As I posted before, beta8c "Rebuilds the database" everytime I power on the unit; and I can't sync with emplode.

So I upgraded to beta9 today and the unit hangs as it tries to start playing a song..... Can't connect to the unit at all with the new emplode.

So, back to 8c and it works as before (well thats better than no music at all).

So, back to 9 and it still hangs (if I'm really quick I can change to radio before it hangs).

I'm about to try the developers image and check the partition.

Before I start guessing, what are the steps?
1. connect via serial port
2. get a shell
3. remount the partition RW
4. fsck
5. reboot

That's my guess... anybody care to fill in the details and exact commands to type?? :-)



6GB, Blue, S/N 00272, Q 5001

Well, if it's any consolation, my player works fine with beta 9 except for the specific EQ oddities I'm reporting. I get no hangs. It's probably a database issue- I'll bet there's some sort of database error that 8c tolerates but 9 doesn't.

Sorry I can't help you with fsck, I haven't run it before.

The first boot with the developer image (beta9) came up OK.
Emplode tried to start to sync and I got the same error I got with 8c "The sync process failed during stage 3 with error 0xffffffe" (or some # of f's anyway).

Now the reboots fail sometimes; work sometimes....

Still waiting for the info about how to do an fsck.


6GB, Blue, S/N 00272, Q 5001

Well here I go myself.....
(The answer is at the bottom, but the problem was the disk was 100% full)

1. connect to the player on com1 at 115200, no parity, 8 data bits, 1 parity, no handshaking (using hyperterminal under windoze)
2. hit Q to get a shell running bash
3. cd /
4. umount /drive0
5. mount -rw /dev/hda4 /drive0
6. fsdk /drive0
7. wait a LONG time
8. umount /drive0
9. pull power to reboot unit
10. watching debug output:
empeg-car 0.81 beta9 pre-release.
E #W tags.cpp 62 ( 7): Failed to read tags.
E #W player.cpp 196 ( 7): Static database is unavailable, building.
E tunedatabase.cpp 702 ( 7): Database count = 1671
E #W fidfile.cpp 252 ( 7): Failed to open file '/empeg/var/database' for prep
aration. errno=30
E #W tunedatabase.cpp 755 ( 7): Failed to prepare static tune database -30.
11. This doesn't look good..... But my "old" playlists are still good.
12. STILL!! can't sync with emplode under windows....
13. Part of te emplode sequence...
E player.cpp 697 ( 25): Saving static database.
E #W tunedatabase.cpp 767 ( 25): Failed to save static tune database.
E player.cpp 715 ( 25): Invalidating saved playlist.
E cache.h 52 ( 25): Caching is now enabled
E server.cpp 945 ( 25): REBUILD response=-2
E server.cpp 184 ( 25): Got an ACK: 2
E server.cpp 430 ( 25): MOUNT partition=0, mode=0
E server.cpp 461 ( 25): MOUNT0 result=0.
E server.cpp 472 ( 25): Drive 1 doesn't appear to be present.
E server.cpp 491 ( 25): MOUNT result=0
E server.cpp 184 ( 25): Got an ACK: 12
E server.cpp 565 ( 25): COMMAND command=0, param0=1 param1=0
\x19\x0dE server.cpp 184 ( 25): Got an ACK: 0
E server.cpp 202 ( 25): PING id 3a
E server.cpp 1198 ( 7): ReturnToSafeState called.

E #W fidfile.cpp 252 ( 7): Failed to open file '/empeg/var/tags' for preparat
ion. errno=30
E #W player.cpp 210 ( 7): Playlist database is unavailable, building.
E #W fidfile.cpp 252 ( 7): Failed to open file '/empeg/var/playlists' for pre
paration. errno=30
E #W tunedatabase.cpp 899 ( 7): Failed to prepare playlist database -30.
14. I poke around and it looks like the disk is FULL; a "mkdir /drive0/junk" said it had no room!!
15. I removed the last files in my /drive0/fids/ dir (ff0 and ff1)
(make sure the disk is in RW mode before removing any files)
umount /drive0
mount -n -o rw /dev/hda4 /drive0
16. Trying emplode now....
17. Finally!!!!!! I'm in; so the freaking disk was 100% full.


6GB, Blue, S/N 00272, Q 5001

Ah, so everything is fine now that you've freed up some hard disk space?

Okay, then suggestion time:

1) Upgrade tool needs to check and warn the user if the hard disk is full (or nearly full) as part of the upgrade process. This is vital, because what if the user fills it almost full, then the upgrade OS ends up being bigger than the original OS?

2) Emplode needs to warn the user when the hard disk is full (or nearly full).

I've only been in situations where I overdid the hard disk space in the process of a synch, and it failed immediately, and I knew what it was. But it didn't fail gracefully, it gave me one of those "bad report card" (FFFFF...) errors. The average consumer would panic at an error like that, whereas a friendly message telling them the disk is full would be much less likely to generate a tech support call.

So now that you've got it all working, would you like to try to reproduce my EQ issues? See if it's just me?

Kedl, I take back what I said about Beta 9 being OK for me. Did you read my last post?

OK, beta9 had some problems. Here's some information you might find useful though:

1. Upgrades are applied to a completely different partition. It doesn't matter how much space you have on your music partition.

2. Yes, we do plan to make emplode keep track of disk space. I was hoping to get it into beta9 but it didn't make it :-(

3. The problems you were seeing in beta9 may not have been due to your disk being close to full. The consumer version of beta9 was inherently unstable due to memory overcommitment. I notice you were later running the developer version though.

4. You can use 'rwm' and 'rom' to switch between the disk being mounted readwrite and readonly without unmounting it.

--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)