User talk:Der Papst

From wikiPodLinux

Table of contents

1 Alternative partitioning method 2 Help_for_Newbies 3 Awesome 1D Tetris port 4 about that 5g 5 TuneTalk Fix 6 Get around erasing all my music 7 Nano kernel 8 VMPod 9 Why do you create these pages at all if they should be deleted anyways? 10 iPod Linux Manager Video

Alternative partitioning method

Personally, I wouldn't recommend using the method you added to the 5.5G page. I'm not entirely sure what will happen (Linux, for instance, ignores partition boundaries for anything but filesystem mounting (start sector) and filesystem creation (end sector)), but I think there are 2 possibilities:

Either the host OS will complain that the FAT32 partition is corrupt when it starts to get filled up to it's end,

or the host OS will write beyond the partition marker, corrupting ext3 (and possibly complaining along the way that the FAT is broken).

So those are my arguments for not using that method. I think there is (except for making a backup and restoring it, or using a partition resizing program (which can be hard with so little space left on the device (none))) no other way to create an ext3 partition without some sort of data loss in either that partition or the music partition. My 2 cents.   DataGhost

OK.... but i have one question. Is the end of the FAT patition saved in the FAT superblock or something so that the host OS thinks that the partition is bigger? If so could it be fixed so that it equals the MBR?   Der Papst

Yes I believe it is. There is an FSINFO block, which stores the total size and free space available (IIRC), and I believe the length of the filesystem is written in the superblock. I'm not entirely sure about the structure though, it would require more in-depth knowledge of the FAT FS. Basically, what you just asked is a partition resizer... the thing Partition Magic does (but refuses for the iPod). When resizing, you should also make sure that there aren't any files at the end of the partition (yes that happens unfortunately) so they can be moved elsewhere before overwriting them with ext3. So those are the problems which need taking care of, actually :)   DataGhost

This was the only way to get TuneTalk working without using your installation method. It seems that somehow the Apple firmware fails at writing stuff to the FAT partition (at least big files) if the FAT partition is formated with linux' mkfs.vfat. And the fragmentation is indeed a problem. Would fsck be able to correct the lenght in the FSINFO block?   Der Papst

I don't know... you could try experimenting a bit with that... dd a file from /dev/zero (128MB? whatever), mkfs.vfat on that file, loopmount it, throw some stuff on, dd it to another file (96MB?) and see if running fsck helps :P and you could try some other things too, maybe you can find an easy way :)   DataGhost

What i've done:

dd if=/dev/zero of=fat.img count=256000
mkfs.vfat -F 32 -S 2048 fat.img
mount -t vfat -o loop fat.img /mnt/ipod (124.4MB of total space)
mv random_stuff /mnt/ipod/*
dd if=fat.img of=fat2.img count=200000
mount -t vfat -o loop fat2.img /mnt/ipod1

fat2.img claimes to have 124.4MB of total space available :-(

dose:/home/alex/iPL # fsck.vfat -Vvr ./fat2.img
dosfsck 2.11 (12 Mar 2005)
dosfsck 2.11, 12 Mar 2005, FAT32, LFN
Checking we can access the last sector of the filesystem
Boot sector contents:
System ID "mkdosfs"
Media byte 0xf8 (hard disk)
      2048 bytes per logical sector
      2048 bytes per cluster
        32 reserved sectors
First FAT starts at byte 65536 (sector 32)
         2 FATs, 32 bit entries
    256000 bytes per FAT (= 125 sectors)
Root directory start at cluster 2 (arbitrary size)
Data area starts at byte 577536 (sector 282)
     63718 data clusters (130494464 bytes)
32 sectors/track, 64 heads
         0 hidden sectors
     64000 sectors total
Starting check/repair pass.
Checking for unused clusters.
Checking free cluster summary.
Starting verification pass.
Checking for unused clusters.
./fat2.img: 48 files, 15978/63718 clusters

But fsck also claims that everything is ok... it doesn't even notice that fat2.img only has about 100MB of total space. But if i do it on my iPod i get the following:

dose:/home/alex/iPL # fsck.vfat -Vvr /dev/sdb2
dosfsck 2.11 (12 Mar 2005)
dosfsck 2.11, 12 Mar 2005, FAT32, LFN
Checking we can access the last sector of the filesystem
Seek to 79883913216:Invalid argument

  Der Papst

Help_for_Newbies

I changed it a lot. Take a look. Tell me if theres still some problems with it, and i'll be happy to fix them. --Fiftyfour123

Awesome 1D Tetris port

It's one of my all time favorite games, and now I can play it anywhere! --Nintendorulez 09:09, 31 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Thank you :-D   Der Papst

about that 5g

Hello Heh, i guess i have made mistake, i thought it was /dev/xxx2 :) By the way, arm-uclinux-elf-tools-base-gcc3.4.3-20050722.sh doesnt contain gzipped tar file, its tar.bz2 (100% this time) so, most of users must get error and they'll need to change "gunzip" with "bunzip2" @ string 39. I have encountered this thing... --GioMac

TuneTalk Fix

I have an 80GB 5.5G with iPodLinux installed and I'm having major problems with the Belkin TuneTalk that I just bought. It sounds like you ran into some problems. I'm getting mostly static when I use the recorder. It works on other ipods.

