New unit. Loaded about 4 cd's.Worked fine.Upgraded to 2.0b11.worked fine.Loaded another4cd's.worked fine.Added some more and unit hung up on synchronizing so i removed power wire and reconnected power wire now player is locked at "building music datbase".Found a similar problem by doing a search here but i need a more "user friendly" explaination.Says something about reading whats on serial output.Ok how do i do that? Etc.Etc
Mike

I don't know what that other thread you refer to says, but here is about serial bit (and before others jump in, read the whole FAQ, of course ):

Connect your player to your computer via supplied serial cable. Fire up your favourite terminal emulator (Windows comes with Hyperterminal). Configure it for 115200 bps, 8 data bits, 1 stop, no parity, no handshake (neither hardware nor Xon/Xoff). Reboot the player by cycling the power. Observe (better yet, capture) serial output on your terminal emulator.

If the symptoms persist, describe them in detail and attach the captured serial output.

Good luck!

Here is the similar thread (i think) http://empeg.comms.net/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=empeg_general&Number=53639&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1
This is what comes up when i get the hyperterminal connection done ; EXT2-fs error (device ide0(3,4)): ext2_readdir: bad entry in directory #2049: re
c_len % 4 != 0 - offset=1476, inode=68731, rec_len=13, name_len=5
Remounting filesystem read-only This just keeps repeating itself.Unfortunately for me its hard to read the FAQ when i dont really know what to look for Mike

Should i put this question in a different category?does anyone know where i can get help? Mike

does anyone know where i can get help?

I don't know a solution for you, perhaps somone on the BBS will post one for you soon. In the meantime, there always genuine tech support from the company, click here.

If you can install the "car2-developer" upgrade, then you can fix this yourself (afterwards) by hitting "Control^C" to get a shell prompt, and then do "fsck -fay /dev/hda4".

-ml

Thanks Ill try that. Is there a chance i would make it worse or damage anything if i did something wrong?Mike

Your primary music partition seeme to be sick. While it is usually caused by a hardware mallfunction, let's first suppose the culprit is an extreme case of yanking the power off while the disk tries to write.

As Mark suggests, try to load development SW, then follow directions for fscking in the FAQ. (Your situation is different, but the procedure outlined there still applies.)

Edit: It just occured to me: did you perhaps removed the power while empeg was in (seemingly endless) 'checking media' phase? This is a Bad Thing (TM). Anyway, after you ressurect your player, install Mark's Hijack kernek which has an option to skip those checks (unless they are *really* necessary).

In reply to:

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EXT2-fs error (device ide0(3,4)): ext2_readdir: bad entry in directory #2049: re
c_len % 4 != 0 - offset=1476, inode=68731, rec_len=13, name_len=5
Remounting filesystem read-only

---

Sounds like your ext2fs (that's the filesystem the empeg runs on) isn't very happy with itself.

Possible solutions:

1> from the serial terminal, hit q to get to a shell prompt. Then, type rw and rwm to mount the drives read-write. If it lets to do this, then wait a minute or so, then pull the power. Next time it syncs, it will force a filesystem check.

2> if the rw and rwm doesn't work, try fsck -fay /dev/hda4.

3> It that doesn't work (which is possible), and you haven't uploaded much music, you could always load the diskbuilder images from www.empeg.com, and then reapply the player image. This will completely destroy the existing files and filesystems, and start you from scratch. If you let the builder image run for a bit, it will test the drives, to determine if they are going bad.

And of course, if none of this works, follow Tony's advice and contact support.

Don't you hate it when three people respond at the same time... There ought to be a feature locking the thread to prevent this...

Not so bad - you remembered to mention rebuilding the disk from the scratch, I found a way to include FAQ reference

Actually, before writing a long answer, one could take a peek at online users list to check whether anybody ales is doing that. However, since looking there and starting the answer is not an atomic operation, we have a classical race condition here

Not so bad - you remembered to mention rebuilding the disk from the scratch, I found a way to include FAQ reference


That's true... The more I think about it, the better I feel about including the drive builder in the response. If I had only loaded a few albums on a new player and it crapped out, I'd personally want to MAKE sure that the drives were ok. The Builder does that for you.

Better to know before you start loading 3000+ songs...

>Thanks Ill try that. Is there a chance i would make it worse
>or damage anything if i did something wrong?

Yes, there is a small chance you might lose some music already loaded on the machine, and have to re-download it again. Very small chance.

But the real question is whether or not the car2-developer image will even install under these circumstances.. it should, I think. At the end, it may end up looping the same as above (actually, it WILL), but then just do the "Control^C" and then these commands:

  mount -n /dev/hda4 /drive0 -oremount,ro

  fsck -fay /dev/hda4

  sync

and it might behave after that.

You won't damage the hardware.. worst case, if all else fails, you can just reinitialize the unit and start over.

-ml

ok I installed Developer image. the front panel now reads BUILDER IMAGE DRIVE APPEAR TO BE ALREADY BUILT. SKIPPING TO SHELL. I dont mind reinitailizing the unit and starting over but how do i do that?I cant wait to get this worked out because this thing is awesome!!!! Mike

Click on the "Latest S/W" link at the top of BBS pages, from there click on "empeg car utilities", and grab/run the "Test builder image" for your Mark II player.

I've never done this, so if you have any issues, somebody else will have to help out.

Cheers

It appears at this point ive got it back up and running thank you to all that helped Being that im still a newbie should i go back to using version 1.03 that came with unit or keep the 2.0b11 thats on there now?Mike

It's always advisable to stay at the latest stable version (1.03 in this case) until you have everything working well. On a new empeg, I wouldn't put the beta's on until you know the system is stable, and not a hardware issue instead of the software.