webOS versioning uncorrect?

[debilater]

I've found a strange thing with webOS. I applied the "Messaging Plugin" patch a few days ago, it didn't work, I removed it, which also didn't work. It left a whole mess and messaging doesn't work at all since then. Next step would be to webos doctor the phone and start from scratch.

However, I am just too lazy to do that, so I fetched the webos doctor jar file for O2 users in germany for webos version 1.3.1, the very same I have installed here. But I cannot revert the patch anyway, because the versions differ. Yes, "webOS 1.3.1 O2 germany" and "webOS 1.3.1 O2 germany" are NOT the same!

Take a look: At first, there is a file in /etc called "version". It contains a timestamp (build time?):

on the phone:

root@palm-webos-device: # cat /etc/version 
200909101807

on the unpacked rootfs of web os doctor:

me@loria: $ cat etc/version 
200911011842

There is also a file "/md5sums" which contains MD5 checksums of all installed files. It is also different:

on the phone:

root@palm-webos-device: # ls -l /md5sums 
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      1224510 Sep 11 02:33 /md5sums

on the unpacked rootfs of web os doctor:

me@loria: $ ls -l md5sums 
-rw-r--r--  1 scip  scip  1302618  2 Nov 04:03 md5sums

So, it is no wonder that some patches fail! Patch developers might consider to check /etc/version bevore applying a patch.

[rwhitby]

Actually, the Package Manager Service checks /etc/palm-build-info to determine the webOS version, and provides only those patches that are compatible with that version.

-- Rod