Okay I upgraded the HD to 40gb from 20gb. I replaced the 20gb drive with 1 IBM 40gig travelstar so I can add another 40gb in a few weeks.

The upgrade went smooth and was pretty easy. I ran builder on the HD and then installed beta 13. The player boots up fine like normal but now when I try to access the player through emplode it wants to check the disk integrity and it hangs there. Anyone have a problem like this before or know why it might be doing this?

TIA.

Cblake

but now when I try to access the player through emplode it wants to check the disk integrity and it hangs there.

Did you hand-copy the files from the old 20 to the new 40? Using those shell commands you found in the upgrade guide?

If so, odds are you simply forgot to RO the disk drive before pulling the power, and it's doing a standard integrity check.

Note that when Emplode does an integrity check, it looks like it's hung, but it's not. It's just taking a long time. Those 40s take a long time to FSCK. You probably pulled the power without giving it a chance to finish the FSCK.

So you're probably at the point you need to do a manual FSCK.

This is, I think, the second or third time that someone's complained that emplode is locked up on "checking disk integrity", so that's 'frequent' enough for me to add a FAQ entry.

I think you just need to be very very patient and let Emplode do it's stuff. I had the same thing happen to me recently after a drive upgrade.

Okay, new FAQ entry in place.

thanks for the help. I let emplode run for awhile the first time but it just kept checking the disck integrity and the player itself said synchronising. I thought it was hung up but obviously not.

So now I have to manually FSCK? How long usually would you say it takes for emplode to check disk integrity. I am trying to do it now and its been running for atleast 10min.

Thanks.

all is well.. thanx!

Okay, new FAQ entry in place.

Perhaps it should give a rough time estimate? People's capacity for patience seems to vary widely . How about a sentence like, "If it has taken more than about a minute for every 2Gb -- say, 20 minutes for a 40Gb player -- then you might have an actual problem, but otherwise you probably don't." ?

It is all a bit rubbish on our part, really; we'll do better post-2.0. We'll almost certainly integrate ext3, for one thing.

Peter

Greetings!

What would the upgrade path be like for ext3? I have been stubbornly holding to ext2 to make certain I am still compatable (plus I am lazy...).

It is all a bit rubbish on our part, really; we'll do better post-2.0. We'll almost certainly integrate ext3, for one thing.

Please remove the 'almost'!

In general, the conversion from ext2 to ext3 is trivial. It's basically the same filesystem on disk, with ext3 grabbing a specific inode to hold journalling information. In fact, an ext3 filesystem can be mounted as ext2 with no changes -- you just don't get the journal facility. Under ``normal'' linux, to convert an ext2 filesystem to ext3 requires running one command that takes under a second to complete (it just grabs that inode and sets it up IIRC).

So, without being definitive, the upgrade path could be transparent, and should at least be trivial.

a minute for every 2Gb

Okay, will integrate this time factor now. The only reason I didn't have it before was that I didn't have accurate figures.

Normally, how many synchs between disk checks?

I'm having trouble seaching for info on ext3 at riocar.org because it is too short of a term to search for (?). And I've seen quite a few posts on the topic here, but it usually requires reading 5 or so pages of posts which leaves my head spinning sometimes. Is there a tutorial for switching to ext3 manually? I'm up to 108GB on my player and I'm going to buy one of those 80GB drives before May - am I a candidate for this?

I'm having trouble seaching for info on ext3 at riocar.org because it is too short of a term to search for (?).

Yeah, that was one draback of the search-system upgrade. Search terms must be more than four characters now. They're going to work around that if they can. But hey, we get fuzzy searches on the FAQ now!

Anyway, even if you could search on that term, you wouldn't find it in the FAQ. I've left it out because I don't want to popularize it at the moment. Converting to EXT3 isn't something you should do unless you really know what you're doing. You could get yourself into trouble. If, post-2.0, the empeg's default software supports that type of file system, then it will all be made transparent to you. But until then, unless you've got a really good reason and you know exactly what you're doing, I would recommend against messing with EXT3.

Okay, will integrate this time factor now. The only reason I didn't have it before was that I didn't have accurate figures.

TBH, I don't either (we didn't intend for it to go so long between progress updates, but fsck "pauses" for much longer than we anticipated on very big, very full disks). That guesstimate was largely based on the timestamps on this BBS's collection of "Oh, ignore my previous post, it's done it now" messages

Normally, how many synchs between disk checks?

20, or six months, whichever happens first.

Peter

So, without being definitive, the upgrade path could be transparent, and should at least be trivial.

Yes, I expect so too. The only time you'd get in any trouble, is if your disk is so full that there's no room for the journal. We're still working on how best to word a dialog box that says "Please delete some of your music, it's for the best in the long run"...

Peter

We're still working on how best to word a dialog box that says "Please delete some of your music, it's for the best in the long run"...

Forget dialogs, just have the sync process look for anything from Britney Spears, N'Sync, or similar and automatically delete those to free up space for the journal.

until then, unless you've got a really good reason and you know exactly what you're doing, I would recommend against messing with EXT3.

If on the other hand you like to play with stuff like this and you realize that this isn't that big of a deal and you have a backup of your music on the off chance something goes really wrong (to the best of my knowledge nobody has lost any data to ext3 on the empeg) go here.

-Mike

We'll almost certainly integrate ext3, for one thing.

Oohh, I am being made redundant. Does that mean we would get a 2.4 kernel as well or would you use the (less supported) 2.2 ext3?

-Mike

20, or six months, whichever happens first.

Thanks!