How do I format the disk? I've installed the car2-builder-20011022.upgrade but when it boots I just get:

[SNIP early boot stuff]
Press Ctrl-A to enter pump...VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
change_root: old root has d_count=1
Trying to unmount old root ... okay
Freeing unused kernel memory: 4k init

And then it hangs. Nothing else. Any hints?

My empeg crashed during sync and began panicing at boot so I'm trying to bring it back to life.

Thanks for your time,

Sumner

You shouldn't need to format the disk. Check here, here, and here.

Did you install a player .upgrade file (ie 2.0 consumer or developer) after the disk builder .upgrade file?

The disk builder file does not install player software.

/Michael

Did you install a player .upgrade file (ie 2.0 consumer or developer) after the disk builder .upgrade file? The disk builder file does not install player software.

Duh, I mis-read his post. Of course. He installed the builder upgrade but then he didn't add player software afterwards.

Hey, Sumner: Full instructions on how to format the disks are here.

>> You shouldn't need to format the disk. Check
>> here, here, and here.

That's what I tried first. (the first of those links). No dice, which is why I went to the formatting idea. :-/

>> Duh, I mis-read his post. Of course. He installed
>> the builder upgrade but then he didn't add player
>> software afterwards

Yeah, that's what I was working from. But there doesn't appear to be any step when the drive is actually formatted--I get to what that guide describes as: "The instant that the upgrade has been applied and the wizard is finished, run that Hyperterminal profile. Quickly! When the player reboots after the upgrade, you will see it reboot and it will start formatting the disk. You should see the formatter's output in ASCII on the serial port and on the screen of the player. If the disk drive wasn't blank, the formatter may complain by saying 'disk is already built'. If this happens, you must press the Enter key in Hyperterminal before it will begin erasing the disk."

But none of that happens. It boots to the point I quoted earlier (discarding initdata sections, the "Freeing unused kernel memory: 4k init " message) and then simply hangs. Hitting enter doesn't help, nor does q.

Applying a consumer/developer image afterwards doesn't work, I don't have the exact message but it reboots continually. :-(

I've noticed that sometimes pump seems to hang for a long time during the installs without progressing. What exactly is pump? I'm a long-time linux user but new to the empeg world...

I'll try fiddling with it some more.

Thanks for the time,

Sumner

The pump is when it applies a filesystem image to a raw partition.

Make sure that your builder .upgrade file is clean. Try downloading it again with wget or similar.

Applying a consumer/developer image afterwards doesn't work, I don't have the exact message but it reboots continually. :-(

Having the exact message might help us diagnose the problem. Can you get it for us?

Also, try Bitt's suggestion: Use GetRight or some other similar utility to re-grab the files. They might have been corrupted on download.

But none of that happens. It boots to the point I quoted earlier (discarding initdata sections, the "Freeing unused kernel memory: 4k init " message) and then simply hangs. Hitting enter doesn't help, nor does q.

This means the builder image didn't work at all. If it worked, you would be seeing it format the disk and run a stress test. It didn't get that far.

I am re-downloading the disk builder and if it still doesn't work I'll get the message the consumer image is printing.

I'll keep you posted.

How long should it take to apply the developer image? It seems to vary widely for me, from about 15 minutes to about 45 minutes.

Thanks for your time,

Sumner

It takes about 10 minutes on my PC to apply car2-developer-2.00final. It shouldn't vary that much.

Methinks that you might have a hardware or cabling problem with your hard disk.