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nomadness.net: Forums NJB3 filesystem Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3          Nomadness.net Forum Index -> Firmware Hacks View previous topic :: View next topic   Author Message quetzalcoatl Regular Joined: Feb 28, 2004 Posts: 43 Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2006 11:11 pm    Post subject: JakeAmes wrote: If you guys can figure out to 'fix the big hard drive ie 80-100-? GB' playlist bug, I would probably send money! I am not a programmer nor micro code kind of guy and there is little I can contribute (Al-G has done more than what I could do) but I confident that there is a signficant community out there of folks who would be VERY happy if there was a solution to the big hard drive issue on JB3/Zen Xtra's. cheers, jake Unfortunatelly I know nothing about issues with playlists :\ I didn't either look at their structure yet, but I can compare them, why not I remember that I heard once that there is maximum number of tracks possible to be uploaded, around 65536 files. I can only add to this, that the system-space is limited to 19MB, and whole system data *must* fit in this limit. Assuming that total information about a file eats 200bytes, that gives a hard limit of ~90.000 tracks. Of course not only track information is stored in this 19MB, so its very likely for the limit to be far less, and about those 65k :/ but that should not be the issue.. assuming 65k mp3s, 6mb each, that gives 384Gb of data.. so theres no reasonable way that 80gig drive could have more mp3 than fits on the index.. I'll check it. In the mean time, it'd be great if you could give me some more info about the problem, especially: * if it is only the playlists that stopped working at 80gig drive? * are those completely inoperatible? what exaclty happens when you try to use it? system hangs up? nothing happens and rest of functions still work? * is the inoperability (what a word ) related in any way to the number of tracks uploaded (for example, works with 1 track, stops with 100 tracks) or the size of the data uploaded? or time? i mean, everything worked ideally, but after uploading Nth tracks it went crazy? * any strange or interesting things you have noticed? or differences in behaviour in comparison to smaller drives? Back to top quetzalcoatl Regular Joined: Feb 28, 2004 Posts: 43 Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 10:15 am    Post subject: no good news again.. whole last week I spent on searching for a bug that results in kernel's OOPS whenever an inode is read.. I found 2 minor and one major bug (all of them were typos.. but that last one could be disastrous) accidentially but I still didn't found *that* bug. And that strange, because I have reviewed almost 90% of the code that is run during reading inode and eveything is clear :/ Back to top Vido Regular Joined: Oct 08, 2002 Posts: 83 Location: The Netherlands Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 2:14 pm    Post subject: About the playlist bug: There are some long threads on the new Nomad Newsgroup. I have this one: once my disk contained more than approx. 64 GB, all playlist changes (done via edits in Notmad explorer) resulted in the message <<error>> when trying to invoke such a playlist from the JB3 itself. The playlists are perfectly OK, however, because they are accessible and playable via the computer interface. I just this week noticed that I can still save the 'now-playing list' as a playlist, but I neither can play it from the JB3 interface. When checked in notmad, this playlist exists and has exactly the tracks which were on the 'now-playing list'. Reducing the amount of files below the limit does not resolve the issue. The only way out is formatting the drive, and reloading all content up to say 63 GB, then restoring all playlists and then restoring the remainder of the tracks (which are not in playlists) and then: don't make any changes to the playlists. BTW, does anybody know how to transfer back all playlists at once? With Notmad, I only was able to do it one by one (which is a quite big job with several hunderd playlists...). I really look forward to new developments in this thread! Hopefully creative will let us solve this issue ourselves, as they do not give any support for these few nasty bugs which are in the last firmware! V!do Back to top JakeAmes Regular Joined: Jan 11, 2002 Posts: 298 Location: North Vancouver, BC Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 6:21 am    Post subject: quetzalcoatl wrote: In the mean time, it'd be great if you could give me some more info about the problem, especially: * if it is only the playlists that stopped working at 80gig drive? * are those completely inoperatible? what exaclty happens when you try to use it? system hangs up? nothing happens and rest of functions still work? * is the inoperability (what a word ) related in any way to the number of tracks uploaded (for example, works with 1 track, stops with 100 tracks) or the size of the data uploaded? or time? i mean, everything worked ideally, but after uploading Nth tracks it went crazy? * any strange or interesting things you have noticed? or differences in behaviour in comparison to smaller drives? At 60GB my JB3 was perfect. I moved to 100GB Jan05, firmware 1.40.06p (latest), driver I am not 100% sure, I think was 1.27. Filled the drive at about 17500 tracks maybe 200MB free. Created about 35 or so playlists and started using the player. Some playlists worked, some did not. I had noted other posters had odd things happen to playlists with an 80GB drive but thought nothing of it. On my player, the playlist shows up in the Player UI and can be selected but when played (nothing happens no songs in the active queue), when opened, an error pops up. Hitting the back button sets everying back as it was. Everything worked well except for playback, viewing and editing of playlists on the player. About Aug05 I started looking at the issue a lot more closely. There is a lengthy and detailed thread at the