Bad Synchronization / messed up my Empeg / HELP!

HELP!

I was uploading some files to the Empeg a couple days ago. The synchronization failed, which usually isn't a very big deal, I can just re-synch it, and everything's ok.

Well, this time it's bad. I can't get the empeg to play anything, or switch playlists, although it says it's still on the last playlist I was on before the last synch. Emplode won't recognize the Empeg on either the USB or COM ports, so I'm stuck. I opened up Hyperterminal, and it can see the Empeg on the COM1 port, so I'm assuming I need to do some kind of hacker magic to get this back from the dead. Someone please guide the way! I'm clueless beyond Emplode. Here's the Hyperterminal boot screen in case it helps:

------------------------------------


empeg-car bootstrap v1.02 20001106 ([email protected])
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
If there is anyone present who wants to upgrade the flash, let them speak now,
or forever hold their peace...it seems not. Let fly the Penguins of Linux!

e000 v1.04
Copying kernel...
Calling linux kernel...
Uncompressing Linux..................................... done, booting the kerne
l.
Linux version 2.2.14-rmk5-np17-empeg50 ([email protected]) (gcc versi
on 2.95.3 20010315 (release)) #8 Fri Feb 8 18:48:15 GMT 2002
Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100
empeg-car player (hardware revision 9, serial number 30102252)
Command line: mem=16m
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 15024k/16M available (964k code, 20k reserved, 372k data, 4k init)
Dentry hash table entries: 2048 (order 2, 16k)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 16384 (order 4, 64k)
Page cache hash table entries: 4096 (order 2, 16k)
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
Based upon Swansea Universit
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
TCP: Hash tables configured (ehash 16384 bhash 16384)
IrDA (tm) Protocols for Linux-2.2 (Dag Brattli)
Linux-IrDA: IrCOMM protocol ( revision:Tue May 18 03:11:39 1999 )
ircomm_tty: virtual tty driver for IrCOMM ( revision:Wed May 26 00:49:11 1999 )
Starting kswapd v 1.5
SA1100 serial driver version 4.27 with no serial options enabled
ttyS00 at 0xf8010000 (irq = 15) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS01 at 0xf8050000 (irq = 17) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS02 at 0xf8030000 (irq = 16) is a SA1100 UART
Signature is 67706d65 'empg'
Scheduling custom logo.
empeg display initialised.
empeg dsp audio initialised
empeg dsp mixer initialised
empeg dsp initialised
empeg audio-in initialised, CS4231A revision a0
empeg remote control/panel button initialised.
empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0005080).
empeg RDS driver initialised
empeg power-pic driver initialised (first boot)
RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM
empeg single channel IDE
Probing primary interface...
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hda: IBM-DJSA-220, 19077MB w/1874kB Cache, CHS=38760/16/63
empeg-flash driver initialized
smc chip id/revision 0x3349
smc9194.c:v0.12 03/06/96 by Erik Stahlman ([email protected])

SMC9194: SMC91C94(r:9) at 0x4008000 IRQ:7 INTF:TP MEM:6144b MAC 00:02:d7:26:08:c
c
Partition check:
hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6 > hda2 hda3 hda4
RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: Loading 320 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
EXT2-fs warning: checktime reached, running e2fsck is recommended
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
empeg-pump v0.03 (19980601)
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 player.cpp : 385:empeg-car 2.00-be
ta11 2002/02/08.
Prolux 4 empeg car - 2.1434 Feb 7 2002
Vcb: 0x4090c000


thanks for any and all help...

~jason

My guess is that the database is screwed up.

Grab the latest official 'development' kernel, install it using logoedit. (Make sure you close hyperterminal first)

Then open hyperterminal and boot. Hold down Ctrl and press C. Then type:

rwm
rm /drive0/var/database
ro


Then reboot. The database should get rebuilt.

where do i find this latest development kernel?

rwm
rm /drive0/var/database
ro

Don't you mean rom not ro? And the FAQ entry on this topic is here for reference...

No, I did intentionally type 'ro'.

A little un-advertised feature of 'ro' is that it remounts the music paritions ro as well as the root. Although 'rom' would have worked equally well in this situation, ro will insure that all offical empeg partitions are made safe.

