Hello all... i'm not sure if this has been done already. I dont think i've seen this yet, so i'll propose the idea and wait to see what ya'll think. Maybe i can get some help from some programmers on this board.

I was thinking about creating a backup util for my empeg. my thoughts are these:

1. I've got about 100 gig of mp3s on my player and i've spent years getting the tags correct. I use my player as my primary music player. I listen in the car, and i stream over HTTP to winamp while at the office via the neet little web page i found here on the bbs. I would be pretty upset if i lost that data.

2. i've got a spare 120 gig firewire drive that i would like to use as the backup.

3. The util would need to do the following:

a FTP the files down from the player to a local folder by clicking the "backup" button. If this was the first time doing a backup, the util would FTP ALL the files from both drives down to a local folder. (might take a few days for large empegs)

b once files are downloaded, and i re-sync or re-backup, i would have the app only find the files that have been changed or added to the player since i last backed up. In other words, any files not on the local pc, transfer. That way, i wont have to re-FTP all the files which takes days.

c. once the files are sync'd, grab the ini file AND run a script to pull the play count and EQ settings from RAM to a file, THEN transfer that file. (i've done it before when upgrading my drive) There is an article about it in the FAQ section. (see this link: from the FAQ section )

I hope that would give me EVERYTHING that i would need to do a full restore WITH the play count, EQ settings, Wendy Filters, etc.


Can anyone add to this concept or help me start building it? I was thinking i could get a friend to help start building something in VP to do the FTP and file compares, but i'm not sure how i can run the RAM-to-file-then-pull-file script to backup the EQ and play counts. My programming expreience is only in ASP (little VP) and Windows only.

Basically, look at that FAQ link and i would want to automate that entire process, but only pull the CHANGED or ADDED files, so it wont take 3 days everytime i want to backup 100 gig.

Any ideas or help would be great.

Or just use ordinary mirrordir over FTP.

Cheers

hope that would give me EVERYTHING that i would need to do a full restore WITH the play count, EQ settings, Wendy Filters, etc.


When you have it done, name your price!

tanstaafl.

1. sure!
2. I think i have to learn what that is. i know what FID structure is, but I’m not sure what FIDsifted structure is.... ?
3. Restore... yes.. i figured i would be happy with just the backup. I can do the restore by hand no problem. I don’t want the restore to be something that I use all the time, only when i needed to test this thing out or actually restore from a failed system. If i can get it to work, I’m sure I can reverse the process for a restore. I wouldn't want to accidentally restore the wrong files.
4. huh? I must have missed a thread somewhere. 1 button is the idea, its what would make sense.

I would have to check into Rsync.

i'll have to check into mirrordir.

I would use my developer's suite of tools for FTP. I have some FTP clients for VP apps that do a lot. If I’m going to do it, i want to stay away from a MS Dos batch file because that really doesn't do what i need. The tools i have for VB app programming is: IP*Works! V6 ActiveX Edition. Here are the Components that i can use with it.

well, from what i can find about mirrordir, its Linux based.... I dont use any Linux machines. i'm 99% windows (1% empeg).

Not to rain on your parade, but this sounds like a huge waste of time. Spend a half an hour getting rsync working which was made for this sort of task. If you can manage to write this program you describe setting up rsync should be trivial. Leave the rsync server running as a service on your PC and add a hijack menu_exec option to initiate the rsync from the empeg. Then you don't need to build a GUI and all you have to do is select rsync from the empeg and off you go.

-Mike

I don't think it's a waste of time... IF... it becomes a truly transparent one-button process that doesn't require you to jump through hoops to install it or get it working.

There are plenty of people who don't want to deal with getting rsync working or understanding command-line parameters. Those people would be very happy to see such a project work.

I don’t think this is a waste of time at all.... i think its worth at least a discussion...

ok, look.... if I can get rsync to work, which at this point i have never used, i might be ok, HOWEVER, I’m not sure how i would go about doing the dynamicbackup? My guess is a script of some sort. I don’t have much experience doing that, but i will give it a shot if i can start somewhere. You see, my thought is that if the dynamicbackup takes a minute to run, how does the script know to wait for it to be completed before running the next step of copying that dynamicbackup file over to the PC?

Remember, i want to do more then just ftp the FIDs, i want to back up the Play Count, Number of Plays and EQ settings found in the dynamicbackup (that data along with the tunes are more important to me then just backing up the tunes). So my solution would have to do the file transfer, then pull down the dynamic partition, and copy that file too. If this can only be done using a shell prompt, can i write a script file that i can just click on and run thoes commands at a shell prompt. (perhaps pulling open Term Serv to connect first). So I’d need to have the empeg connected via Serial AND Ethernet for all steps to complete.

I guess I’m just looking to get started but wanted to see other people's ideas and input first to see if there is an easier way, or to get other ideas going.

You can obtain the play counts and Wendy information from a stock empeg using just the normal emptool protocol. You can't, however, obtain the tuner presets, EQ settings, or bookmarks without installing third-party software on the player, such as Hijack.

And as you need Hijack's FTP server support in order to get the tuner and EQ settings, you might as well use it for everything, especially as clients are so easy to come by. You could, in theory, use the REST command to implement rsync over FTP, but in practice, backup isn't time-critical (leave it overnight) and so it's probably more effort than it's worth. If you don't mind a dedicated empeg backup, unconditionally retrieving the dynamic partition and then retrieving config.ini and all the fids if they've changed size or date, would be good enough and probably well under an afternoon's work in python. If you additionally want the PC-side version of the music to be usable and playable, you'd have to work a bit harder, and as the obvious representation for the playlists is a symlink forest, it's not clear whether it would make sense to do that to a Windows PC.

Peter

I would not need to play the mp3s on the pc side. I have a dedicated drive just for the data. I would be 100% happy with a system that would (in as few clicks as possible) copy any changed FIDs, grab the ini, and grab the dynamic partition and simply store all that as files on the PC side. That's it. I just want something that is a recent back up so if the empeg HD dies, i can just put a fresh HD in, load the empeg software and then copy/restore the FIDs, ini file, and Dynamic Partition. I've done it before manually when i upgraded my HD and everything was restored just fine. I just want to make it easier so when i run this backup util, it will only grab what has changed since the last backup. The next best thing is to just copy everything by hand every so often when i feel like leaving the empeg for 3 days at home attached to my PC.

I'll check out the REST command. I have no experience in Python. Is there anyone out there willing to help build this util? i'm sure other empeg users would enjoy something like this.

Don't worry about the FTP REST command -- it's actually not that useful for this particular application.

If you want to hack around installing/configuring it (and redoing again after any player s/w change), then rsync is the way to go for backing up anything in the filesystem.

But for me, it's just not worth the hassle. I'll just use mirrordir over FTP from a Linux box -- nothing special (other than Hijack) required on the player end. And also use FTP to grab the dynamic data partition as one largish file. That's it. Complete.

Cheers