Firmware Update 5.16.7 out

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by DNSB

The old Kindle Previewer used to have the capability to display an ebook as if it was being displayed on a specific model of Kindle. That capability is long gone and the only selections are generic (tablet, phone, Kindle E-reader).

Probably because it was sufficiently inaccurate as to be borderline useless for that purpose (I can confirm that its alleged reproduction of a Paperwhite could actually look quite different from the same book on an actual Paperwhite, different spacing, different pagination, different set of HTML elements handled etc etc).

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by NullNix

Probably because it was sufficiently inaccurate as to be borderline useless for that purpose

I agree.

[Ecosphere0620]

Any idea when we would get a jailbreak on this version?

[Frogm4n]

Jailbreaks are useless on anything 5.16.3 or above because (in short) Amazon changed how applications are run. You can still update a jailbroken device with a newer firmware and keep the jailbreak, but it won't run much of anything useful.

On top of that, jailbreaking is a game of chance. There is no timeline for anyone to find and implement a security bypass that leads to a jailbreak.

[tomsem]

I had an interesting glitch since this update: I send Sudoku PDFs via Send to Kindle. I happen to have 2 Scribes and when I downloaded one I'd marked up on the other, one of the pages lacked the solution I'd worked out on the first. Markup I made on the 2nd Kindle on the same page did sync back to the first.

I did manual sync on both devices, still those annotations did not show up on second Scribe.

Then I removed download on the first and re-downloaded it. The 'solution' was gone.

So somehow that entire page of pen annotations failed to get backed up to cloud, even though local file had them in there (until I removed the download).

Both should be more or less continuously able to connect to WiFi as I never use Airplane mode.

So in reference to @jhowell's findings in post #9, there still seem to be some issues with syncing (at least of pen annotations).

It's been awhile since I experimented with sync between the two to see how well it worked, never saw any problems. Sync can be relatively slow (there's more data involved) but haven't seen it fail completely like this.

Of course it is troubling even if you only have one Scribe. How will you realize when some annotations haven't been backed up? You can view Notebooks and sticky notes with the Kindle app, but Print Replica pen annotations can only be viewed on Scribe.

Even if you can check it in theory, in practice the expectation is that annotations are backed up and in removing a download you cannot lose anything.

[tomsem]

5.16.8 imminant, apparently:

https://www.reddit.com/r/kindlescrib...s_coming_soon/

[BionicGecko]

Originally Posted by tomsem

5.16.8 imminant, apparently:

https://www.reddit.com/r/kindlescrib...s_coming_soon/

Why do the French always get the scoop on new firmware releases?

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by BionicGecko

Why do the French always get the scoop on new firmware releases?

I do not know, maybe it is some obscure EU/France requirement.

In any case, these are 100% predictive.

[RequisiteAngle]

I currently have an unrooted kindle scribe at firmware 5.16.1 but it's forcing me to update before letting me use it. i.e. I'm sort of still in the tail end of the registration process, so I don't have access to most interfaces. Can I prevent the firmware update (I stopped it in the middle of an update) so I can root the device, and if I mess it up and accidentally go through with an update, is there a way for me to revert the device to 5.16.1? I'm a bit scared to do anything with this device at the moment just because I'm afraid of making a mistake.

I also posted about this here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...5&postcount=10

[mergen3107]

Originally Posted by jhowell

[*]A process named Minerva for recording and reporting metrics to Amazon.
[*]An app watchdog for the main interface application, possibly to help detect failures.[/list]

@jhowell
Thank you very much for still doing these deep dives!
Do you think these can be safely disabled by renaming their binaries?
Like we do with other logging:

    BLOCK Amazon Logging:
mntroot rw
ln -s -b /dev/null /usr/sbin/syslog-ng
ln -s -b /dev/null /usr/sbin/loginfo
ln -s -b /dev/null /usr/sbin/tinyrot
ln -s -b /dev/null /usr/bin/showlog
mntroot ro

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by mergen3107

Do you think these can be safely disabled by renaming their binaries?

I don't know. You could try it and see what happens.

[mergen3107]

@jhowell
Do you know if the name of the binary is just minerva?
And do you know the watchdog's binary name?

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by mergen3107

Do you know if the name of the binary is just minerva?
And do you know the watchdog's binary name?

Some files to check out in the firmware:

/app/bin/KPPMainAppWatchdog
/etc/upstart/minerva_service.conf
/etc/upstart/minervad.conf
/usr/bin/minerva_service
/usr/bin/minervad

[mergen3107]

Thank you so much!

[tinycrabman6]

Originally Posted by mergen3107

@jhowell
Thank you very much for still doing these deep dives!
Do you think these can be safely disabled by renaming their binaries?
Like we do with other logging

I can confirm that disabling the two minerva binaries has worked for me without any unintended side effects.
(Tested on a Kindle Scribe running 5.16.9 and Marek’s hard float jailbreak packages.)

mntroot rw
ln -s -b /dev/null /usr/bin/minerva_service
ln -s -b /dev/null /usr/bin/minervad
mntroot ro

Before renaming, the folder /var/local/log/minerva/ was being populated with 393kb “entryDs_file_X” files. It has been roughly a week since renaming the files and there has been no activity since. I have yet to observe any negative consequences so far either.

Some miscellaneous documentation things I noted for those curious:

• I saw that the file “/var/local/acs/kvsDefault.db” includes an identifier key: “minerva_anon_customer_id_key”. It appears it is possibly reset by the lipc value of com.acs.minerva resetCustomerInfo
• I found another minerva-related file at /usr/lib/libace_minerva_metrics_api.so
• I haven’t tested yet if the "kppwatchdog" binary can be disabled yet, but I see it is much less chatty in the system logs. In the same all_systems_logs file, over the same period of time, the string “minerva” had a mention in 764 lines vs “watchdog” having 37
• While I primarily use KOreader, I did test downloading a book and using the Amazon reader and didn't notice any problems. Nor any problems with writing on notebooks. I don't have whispersync enabled, so I cannot test if that functionality is impacted

I hope this was helpful!