Aura ONE Strange behaviour

[Lusephur]

Long time member, rarely post problems, usually find solutions or what not via the forum, but I've not seen this one.

My device uses only sideloaded books from calibre, converted to kepub on transfer with series info added to database upon reconnect. Book covers are to retain dimensions etc, and conversion is at tablet setting (no resizing of internal images etc)

Anyway, onto the point, when I put my device to sleep, (book covers full size, info panel on screen) a weird behavior occasionally happens. The screen blinks, and refreshes in six regions. (picture the screen divided three across by two) with a blink occurring at the top left panel first, then bottom left, middle top, middle bottom, right top, right bottom.
Now, normally, i wouldn't mind this but after this behavior starts the database starts to become corrupt.

I've signed out of my account and signed back in, behaviour occurs a few days later.
I've factory reset the device, behavior occurs a few days later too.

Is it just my device getting knackered? Is it the firmware? (But i've not seen the issue listed anywhere else) or have I shagged the bastarding thing with too many books loaded (3 thousand,)

[NiLuJe]

This has been reported to trigger in some exceedingly rare cases with some specific old (or not) kernels on some specific devices (so far, all of them Mk. 6).

I'd never heard of it happening in Nickel, though.

On a KA1, where the behavior is exactly what you describe: https://github.com/koreader/koreader/issues/5571

On a Glo HD, where it's a tad different: https://github.com/koreader/koreader/issues/5916

TL;DR: Does it happen with *every* book, or with a specific one only?

[Lusephur]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

This has been reported to trigger in some exceedingly rare cases with some specific old (or not) kernels on some specific devices (so far, all of them Mk. 6).

I'd never heard of it happening in Nickel, though.

On a KA1, where the behavior is exactly what you describe: https://github.com/koreader/koreader/issues/5571

On a Glo HD, where it's a tad different: https://github.com/koreader/koreader/issues/5916

TL;DR: Does it happen with *every* book, or with a specific one only?

The KA1 link you posted seems to refer to exactly what I'm seeing.
Does it happen on every book? No, but then again, I can't be certain. Current book it's happening with is The Locked Room by Maj Sjowell and Per Wahloo, previous book, The Misty Harbour by Georges Simenon didn't, but that's a quickish read, book before that, Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone did, as did The Abominable Man by Sjowell and Wahloo, but not The Madman of Bergerac by Simenon and certainly with Tapping the Source by Kenn Nun. (Sorry, for the list and specificity. But, all are retail bought via amazon and converted to epub on calibre and then kepub upon transfer.)
So, in relation to your question, Maigret scares the bejaysus out of the issue.
It seems it could be after a certain length of time something happens.
I could reflash with the latest update and see what that does. But I wouldn't know if that solves it or not for days.

[Lusephur]

Right, just reflashed with the latest firmware. Let's see what happens.
One other thing that I've just remembered, the full cover sleep seems to have some faint transparency. As in, I can see the text on the page open.
Better description, you're reading "Chapter 7" you decide to put the book down, you put the device into sleep mode, (settings have full book cover with info panel) you can see quite clearly behind the image on the screen the words "Chapter 7" and text.
It's as if the page was printed on grease-proof paper or onion skin or celluloid. If that makes any sense.

[NiLuJe]

@Lusephur: That last observation is "normal" eInk ghosting (exacerbated by the way Nickel handles displaying a sleep screen, which is not the worst, but not entirely optimal either).

I don't have a Mk. 6 device myself, and given the sneaky potentially random nature of the results on a Glo HD, I don't really have a better answer than: you're not alone, but it's quite likely a very weird corner-case at a deep hardware level that no-one probably cares about anymore, because it affects an EoL device & platform, and the only people that might have been able to do something about it in the first place are NTX (the OEM that provides the boards for Kobo devices) or even NXP (the people that actually come up with the SoC used on said boards), not even Kobo themselves .

[Lusephur]

The ghosting I've only just noticed recently, and I'm almost certain it's recent with one of the numerous firmware updates. (Have this device since launch, the aura 6 and the h20 certainly don't show the same behavior on their latest updates.)
Looks like I'll have to put up with it and see how it goes till Kobo issue a new firmware update. Hopefully that sorts it out, otherwise well... I hear there's something being thrown onto the market soon, might have reason to buy it.
Now, Forma, libra or the new mystery device. Decisions, decisions.


Cheers for your help, NiLuJe. At least I now know it's not something I've done wrong.

[Ripplinger]

If the ghosting truly bothers you that much, when you wake the reader just tap the screen that brings up menus and again to close the menus. That forces a refresh which gets rid of all ghosting.

I do notice it at times on my Glo HD, but whether it's enough to bother me or not depends on the cover graphic. If it's distracting, I just force the refresh, but it's rarely so for me.

