Can't Get KSM to Start, Therefore Can't Get KoReader

[stephen_blobeth]

I had to factory reset my device after it got unplugged abruptly. Prior to that I lived in KoReader, and never used Nickel (I'm including this in case it can simplify my installation process). I have tried just shy of 10 times to get this to work, tediously following the directions (or so I think). Last time (a few years ago) it was a breeze, so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

This thread provides a nice overview of my process:
https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/que...-kobo-aura-one

I too had referenced all the same links the author provides in that post (beside the one for Kobo Aura). This process has failed me three more times today, so if it doesn't work after this one I'm going to factory reset and pray someone here has the expertise to solve this problem. Every time I reboot, it does not load the KSM, just the smiling little Kobo that is part of the Nickel start up process.

Thank you so much to both the developers and kind forum readers that provide this essential support.

[NiLuJe]

Without standing behind your shoulders and seeing what you're doing and what the device is doing, a simple "it doesn't work" is pretty much useless, as far as pinpointing what's going wrong goes.

You'll have to give much more details on what exactly *you* did (instead of what you think you did, which is what just posting a third-party link suggests), and how the device reacted, step by step.

Sidebar 1: After a factory reset, the *original* FW version is restored. It's generally not a good idea to stay on a deprecated FW version, unless you have *very* good reasons to.
In the specific case of the Mini, there's an added quirk in that older FW versions are actually no longer supported by Kobo, and may behave erratically, preventing (among other things) automatic updates.
You should have received a mail from Kobo about that. Otherwise, there's a couple of threads about it in the main Kobo forum.
TL;DR: Start by updating to the latest FW available for your device, it'll make everything else easier to follow .

Sidebar 2: Constructive criticism on documentation is always helpful, so, I'd be happy to know what went wrong with that, so that you had to resort to third-party documentation?

I won't start a rant again about third-party documentation, because I usually reserve that to Kindle-land, where it's much more harmful, because of the peculiarities of the ecosystem .

[stephen_blobeth]

You'll have to give much more details on what exactly *you* did (instead of what you think you did, which is what just posting a third-party link suggests), and how the device reacted, step by step.

I understand, I only held back in case there was some obvious red flag (and it turned it there *maybe* was, with the FW). What I did precisely was factory reset from my Kobo Mini, connected to my Windows 10 Computer with the Kobo desktop app installed. From there, Kobo did it's thing (firmware update included I assume). After it was done, I would "continue setting up" (which meant, for me, exiting out of the tutorial to get started). Then I would plug the Kobo back in, and by this point I already unzipped the KBStartMenu_09_plus_update_001.zip, which I downloaded from: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=293804. So I moved the kbmenupngs to the root directory of the device, ejected, and let it update. I then opened every single image (a total of four, which matched the folders original contents). I reconnected and directly copied the KoboRoot.tgz to .kobo. Upon ejecting, it did it's "Updating.." and "Restarting.." but upon restarting, I am not greeted with the KSM (where I would normally select Nickel or KoReader) like I was before (before I factory reset the first time). I feel that this is where the problem is centered, because after that I proceed to drop the freshest version (pulled right from here: https://github.com/koreader/koreader/releases, as a .zip file, specifically koreader-2019.03 - am I a dummy for not getting koreader-kobo-arm-kobo-linux-gnueabihf-v2019.03.1.zip instead?) of the KoReader folder into .adds, but, of course, I'm not given the option to select it from the KSM, because I can't access the KSM.

Edit: Actually, I've realized I may have been using this as my source for the Koreader folder: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=314220. I'm actually not quite sure where I got it..


BUT, after unzipping the github release mentioned, there is no "koreader" folder, only the folder created by unzipping, which by default for me is named "KoReader-2019.03" -- again, within that folder there is no "Koreader" subfolder. And when using that folder (KoReader-2019.03) in place of a 'koreader' folder, I don't get any magical results.

TL;DR: Start by updating to the latest FW available for your device, it'll make everything else easier to follow .

Does this not happen automatically from the Kobo desktop after I plug my device in? It takes awhile to update, so I just kind of assumed it was updating FW. Anyway, I'll try and hunt that info down, thanks!

Sidebar 2: Constructive criticism on documentation is always helpful, so, I'd be happy to know what went wrong with that, so that you had to resort to third-party documentation?

I have no complaints about that documentation! Actually, wait. I do but it's minor and probably my own dumb fault. My only complaint was when browsing "Semi Automated Installation Method" (my natural first choice) it is not made clear to me if KSM installation is a prerequisite, but that's largely irrelevant to my problem right now. I only included the StackExchange link because it contained the other hyperlinks I used, and was pretty inclusive yet brief, and mirrored my procedure well (including resources used).

Anyway, thanks a million for your time!

[NiLuJe]

I don't have one of the affected device, and I don't recall the details, but, no, manual intervention *might* be needed to get the final FW update. Check what you're running in the Device Info section of the Help menu on the device.

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That aside, the obvious issue is what's happening with archives. Some of it may be on you, some of it may be on your OS, some of it may be on the program (if any) you're using to unpack archives.

For things to go as planned:
*.tar* files should stay completely untouched, and dropped as-is in the right place.
*.zip files should be uncompressed *directly* to the right place, *without* creating a top-level folder (by "directly", I mean what's usually the "Extract To" option of an unarchiving app, instead of unpacking it somewhere, and moving that manually. And creating a top-level folder named after the archive is often the default behavior of an unarchiver for archives which contains multiple top-level entries, which is the case here).