Based on this page, it looks like there might be some problems with the alternate formating method you proposed. Are you using that method without problem?

Thanks for any help. BTW, I'm glad you won that TuneTalk. You are the only reference I found to anyone being in a similar circumstance to me. --TheMaxDaddy

My iPod is still formated with this alternative method and i didn't run in any problems so far. The thing is i'll probably do some day which results in a corrupted FAT32 and EXT3 partition if i copy too much stuff to my iPod.

This issue is maybe a small bug in makefs but i'm not 100% sure. I heard of a similar probelm with rockbox ("installation incomplete" error message) on 30GB 5.5G iPod and formating it with Windows solved the problem. So i tried to format my 80GB iPod in Windows but Windows doesn't like my iPod so i couldn't format it there (dunno why but maybe you have more luck).

DataGhost suggested a tool (if i remeber correctly it was called "mtools") to format the iPod instead of using makefs. I haven't tried it yet. So i don't know how to use it nor where to get it. If you find out anything please keep me informed. ;-)   Der Papst

Get around erasing all my music

Is there a way to get around erasing all my music when it says "complicated suspend-to-disk logic" when first installing? --Mrmojorisintanne

I've never heared of anything that says something like "complicated suspend-to-disk logic".

If you have a MacPod you don't have to delete anything. If you have a WinPod you can try out Installation:_Winpod_without_datacorruption. But i'm not familiar with this installation method.

A few site notes: Please don't put your entire question in a headline, put your question/comment at the end of the talk page and sign your comments.   Der Papst

Nano kernel

This is so funny, you have no idea :P Anyway, I decided I'd just fix that damn kernel so that would be over, so I searched for my patch. Grepping for 'nano', I stumbled upon a .bin file with a date :) funny thing is, I made a binary version of that kernel immediately with the patch and then forgot to link it anywhere (judging by my access log, almost 5000 downloads for the 20060303 kernel opposed to 5 for the nano-fixed kernel). Possibly this was because the patch was about to be merged in CVS and made available through a nightly. So, since this didn't quite happen, I forgot about that thing altogether and took a few months doing other stuff than iPL.

Anyway, here it is:

http://ipl.dataghost.com/nano-buffers-fix-20070318.bin

http://ipl.dataghost.com/nano-buffers-fix-20070318.bin.md5

Old hosting, CNAME will be redirected to stack.dataghost.com in a bit, so no 404s will occur (ipl.dataghost.com = stack.dataghost.com/ipl/)

http://de.dataghost.com/ipl/nano-buffers-fix-20070318.bin

http://de.dataghost.com/ipl/nano-buffers-fix-20070318.bin.md5

By the way, reason for the message is that you aren't on IRC right now and I'll be away this weekend (leaving in 7,5 hours) so I'm pretty sure that I won't catch you before I go and not entirely sure if I'll be able to talk to you this weekend :) --  DataGhost

Wheee... thanks :-D

I'll add that to the download page. Thank you :)   Der Papst

VMPod

Why did you delete VMPod? Megabyte already had a beta version out and I was going to put it on the wiki as soon as he got home from his girls friend's house, becasue he said he can't upload it at the moment. Thank you Brarei200 19:09, 2 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Please read the Editing Guidelines again. There it clearly says that you have to publish fully working source code (meaning i can compile it and use it on the iPod) and maybe a binary too with the very first edit of that page. All you have referred to is where i can get the source code and i don't think that it will perfectly work on the iPod without adaptation.

And i don't care if megabyte got it working at 150% with all the buttons working as long as he hasn't published anything. When he has prove it to me and i will happily resore your page again.   Der Papst

Why do you create these pages at all if they should be deleted anyways?

This page's history was broken, b/c the page used to exist. I look for pages by clicking on Random page and that popped up.

iPod Linux Manager Video

So the sysinfo fix isn't required for ipodlinux manager? Because it was the only way I could get installer 2 to work--Blastinonyall 19:46, 7 Sep 2007 (CDT)

Nope Brarei200 20:38, 7 Sep 2007 (CDT)brarei200

Alright, I'll edit my video then. Thanks--Blastinonyall 20:41, 7 Sep 2007 (CDT)