http://www.jumpingcholla.com/jce_nomad.htm sponsored NG for creative players. Point your news reader to news.jumpingcholla.com, subscribe the various groups (not that many) then bowse the njb1-2-3 group. Summary, as of Aug05 I was able to play some playlists from the player but I could play all, see all and edit all from a host computer. I could not make a playlist on the go. The PL name would be there but there was nothing behind it. As I tried to trouble shoot, I ended up with zero working playlists. I tried several complete formats and transfers then playlist creation etc. Nothing I tried got me back to the point I had when I first installed and transferred to the player which was partial playlist functionality. This included uninstalling all Creative software on one of my computers, then installing an older version of MediaSource with an earlier driver. (Up to Mar.05 I also used a MuVo²4 so had whatever driver would drive both, after that I got a micro and moved the software to newer driver). You can imagine how time consuming moving 95GB of music on and off an mp3 player can be ... At the moment I have no playlists on my JB3 and I have about 17000 tracks. I have monkeyed with some of the tags to allow me to have semi playlist capabilty. Mind you, I am listening to a heck of a lot of stuff I hadn't in a long time becaue of playing full genres! Not sure what I could do to help on this, but my posts at JCE's were pretty detailed if you want to wade through those. cheers, jake _________________ "it's all about the music!" Back to top quetzalcoatl Regular Joined: Feb 28, 2004 Posts: 43 Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 12:41 am    Post subject: JamesArnes - surely I'll look there, thanks for directions! Vido - so, it seems that once a fragmetn of a playlist get saved after that 64g boundary, the playlist becomes unusable by device's software.. the position of data on the disk is stored as number of 8kB cluster in which the data were written.. the last cluster usable at 64G boundary would written as 0x7FFFFF and first sluster unusable would be neext - 0x800000.. it a bit strange, because it would indicate that the firmware uses only 23 of 32 bits available to store the position.. If this is the case, then the problem can be solved partially - theoretically*) there is no problem in writing a "playlist defragmenter" that will relocate all the playlists to the begining of the volume and move the song(s) that were there somewhere further. Sucha thing wouldnt take long, as playlists are relatively short and it would be probably only 8kb per playlist to move. After such operation all the playlists would become usable:) but this would be needed to be done after any modifications and the playlists still would get broken after being modified on player probably.. theoretically*) - I can tell you that this is qute easy to be done.. but with my luck can take long time i'm still stuck on that dumb inode thing.. for the second week.. so much time on one dumb typo somewhere:| i fear even about imagining what could happen when debugging defragmenting operation ;p Back to top Al_G Regular Joined: Dec 30, 2003 Posts: 90 Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 6:27 am    Post subject: quetzalcoatl wrote: theoretically*) - I can tell you that this is quite easy to be done.. but with my luck can take long time i'm still stuck on that dumb inode thing.. for the second week.. so much time on one dumb typo somewhere:| i fear even about imagining what could happen when debugging defragmenting operation ;p I'm also very interested in any solutions for the playlist bug. The 60GB+ limit seems to be key as I have half as many tracks as Jake (I used --alt-preset extreme and now --alt-preset fast extreme) I have those HD dumps for the 80GB drive if you need them - you have my email address. I also volunteer for any testing. -- Alan Back to top quetzalcoatl Regular Joined: Feb 28, 2004 Posts: 43 Posted: Sat Apr 08, 2006 1:25 pm    Post subject: I'm sorry, but I have forgot about those images completely I'm totally after that friggin' bug that I have stumbled upon 3, maybe 4 weeks ago and I still try to get what the hell is going on.. I have found and repaired 4 other things, but still I cant get why VFS inodes created by my drivers arent freed when the FS is unmounted.. it wouldnt be so bad, but the thing somehow damages the VFS layer it self in meantime, and it causes random damages to the other non-readonly mounted filesystems :/ I just dont get it. I've got 99% of code, that is almost whole reading and setup functionality just ripped of the filesystem's BFS sourcecode and modified to read properly from the MINIFS and doh! i just dont get it.. :/ Back to top Anonymuos Regular Joined: Dec 27, 2002 Posts: 42 Posted: Fri May 19, 2006 2:04 pm    Post subject: I was so happy when I saw this thread because I have been having a problem I didnt know how to fix and now it seems there is a way to do it. I was trying to support my favourite artists and buy music from them. Since I consider CD's useless for me because I am only going to rip them and then they will just sit there collecting dust, I came to the conclusion that downloading music legally would be the best option. After finding a cheap local downloading service that was legal (with music from my country), I decided to buy the music I wanted. After investing money into a music collection of good quality and with the selection of music I like, I was satisfied. The collection consisted of WMA music of high bitrate (good quality), but had a downside to it. Every file had DRM on it with certain restrictions such as not being allowed to burn a CD with the music. This was not a problem for me because I was interested to use it with my brand new player (which just hit the market at the time), the original Zen. The Zen I have is the Firewire version which has USB 1.1 and Firewire 400 with the latest firmware. After a while the downloading service went bankrupt I couldnt buy songs anymore, but that was ok because I had my