Disabling Sansa e200 firmware's obnoxious database refreshing

[Chronon]

Well, it should be very easy to test whether changing my firmware version to that one deterministically produces an endless boot cycle as you suggest.  I will test that proposition when I can.

Are you referring to the SansaFAQ page?  I don't see any such table there.

[robin0800]

This is for the c200.
I am not in a position to comment on E200 but as the problem exists in C200 I would not be surprised if E200 also suffers from firmware anomalies.

[MarcGuay]

I have no idea what you guys are talking about at this point.  I got the impression that ThaCrip was saying that making his e200 SYSTEM folder read-only caused a problem that was only repairable via recovery mode. 

Perhaps it would be wise to merge the c200 port page "troubleshooting" section into the SansaFAQ so it's all in one place and easier to discuss.

[Chronon]

Thanks Marc.  I had thought that ThaCrip was referring to the procedure on the wiki as causing his reboot problems.  I had somewhat overlooked ryran's comment about making that directory read-only (a bit tired at the time  ).  That definitely injects some clarity into this.

That read-only trick is mentioned for the c200 in the SansaFAQ page as a way to accomplish the disabling of database rebuilding, not for the e200s.  It will be easy to test that doing this on the e200 produces the behavior that ThaCrip reported.  In such case a note in the FAQ would be helpful.

I'm still confused about the table in the FAQ that robin0800 referred to, though.

[MarcGuay]

I believe s/he's referring to the firmware table on the c200 port page in the wiki.  Which lead me to feel that it should be merged with the FAQ. 

Or maybe device-specific information should remain on the individual port pages and not in the more general FAQ.

[Chronon]

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edit:

Changes to the wiki have been made (not by me).  That table has been moved to the SansaFAQ page.  Though, it (rightly) does not document differences in runtime behavior of the Sansa firmware -- only which firmware versions (for the c200) are currently compatible with sansapatcher/Rockbox Utility.

I agree that certain things like ability to get into MSC mode can be important for Rockbox users, so if someone wants to create (separate) table that tracks such changes I think that would be a fine addition to the SansaFAQ.

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Things have gotten off topic here.  I apologize for my part in that.  Please restrict further discussion to the stated topic.

[ThaCrip]

like was said above... i basically got the endless reboot cycles when i was running firmware v1.0.2.18A (which originally came with my REFURBISHED e250) and it installed rockbox fine to it with the sansapatcher.exe file and copied over the .rockbox folder etc etc and everything was running fine.

then i later ran into the disabling of the original firmwares refresh thing.... so i tried doing it as per what the OP's post said (which was in the WIKI on this site) and then it bricked my player and i had to use the 'recovery mode' in order to fix it.

but basically this...

--------------
sansapatcher.exe -of PP5022.mi4
sansapatcher.exe -d
sansapatcher.exe --install
--------------

bricked it (i.e. turned the player into endless reboot cycle when booting) when i was using the v1.02.18A firmware (i aint tried it since then as im using v1.02.15A now which i got from this site and used it in recovery mode to fix my player back to good running order and reinstalled rockbox and i aint touched the player since then)

[Chronon]

ThaCrip, I also tried this on my e280 and it appears that this particular PP5022.mi4 also causes problems for me.  If I follow the identical procedure but instead use the 1.02.15a.mi4 (from http://daniel.haxx.se/sansa/mi4.html) then each step of the process finishes normally and everything works as expected.  The current PP5022.mi4 leads to failure of "sansapatcher --install" due to an "OLD ROCKBOX INSTALLATION DETECTED, ABORTING" error. 

Is the current PP5022.mi4 file linked from the SansaFAQ working for some people?

[ThaCrip]

just rechecking but once i 'disable the database re-fresh' does that make it so the device dont re-create those music/video etc etc folders and files everytime?

if it does im going to do this cause that's annoying.

p.s. on a side note is the final stable build of rockbox (i.e. v3.0) still planned for the end of this month?

[MarcGuay]

If I follow the identical procedure but instead use the 1.02.15a.mi4 (from http://daniel.haxx.se/sansa/mi4.html) then each step of the process finishes normally and everything works as expected. 

I updated the FAQ to point to this file instead.

[Chronon]

just rechecking but once i 'disable the database re-fresh' does that make it so the device dont re-create those music/video etc etc folders and files everytime?

if it does im going to do this cause that's annoying.

p.s. on a side note is the final stable build of rockbox (i.e. v3.0) still planned for the end of this month?

No.  The Sandisk firmware will re-create and (in some cases) re-hide those each time it runs.  This just prevents the Sandisk firmware from embarking on the lengthy process of scanning the entire drive for new media and cataloging it in its own database.  You now have an appropriate Sandisk firmware on your unit and a new Rockbox bootloader, so this should already be working for you.  When you plug in a USB cable the Rockbox bootloader should tell you that it's starting the original firmware, perform some checks, and finally announce that it's disabling database rebuilding.

[JEJ]

There is something i don't quite get. The FAQ reads: Database-refresh will only be deactivated when you boot into the OF via USB-connection with no microSD card inserted.

I thought that the OF only updated the database when it detected a microSD card, sice it doesn't have a way to tell if that card is the same it had the last time it was turned off. So what would be the point in doing all the process if the database was not going to be updated anyway?

[Llorean]

The database also updates if you use MSC mode USB connections, and it's *that* update that is disabled.

[ThaCrip]

@ chronon .. your right cause that's exactly what mine does at the moment.

[JEJ]

Ok this is something I've been meaning to ask, when people say USB connection are they referring to a specific mode of the way you connect your player to the computer? Because the only modes I know are MSC and MTP and both are done using a USB cable.