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JOURNAL FOR MONDAY 6TH AUGUST, 2018
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SUBJECT: Minor recordjar update + Nokia 5 woes
DATE: Mon 6 Aug 23:07:29 BST 2018
I recently completed re-writing the recordjar.Write method. Changes are
available on the public dev branch. Why a rewrite? Two main reasons. When
writing out fields a space was always added after the separating colon, even
if there was no data for the field. I hate trailing whitespace[1] — so I fixed
the problem. The other issue I addressed was the sequence of fields within a
record. I had been lazy. I just ranged over a map, writing out the fields as
they came. By design, when ranging over maps the order of the elements
returned is deliberately indeterminable. Fields are now sorted within records.
The code for the new version of recordjar.Write is longer. This is mainly due
to making the method simpler, and easier to follow. Unlike its predecessor the
new version is now documented.
The only big omission is comments. If you read a recordjar (.wrj) file and
then write it, any comments from the original will be lost. I’ll have to
remedy that as I want to write a simple, gofmt inspired, linter/formatter.
For now, I’m testing still. I’ve nearly finished writing tests for the new
Write method — I just want to poke around in a few more dark corners before
releasing the tests.
Do I have anything else interesting to report? I guess I could mention my
Nokia 5. Actually this is going to be quite a rant, feel free to ignore.
My Nokia 5 stopped receiving security updates after May, 2018. I thought that
odd. Some Googling around showed there had been problems with the update on
some handsets. I reasoned that maybe the update had been pulled until the
issues had been sorted. July rolled around and still no updates, same come
August. I don’t like unpatched devices and one reason for having a Nokia was
the promised quick updates. That and the nearly stock Android. I had continued
Googling during June, July and into August, looking for people with similar
issues or confirmation of the security updates being received in the UK.
Finally I found a 10 month old thread of a similar issue[2]. The problem
seemed to be that the carrier, as reported by the SIM, is used to query the
OTA update server. This wasn’t working, and it seems that carriers can
interfere with, and block, updates. This is annoying as I use an MVNO (Mobile
virtual network operator) on the O2 network and it seems that O2 is blocking
the updates.
What I needed to do was to query the OTA server without the carrier involved.
This is where the fun starts. I needed to do a factory reset without the SIM
card in the phone. I made sure backups were on and current, powered off the
phone, removed the SIM and did a factory reset. Started to restore from the
backup — and it wanted an authorisation code. No SIM, no text, no code. It
wouldn’t call the backup number because it said it had been called and failed
too many times. Luckily I had a set of backup codes. Restore started apps were
reinstalled, then the June security update was installed — Yippee! \o/
A reboot and the July security update was installed. The August security
update does not seem to be available yet. I powered off the phone, put in the
SIM card and powered on again.
Things looked good, a little too good…
Some of my settings had been changed (or simply not restored). Which ones? No
idea. Had to go through every setting on my phone and check everything. All of
my text messages — gone. Custom ring tones for specific contacts — gone. All
information in contacts for ‘Your Info’ — gone. Emergency information — gone.
SSH authentication keys — gone. This last one took ages to sort out. I had to
generate new authentication keys then re-authorise the new public key on
various machines — and also de-authorise the old public key.
Then I noticed that two O2 apps, ‘O2 Priority’ and ‘My O2’ had been *SILENTLY*
installed from the Google Play Store. What!? Why!? Uninstalled them both. I
can’t use them as I am ‘on’ the O2 network, but not ‘with’ O2. Then thought
I’d better check all of my apps, and review their permissions.
Will I have to go through this again for the August security update? *shrug*
--
Diddymus
[1] I have Vim setup to show trailing whitespace as reverse red blocks, so
that I can see and delete it.
[2] Nokia thread on update issues:
https://community.phones.nokia.com/support/discussions/topics/7000010948
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