collection saved on my HDD and my Zen. Now my HDD failed me a couple of months ago and everything on it including my collection, pictures, etc... was lost. When I tried to copy my music collection back from my Zen I found out that the DRM on the files didnt allow them to be copied back. The last couple of weeks I have been trying to get my collection back but since the company was bankrupt nobody could help me, neither was there any cracks for the WMA DRM protection on the Zen. This was not ok, but I couldnt do anything about it so I just listened on my music from my Zen. The problem is that my Zen has now started to act funny and I am afraid that it might stop working soon and together with my music collection be gone forever. When I read that you found a way to copy back DRM protected WMA files I became very happy I know you only did it in linux and that you need to open the Zen and connect the HDD directly to the computer, which I am prepared to do as long as I might get my collection back. I am trustworthy and will not share your software with others if you dont want me to, consider me a beta tester that is willing to sign a NDA. Because I dont have the possibility to install linux at this point (actually the problem is that I cant partition my drive without creating problems) and would need to get another PC to install linux so if it is possible to run the software of a linux Live CD, that would be great, if not, I will get a hold of another computer. What I didnt understand is when you copy the files back do they still have the DRM protection? It doesnt matter if it still has the DRM protection or not. I would be very gratefull if you would help me get my music collection back. Would you consider helping me? Thanks _________________ bother, bother, bother, bother Back to top Al_G Regular Joined: Dec 30, 2003 Posts: 90 Posted: Fri May 19, 2006 7:09 pm    Post subject: Anonymuos wrote: I was so happy when I saw this thread because I have been having a problem I didnt know how to fix and now it seems there is a way to do it. quetzalcoatl will need to confirm this, but I think the 'lock' he is talking about is not associated with DRM. It is a file system lock on the creative players, which is independent of the type of file (mp3, wma, drm, non-drm). If your player's hard drive is starting to act up, you should make an image of this drive as soon as you can. One method I've used is with a laptop hard drive connector. You will need to have a computer with enough space to store the player's image temporarily, and a second 2.5" laptop drive as the replacement for the failing drive. This is the type of connector I used, http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1945479&CatId=410 The software I used is: http://www.roadkil.net/DiskImg.html. I tried Ghost and Disk Image and neither one was able to handle the player's proprietary file system. I suggest using your player as infrequently as possible until you are able to make the backup. Hopefully quetzalcoatl can add more. Back to top Stefan764 Newbie Joined: Jun 03, 2006 Posts: 1 Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2006 6:16 pm    Post subject: Hi, I have a problem with a Zen Xtra. The player is crashed and cannot read the harddisk anymore. Now i have connect the harddisk with a PC. I want restore my files from the disk. I can read the disk as hex-dump, and have seen many filenames and directory-structures. But i cannot find any typical filedata (like ID3-Tags or JPEG-Headers) . Only caotic charters. Is the filedata crypted or compressed ? Or is there a fatal disk-error ? I hope, quetzalcoatl can write a driver. I want to help him, but i havent any knowledge about linux kernel. Back to top xor Newbie Joined: Jun 15, 2006 Posts: 1 Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 6:30 pm    Post subject: quetzalcoatl wrote: well.. my NJB3 has: Code:   attrs.db   jukebox2.jrm   jubebox2.jrs   unicjk.nft   uni8x12.nft   wruniji.nft   kanji.dct   fhandle.db   btree.db   pm.cfg   pm.cbk   (emptyentry)   (emptyentry)   jukebox.opt   unicjkl.nft Would you be able to look at the contents of "jukebox.opt" please? Back to top Anonymuos Regular Joined: Dec 27, 2002 Posts: 42 Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 12:31 am    Post subject: Hehe, seems like instead of my Zen failing, it was my computer that failed. Anyway after getting everything back online, I looked up this thread and saw that it was mentioned to do a backup image of my HDD and replace it, but I dont think that is going to help, because it doesnt look like its the HDD that is acting up, it looks more as its the Zen itself that is acting up. I really need to recover my files, I would even pay a small price for it, so any help I can get is very appreciated. It doesnt even have to be a driver that mounts the HDD, a simple software to copy its content over to another hardrive would be enough. I just want to recover my files from my Zen. Thanks for any help _________________ bother, bother, bother, bother Back to top Display posts from previous: All Posts1 Day7 Days2 Weeks1 Month3 Months6 Months1 Year Oldest FirstNewest First         Nomadness.net Forum Index -> Firmware Hacks All times are GMT Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 Page 3 of 3   Jump to: Select a forum General----------------NomadnessMP3 & Digital AudioThe FutureUnix, Linux and MacOS XSales Nomad Players----------------NomadNomad IINomad II MGNomad JukeboxNomad Jukebox 2Nomad Jukebox 3Zen RangeNomad MuVo RangeZen MicroZen VisionFirmware wishes and bug reports Nomad Applications----------------PlayCenterMP3 LibraryNomad Jukebox CenterJBSuiteJBCommanderNotmad ExplorerJBHTTPWindows Media Player, MusicMatch Jukebox...MediaSource Nomad Development----------------C++ developmentDelphi developmentJBDirect developmentFirmware Hacks  You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum Powered by phpBB 2.0.6 © 2001 phpBB Group Version 2.0.6 of PHP-Nuke Port by Tom Nitzschner © 2002 www.toms-home.com

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