Latest Rockbox not working on Nano

[danhibiki]

Hello, I'm getting this error when I update to the latest rockbox build: "No partition found. Insert USB cable and fix it.". Sometimes it freezes on the Rockbox logo, too.

At first I thought something corrupted my partitions, even though I could open my Nano just fine with Windows XP, so I restored it and reinstalled everything (installed the bootloader through rbutil, if that matters), but, then again the same message appeared.

So I did a little further testing and found out that the archived build from 2007-07-02 still works fine, but the one from 2007-07-03 doesn't and I get the same message I'm getting on the newest one.

Now I'm thinking this issue is related to those changes on CPU clock. Is anyone having the same problem as I am? I looked around the forum but didn't find anything related to this.

Thank you!

[Llorean]

I have no problem booting Rockbox on my Nano, with a build from merely a day ago. Is there anything at all non-standard about your Nano? Do you, or have you in the past, installed iPL, etc? Is it a 1/2gb, or a 4gb?

[danhibiki]

A long time ago I installed iPL, before Rockbox had sound on Nano's, since then I restored my iPod a couple times, but that's it I think, nothing else. It's a black 4GB Nano.

Besides that, I have a silicon case for it, but I don't think that's an issue

[Llorean]

Well, my black 4gb Nano happens to work perfectly. Is that error message you quoted the exact one? And what does your partition table look like.

[danhibiki]

Yes, this is the exact message. But, as I said, sometimes it hangs before it and doesn't boot Rockbox at all.

My partition table as ipodpatcher outputs:

[INFO] Scanning disk devices...
[INFO] Ipod found - 1st Generation Nano ("winpod") - disk device 2
[INFO] Part    Start Sector    End Sector   Size (MB)   Type
[INFO]    0              63        160649        78.4   Empty (0x00)
[INFO]    1          160656       7984304      3820.1   W95 FAT32 (0x0b)
[INFO] Ipod model: 1st Generation Nano ("winpod")

Listing firmware partition contents:

Image 1:
    Main firmware - 5566464 bytes
    Third-party bootloader - 49356 bytes
Image 2:
    RSRC - 16777216 bytes
Image 3:
    AUPD - 545244 bytes

[Llorean]

And by "Latest build", which specifically did you mean? We do ask that you include SVN revisions, because 'latest' can easily be one or two revisions behind the most recent at the time of posting, or even mean 'the daily' from some people.

[danhibiki]

It was the current SVN build when I posted, but I just tested the r13847-070711 and still have this issue. Right now it froze (so I could see my version , but one reboot before it showed the partition error.

Whoa! While I was typing Rockbox booted (when I thought it was frozen), but if I open the "Files" menu it shows nothing (and I've set it to show All files). It is running pretty sluggish too.

Ok, now this is interesting, on the Rockbox info screen, it shows that I have a disk of 1.80GB (my nano is a 4gb) and have 0KB free

My partition info shown in the debug menu is as follows:
P0: S:3F
T:0 78MB
P1: S:27290
T:B 3820 MB
P2: S:0
T:0 0MB
P3: S:0
T:0 0MB

If more information is needed, just ask, I'll leave it running this flawed Rockbox for now.

[Llorean]

Are you sure that's not S:27390?

[danhibiki]

Yes, it's 27290

[danhibiki]

Updated to rev.13855 and now it doesn't show that partition error message (at least it didn't show up until now), but now I'm getting an error about .rockbox does not exist and installation incomplete. If I open the filetree it still shows nothing, while when I connect my nano to XP everything shows up almost fine.

I say almost fine because it seems that Rockbox is corrupting the file system on the iPod, the directory codecs, for example, became co@ecs, there was a weird file over 1GB inside .rockbox folder, and stuff like that.
But that may be because of all the lockups and reboots I am having/doing to try to make RB work correctly here.

Also, now it shows S:27390 instead of 27290

[danhibiki]

Still running rev 13855 and could boot into Rockbox almost properly a few times. I could see all files fine, but sometimes folder/files names got corrupted. And not always the settings were properly saved, sometimes it would boot with the settings resetted, others with my previous settings, so it's basically a complete mess

But now I got a new error when trying to boot:
*PANIC*
Dir entry 2 in sector 3 is not free!
42 64 00 00

To illustrate the corruption I'm having on file names, I'm attaching a screenshot from Windows Explorer. Notice the "ibons" folder, confhg.cfg, NVR@M.BHN and so on...

[attachment deleted by admin for age]

[LambdaCalculus379]

Hmmm... that is rather screwy.

It's a long shot, but try checking your iPod file system for any errors or corruption. And as an even longer shot, run it through a virus scanner. It looks like something may have gotten in there and is causing havoc.

Keep us posted.

[danhibiki]

As I said, it was recently restored, so I don't think there should be any problems with my file system before it got into this state. In this current state it's obvious that it was corrupted in many ways, so running CHKDSK on it was necessary, many files appeared on FOUND.000 and many folders/files on .rockbox disappeared.

I am thinking Rockbox is the one causing all this corruption, especially because it seems to occur only on its own folder. And because older builds (2007-07-03) doesn't have any problems.
Apple OS also runs without any trouble on my Nano.

Just to be sure, I scanned it through my anti virus and got nothing.

I think I'm gonna restore it one more time and see what happens.

[danhibiki]

Some news, I saw some updates on PP targets so I updated Rockbox (r13991) hoping that it would be running correctly right now. I think it is better than before, but it's still pretty bugged on my nano.

Now it seems to boot every time I try, didn't see those ".rockbox directory not found" messages until now, but I'm getting HEAVY graphical corruption sometimes and most often than not some kind of graphical corruption. But the filenames seem to be fine, didn't notice those bizarre file/folder names.

I tried to play some songs with no success, one time I got Data abort at 01f00228, others I got Codec Failure, sometimes I could see something like "Error accessing directory" and right now I just got "Undefined instruction at 00070D64".

By the way, I'm trying to playback some Vorbis files.

[Dwyloc]

I have been using my black ipod nano 4GB for about a year under Rockbox and I have found that it works very reliably.

I use it every day and I never see any problems with lockups or file system corruption, but when I first got my nano I quite often had problems with file system corruption.

After two small changes the problem when away.

1. I stopped using diskmode by plugging in USB under rockbox and started rebooting in to the retain OS for file transfers, file transfer are much faster and also seem to be more reliable.

2. A fix was committed for a rockbox bug which corrupted file system by creating duplicate short file names when I saved my rockbox config.