Getting all of that to behave in a consistent manner can sometimes be tricky, and what we need is often not the default behavior of an OS/unarchiver. And taking care of that is fairly hard to detail in a "one-size fits all" manner.
Hence the install scripts for the semi-auto packages .

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GitHub releases are packaged to be unpacked to the .adds folder, a folder you *may* have to create yourself in some cases (the wiki instructions *should* be ordered in a manner that should ensure it'll already have been created by something else first, though ).
And yes, you're meant to use a Kobo binary package. The unnamed zip link on the bottom is the source-code, which won't do you any good in this context .

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The semi-automated packages are designed to be unpacked to the root of the device. Or, better yet, to let the install scripts handle it.

Speaking of that, since you mentioned KSM in relation to that, and it has come up before: was your confusion stemming from the Wiki page, or the MR thread?

To be clear: these do *NOT* have anything to do with KSM. They don't use KSM, they don't need KSM, they won't install KSM, and they won't do anything (much) if you're already using KSM .

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I'm probably being a bit too verbose, when in fact things should be as simple as "unpack the right file the right way in the right folder" .
There's just a few potential interactions one might not be aware of that can gum up the works .

That was one of the things that drove me to create the install scripts, and why I'm always careful about install documentation, because this isn't a new issue, in fact, over the last 8 years of so of maintaining custom stuff for eReaders, it's probably a source of confusion for a good third of the support requests we get .

[Alan_S]

I also don't know what goes on, but I would first try to use right thread, i.e. KSM thread here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=293804

Also, if for some reason KSM 9 doesn't work for you, you can use KSM 8, or even 7 (main difference is that KSM 8 places some crucial files on system partition, so it can cleanly unload files on user partition when you access it). And yes, I'm not sure if maybe KSM 7 asks for koreader dir to be in adds or kobo folder, it's too long time ago when I used it.

But, better to ask for help from tshering, as he is author of KSM and know more.

[stephen_blobeth]

Originally Posted by Alan_S

I also don't know what goes on, but I would first try to use right thread, i.e. KSM thread here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=293804

Thank you for the link, this is what I had been referencing but was wrongly under the assumption that Kobo would automatically update outdated firmware. I now have KSM 09 working, so I'm downloading fresh copies of the KoReader binaries from: https://github.com/koreader/koreader/releases.

In this case, I should be trying to download "koreader-kobo-arm-kobo-linux-gnueabihf-v2019.03.1", correct? My wifi is horribly slow, and for some reason the download keeps failing, so it's taking a bit. Thanks for stopping by!

And to NiLuJe, I've had a half typed out reply waiting all day, I just wanted to finish updating firmware and trying once more before replying to conserve his or her time. I have a good feeling this will work this time with the firmware updated (the semi-automated method still didn't work with old firmware).

[NiLuJe]

Yep, that's the Kobo binaries!

FWIW, the final FW release on the Mini is 3.19.5761 .

(And I'm a he, ).

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EDIT: Although, you've piqued my interest with than final comment. Do you know which FW version you were running before?
KFMon *does* have a FW version requirement, but it's a pretty ancient one (2.9.0), and only a tad newer than KSM's requirement (2.6.0), so that shouldn't have been an issue.

EDIT²: Or it might have been actually, as, according to our wiki, the Mini was originally released on 2.1.4...

[stephen_blobeth]

EDIT²: Or it might have been actually, as, according to our wiki, the Mini was originally released on 2.1.4...

Yep, that was it! Lol. I finished the firmware install awhile ago, I mistyped when I wrote that. I am now at the latest firmware version 3.19. All I'm trying to do now is download the proper binary, but my downloads keep failing. But since I have your attention, the process should just be extracting the "koreader-kobo-arm-kobo-linux-gnueabihf-v2019.03.1.zip" straight into the ".adds" directory, yes? The directions here: https://github.com/koreader/koreader...n-Kobo-devices

Extract the koreader folder of the zip into the .adds directory of your device. If you are using a version of KSM older than version 8, please extract to the .kobo folder instead.

instruct me to extract a folder of the zip, and this would I imply that I must extract/decompress the zip first, then find a compressed 'koreader' folder to extract to .adds.. So I'm a little confused at the terminology there. Perhaps I'm supposed to copy the koreader folder after extracting the zip (probably, I just want to be safe so I don't have to factory reset again)? Thanks so much for the help I can't wait to wrap this up!

EDIT: Installation complete! I extracted the zip, and copied the koreader folder into .adds, ejected safely and rebooted and all was well. I think all of my problems boiled down to the prehistoric firmware I was using.
EDIT^2: And as a quick question, what do KFMon and Plato offer over KSM and KoReader?


THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL THE HELP!!! I always forget what a big part of my life my Kobo w/ KoReader is until something happens.

[NiLuJe]

That particular quirk of the Kobo release zips is because they bundle a README and a koreader.png for fmon-purposes that *may* badly interact with (very) legacy fmon setups.

In practice, it's in 99% of the cases useless legacy cruft, which is why that's gone from the semi-auto packages .

TL;DR: As you found out, what you did should just work, as would directly extracting the zip (... in most every cases; certainly yours, as your device was pristine).

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Plato is another, younger document reader, while KFMon is a simple launcher that piggybacks on the native Library, instead of being a full-fledged app with an UI.

See the wiki install page for a quick rundown of what this means in practice re: KSM vs. KFMon .