(Doesn't handle /programs0 or /programs1 as I didn't want to change the empeg offical utilities, hence 'rop')

Oh.

So my FAQ instructions are overkill.

so when i do this:

rwm
rm /drive0/var/database
ro

is there a carriage return after each line? i'm still getting errors, although the com port can see my empeg through emplode now. it's still getting errors trying to build the database.

here's the emplode message now:

Download failed while rebuilding database.
Error 0xc0041002

any suggestions? thanks!

Can I??? FAQ.

Seriously... 0xC0041002 is "No such file or directory" from the lookup utility.

Hm. 0xC0041002 is "No such file or directory" .

Did you install a third-party application to run from the music partition, and that's killing your synchs?

nope... no third party apps. could my drive name be something other than "drive0"? when doing the rm /drive0/var/database, i get "No such file or directory"...

Oooo, pebble snatched! You're outta here, grasshopper!

Greetings!

If you have the developer version loaded, you can drop to shell and:

rw
rwm
cd /drive0/var
rm database*
rm tags
rm playlist*
player

Note: Running the player from shell like this without the database files there will force the player to rebuild them. With the drives read/write will allow the player to save the files back to /drive0/var. After the player application is loaded, type "q" to exit back to shell. It should reset the drives to read only, but just in case...

rom
ro
exit and reboot.

Try your sync now.

when i ls -la to view the directories, i see no database, tags, or playlist files or directories. is this bad?

Not bad, assuming you are in the right directory. You should still see a config.ini file. It means that they are not there. They can be rebuilt. Do the steps I stated above, but don't worry about the rm filename steps. Since the files are already deleted, you don't have to worry about that bit.

what directory is the config.ini file supposed to be in? i don't see that either.

Hmmm... Do a "pwd" or a "cd /drive0/var" and "ls -al".

no luck. i don't see the config.ini anywhere

Okay.

I am not sure if the file has been deleted, or if you are in the wrong directory.

My recommendation at the moment is to put the player back into read only mode ("rom" and then "ro"), reboot the player (it may take a bit of time as it will need to find / rebuild databases) and attempt another sync.

no luck all day long. should i be emailing support at this point?

Worst case, you can always reload the kernel. Anyone else have recommendations?

is reloading the kernel the same thing as upgrading? or is it different files? (excuse my lack of knowledge, i haven't hacked into this much since i've had it)

I think that Paul meant 'upgrade' file. Replacing just the kernel won't help you any at this stage. I'm not sure exactly what's going on, but a missing config.ini isn't helping.

Grab the 2.0beta13 developer image and upgrade it. (Make sure that you're running 2.0beta13 Emplode...uninstall and upgrade if necessary)

at this point, i've run the "builder" upgrade to wipe the hard drive, upgraded to developer beta2.13, downgraded to developer 1.03, re-upgraded to developer beta2.13, and everything in between. no luck. could it be a bad sector on the hard drive or something? is there a way to completely reformat the hard drive?

Greetings!

The builder software will do that. If you have already used it, it would have wiped everything on the player. I meant to use the upgrade software and load the developer version 2.0beta13.

ok... i guess i'm in real trouble. i'm trying to run the builder software this morning to reformat the hard drive, and i'm getting this error:

Error "Bad pump response to device selected" occurred during stage 0x20

HELP!

Do you have anything else that is trying to access the serial port when you are trying to flash? Retry flashing (upgrade utility) with the most recent builder program. If your drives are already built, you may need to enter hyperterm (after the flash is complete and the player reboots) to confirm the rebuild.

How did you download the .image files?

You might want to make another try while using something like GetRight (see this FAQ). You could also get a md5sum utility and run on the files and ask here for what other people get with known good files....

As the FAQ says, could also be a disk/cable issue...

Another general software upgrade FAQ

/Michael

ahhhh... finally. success. what a scare. i just ran the builder software again (for the third time), and let the stress test cycle for about an hour. then put the developer 2.13 upgrade in. it finally rebuilt the database, and is now uploading tracks. hopefully it's all done and better. i wonder if i was doing something wrong on the reformat, or it was a disk error/problem? anyway. thanks for all the help. again. this board rocks!