fast for my taste. Haven't found any obvious spots. Anyone have a hint?

[tshering]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

I guess I have been doing this too long, and suffer from some old habits, but the thought of removing any storage device while a program that uses it is still active, just would not be acceptable to me.

You are right. And remounting the external sd with -r or -w according to actual need, seems not really suitable to prevent damage. If the user removes the card while the application is writing, the damage is done. If the user removes the card while the application is not writing, data loss might happen or not, depending whether everything from the writing cache has already been written to the sd. Whether the external sd is mounted with -r or -w at that moment seems to be of no consequence. That is why I added "Edit: Maybe this is not correct". I should rather have added: "This might be complete nonsense."

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Starting Koreader with the external uSD remounted as read/write is turning out to be easy enough. Kobo's database structure seems to be so easily corrupted that, if you use Nickel a lot, you might not want to risk it. I think though, that if you don't let Nickel manage any files on the external uSD, it would not be an issue.

One could remount with -r after leaving koreader, or before starting nickel. Then it should not be an issue for anybody.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by tshering

One could remount with -r after leaving koreader, or before starting nickel. Then it should not be an issue for anybody.

Right, I guess I should add that after the reader call in koreader_kobo.sh?
Might add "exec 3<&-" as well just to be on the safe side.

Luck;
Ken

But, if you mess with any file Nickel is managing with its database, while Koreader is in read/write mode (as for the external uSD), or anytime for files on the internal uSD, you could face corruption of Kobo's database. Returning to RO mode might make Nickel more comfortable, though.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by xor_

Looking for the value that controls the inactivity timout for sending the device to suspend. Comes a bit too fast for my taste. Haven't found any obvious spots. Anyone have a hint?

Not sure what you mean, if you mean Koreader is going to sleep if there are no page turns within a certain time span, I didn't know it could do that, it doesn't on my AuraHD. If you mean the delay after you slide the power switch, that is in .kobo/koreader/frontend/ui/uimanager.lua.

Luck;
Ken

[xor_]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Not sure what you mean, if you mean Koreader is going to sleep if there are no page turns within a certain time span, I didn't know it could do that, it doesn't on my AuraHD.

That is what I mean. Hadn't noticed it before either, but build 398 does that on my Glo. And I'd like to adjust that time value.

Big kudos to the developers, btw. This project is coming along very nicely.

//Edit: Hmm. Could it be that the suspend was triggered by nickel still running in the background? After installing advboot, and running koreader without nickel, I haven't seen it anymore.

[tshering]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Right, I guess I should add that after the reader call in koreader_kobo.sh?

This (I mean: remounting the external sd once before and once after running koreader) might be a good solution for your case, since you know how your reader is configured and how you yourself behave with it.

For the KSM, which should be fit for different types of users, only modifying koreader_kobo.sh is not enough. The problem with the first remounting in koreader_kobo is, that if the users selects "start koreader" quickly after powering on, there might occur the situation, that the sd is not yet recognized by the system, when the script tries to remount it. Therefore, the execution would have to wait for the system to recognise the external sd. But how long should it wait? There might even be no sd in the slot. The user might insert the sd only after starting koreader, or not at all. Therefore, we should have to let the sd script handle these cases. Here the question arises whether in the sd script we should check whether koreader is running, and mount only than to -w, and in all other cases to -r. I think, here is no need to modify the usb script, in addition to koreader_kobo.sh and sd.
Before doing these changes in KSM, I will wait on how the koreader developers decide to proceed.

[Ken Maltby]

This could be looked at as something the Koreader team should look into, to make the file handling features they added to File Manager functional on Kobo devices.

That the scripts can be modified, by those with the need, is something on a use at your own risk basis. It need not be addressed in KSM at all. But if you wanted to it could be an optional way to start Koreader, perhaps "Start Koreader (with SD r/w)" and have it call a modified koreader_kobo.sh. But it seems to me that it is an issue that the Koreader team should be fixing, when they get time.

Luck;
Ken

[tshering]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

This could be looked at as something the Koreader team should look into, to make the file handling features they added to File Manager functional on Kobo devices.

That the scripts can be modified, by those with the need, is something on a use at your own risk basis. It need not be addressed in KSM at all. But if you wanted to it could be an optional way to start Koreader, perhaps "Start Koreader (with CD r/w)" and have it call a modified koreader_kobo.sh. But it seems to me that it is an issue that the Koreader team should be fixing, when they get time.

Luck;
Ken

Sure, it would best if the koreader would handle this internally. Just one more information: As soon as nickel starts, it changes the sd back to -ro. So not really a need to change anything for nickel.
And one remark: The whole KSM is a a use at your own risk thing.