[NiLuJe]

The (second) issue here is specifically with ghosting on sleep screens, where you can't very well request a new refresh, can you .

(I've ranted about this several times in the past. TL;DR: flash white -> flash image generally yields better results than flash image -> flash image again).

[Ripplinger]

Sorry, I thought they were only concerned with ghosting while reading. Since my readers are always in sleep covers, I'd never notice print visible under the graphic. Nor would I care if it was though, it's not like you stare at the cover for any length of time.

But yes, Kobo could certainly make it much better with the proper refreshing method as you said. It wouldn't seem to be more of a battery drain, so I don't understand why they don't. And why they don't force a refresh automatically when waking a book.

The rest of the reading experience is pretty blissful for me, so I guess I'm willing to put up with manually refreshing when I need it. Others might not be, which I can really understand since it could be done better on Kobo's part.

[Lusephur]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

Sorry, I thought they were only concerned with ghosting while reading. Since my readers are always in sleep covers, I'd never notice print visible under the graphic. Nor would I care if it was though, it's not like you stare at the cover for any length of time.

But yes, Kobo could certainly make it much better with the proper refreshing method as you said. It wouldn't seem to be more of a battery drain, so I don't understand why they don't. And why they don't force a refresh automatically when waking a book.

The rest of the reading experience is pretty blissful for me, so I guess I'm willing to put up with manually refreshing when I need it. Others might not be, which I can really understand since it could be done better on Kobo's part.

I don't have ghosting while reading (refresh set to every chapter). I have a sleep screen that blinks once and 6 panels refresh followed by a database getting corrupted.
Apart from this recent behavior, I've had a rather blissful reading experience with Kobo devices over the past too many years to recount. (when was the aura 6 inch first launched? nearly 7 bleedin years ago and nearly 500 ebooks later, I've been as happy as an effluviant porcine.)
Be keeping an eye out for a new reader soon so, and I really don't want to go down the kindle route. (Familiarity more so is what has me wanting to keep to kobo.)

[NiLuJe]

Oh, I somehow missed the database corruption issue. That's... not good. AFAIK, the refresh issues we saw in KOReader were not accompanied by any other kind of weirdness like storage issues.

[Lusephur]

Yeah, the database thing is a tad strange. I don't know what exactly could be causing it.
I've no windows machine at hand. I've my main machine running Arch with kernel 5.6. Is is possibly an issue upon connection with calibre, with the newer fat driver being coded into the kernel (https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...nux-Faster-FAT) is it a dodgy download of the newer firmware (device was just reflashed with latest kernel, and one patch for the annoying chapter and book page details to be swapped)
The observed behavior would be transfer a few books via calibre, normally works quite well. And then, suddenly upon ejecting and the import screen appears and vanishes, the books are not there.
Quit calibre, and reconnect device, mount it, unmount and the books then scan in which is fine but..... eventually calibre will no longer be able to access the database.

[NiLuJe]

AFAIK, the vfat thingy on newer kernels only ever affected Kindles (which implement vfat and USBMS in a very, very, very specific way, so it makes sense that it'd be a special snowflake).

Short of Nickel botching lazy unmounts causing the dirty but flag to be set, which is mostly harmless, I haven't seen a database failure on a sane device in a good long while.

[Lusephur]

It's a strange one alright.
And right now, all I can do is wait and see if my reflashed firmware makes a difference. Fingers crossed it was just a blip that has now rectified itself. Although, kobo currently has a sale on the price of the forma.........

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Lusephur

Anyway, onto the point, when I put my device to sleep, (book covers full size, info panel on screen) a weird behavior occasionally happens. The screen blinks, and refreshes in six regions. (picture the screen divided three across by two) with a blink occurring at the top left panel first, then bottom left, middle top, middle bottom, right top, right bottom.

I have actually discussed this with Kobo at some time. The response was:

that segment draw happens when the image is sinking too much power. it trips a low level event and the panel will refresh itself in 4 or 6 quadrants

And the particular cover that was part of the discussion was one of the almost all yellow covers used by Gateway. The cover the device generated was a lot of small dots to produce grey. Sending the cover from calibre solved it. And I think I also fiddled with the cover in the book in some way to

Now, normally, i wouldn't mind this but after this behavior starts the database starts to become corrupt.

The problems shouldn't be connected. But, it could be memory issues helping to trigger the cover display, and that could cause issues elsewhere. Or a rogue background process using power triggering both. If it is something like this, then rebooting the device might prevent further problems. Hopefully it isn't the storage in the Aura ONE failing. If this was a device with an internal SD card, I'd be suggesting that you replace the card.

Otherwise, I'm with @NiLuJe for database corruptions. I rarely see them. And I can generally track them to something I did.