e260 (not R), MSC mode, Linux, sansapatcher, OEM fW v01.02.18A [SOLVED]

[mmmmna]

In Linux, I can read the contents of the boot partition, I can write the Rockbox structure into it, but sansapatcher can't find the e260.

I have started the e260 into recovery mode (lock switch @ hold, press record button and then power on).
     Edit: RECOVERY MODE IS NOT THE CORRECT WAY TO INSTALL AND PATCH ROCKBOX! --mmmmna

      Edit: Be sure to "Safely Remove" the player before running sansapatcher, and run the sansapatcher as root!

The e260 responds something like this:

**************************
Welcome to Recovery Mode
***************************

USB Cable connected
Enter USB2.0 MSD mode
LUN0 locked
LUN0 unlocked
LUN0 locked
LUN0 unlocked
LUN0 locked
LUN0 unlocked
LUN0 locked
LUN0 unlocked
LUN0 locked
LUN0 unlocked
LUN0 locked

Seems odd, locking and unlocking so many times, but you guys can tell better than I can tell.

But that isn't the reason I post here..... I can't patch the bootloader.

Details....
PCLinuxOS MiniMe 2008, logged in and running as root:

root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]# ./sansapatcher
sansapatcher v0.6 with v4.0 bootloaders - (C) Dave Chapman 2006-2007
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

[INFO] Scanning disk devices...
[ERR]  No E200s or C200s found, aborting
[ERR]  Please connect your sansa and ensure it is in UMS mode
[ERR]  Please refer to the Rockbox manual if you continue to have problems.

Press ENTER to exit sansapatcher :
[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]#

Ok, maybe I need to be specific?

[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]# ./sansapatcher /media/disk/
sansapatcher v0.6 with v4.0 bootloaders - (C) Dave Chapman 2006-2007
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

[ERR] ioctl() call to get sector size failed, defaulting to 512
[INFO] Reading partition table from /media/disk/
[INFO] Sector size is 512 bytes
[INFO] Part    Start Sector    End Sector   Size (MB)   Type
[INFO]    2      -1207970080    -1073456249     65680.6   Empty (0x00)
[ERR]  Disk is not an E200 or C200 (-1), aborting.
[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]#

Huh? Maybe I should check for where it is mounted...

[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]# more /etc/mtab
/dev/hda1 / ext3 rw,noatime 0 0
none /proc proc rw 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts rw,mode=0620 0 0
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw 0 0
/dev/hda3 /home ext3 rw,noatime 0 0
none /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw 0 0
/dev/sdb /media/disk vfat rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,uhelper=hal,flush,uid=0,utf8,s
hortname=lower 0 0
[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]#

I then repeated the effort by pointing to the dev node:

[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]# ./sansapatcher /dev/sdb
sansapatcher v0.6 with v4.0 bootloaders - (C) Dave Chapman 2006-2007
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

[INFO] Reading partition table from /dev/sdb
[INFO] Sector size is 512 bytes
[INFO] Part    Start Sector    End Sector   Size (MB)   Type
[INFO]    0       778135908    1919645538    557377.7   Unknown (0x72)
[INFO]    1       168689522    2104717761    945326.3   Novell Netware 386 (0x65)
[INFO]    2      1869881465    -489057640    945326.3   Unknown (0x79)
[ERR]  Disk is not an E200 or C200 (-1), aborting.

Ok, that is probably what YOU folks needed, but it wasn't very beneficial to me.

[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]# ./sansapatcher --help
sansapatcher v0.6 with v4.0 bootloaders - (C) Dave Chapman 2006-2007
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Usage: sansapatcher --scan
    or sansapatcher [device] [action]

Where [action] is one of the following options:
        --install
  -l,   --list
  -rf,  --read-firmware             filename.mi4
  -a,   --add-bootloader            filename.mi4
  -d,   --delete-bootloader
  -of   --update-original-firmware  filename.mi4
  -bl   --update-ppbl               filename.bin

"device" is the device node (e.g. /dev/sda) assigned to your sansa.
sansapatcher will refuse to access a disk unless it can identify it as being
an E200 or C200.
[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]#

I already figured that was part of the problem, you silly program!

[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]# ./sansapatcher --list
sansapatcher v0.6 with v4.0 bootloaders - (C) Dave Chapman 2006-2007
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

[INFO] Scanning disk devices...
[ERR]  No E200s or C200s found, aborting
[ERR]  Please connect your sansa and ensure it is in UMS mode
[ERR]  Please refer to the Rockbox manual if you continue to have problems.
[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]# ./sansapatcher --help
sansapatcher v0.6 with v4.0 bootloaders - (C) Dave Chapman 2006-2007
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Usage: sansapatcher --scan
    or sansapatcher [device] [action]

Where [action] is one of the following options:
        --install
  -l,   --list
  -rf,  --read-firmware             filename.mi4
  -a,   --add-bootloader            filename.mi4
  -d,   --delete-bootloader
  -of   --update-original-firmware  filename.mi4
  -bl   --update-ppbl               filename.bin

"device" is the device node (e.g. /dev/sda) assigned to your sansa.
sansapatcher will refuse to access a disk unless it can identify it as being
an E200 or C200.
[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]# ./sansapatcher --scan
sansapatcher v0.6 with v4.0 bootloaders - (C) Dave Chapman 2006-2007
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

[INFO] Scanning disk devices...
[ERR]  No E200s or C200s found.
[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]#

Ok, but I can access the partition just fine:

[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]# ls -la /media/disk/
total 28
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 16384 Oct  9 21:11 ./
drwxrwxr-x  4 root root  4096 Oct  9 21:09 ../
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root  4096 Sep 23 17:25 .rockbox/
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root root   512 Dec 31  1979 version.txt*
[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]# ls -la /media/disk/.
./        ../       .rockbox/
[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]# ls -la /media/disk/.rockbox/
total 648
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root   4096 Sep 23 17:25 ./
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root  16384 Oct  9 21:11 ../
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root   4096 Sep 23 17:25 backdrops/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root   4096 Sep 23 17:25 codecs/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root   4096 Sep 23 17:25 codepages/
-rw-r--r--  1 root root      0 Sep 23 17:25 database.ignore
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root   4096 Sep 23 17:25 docs/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root   4096 Sep 23 17:25 eqs/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root   4096 Sep 23 17:25 fonts/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root   4096 Sep 23 17:25 icons/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root   4096 Sep 23 17:25 langs/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root   4096 Sep 23 17:25 recpresets/
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    590 Sep 23 17:25 rockbox-info.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 573440 Sep 23 17:25 rockbox.mi4
drwxr-xr-x  6 root root   4096 Sep 23 17:25 rocks/
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   8878 Sep 23 17:25 tagnavi.config
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root   4096 Sep 23 17:25 themes/
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    835 Sep 23 17:25 viewers.config
drwxr-xr-x  6 root root   4096 Sep 23 17:25 wps/
[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]#
[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]#

So.... what do I need to do here?

Thanks to all devs and testers for the efforts in making the (MP3 player) world a more "Open" place!


(and fwiw, my wife had a Sansa e240r which she bought from BestBuy; she was totally offended by the Rhapsody poo, she got in touch with Sandisk tech support, the tech instructed her in how to remove the crapsody stuff. So, I wonder how that removal impacts RockBox....).

[saratoga]

In Linux, I can read the contents of the boot partition, I can write the Rockbox structure into it, but sansapatcher can't find the e260.

I have started the e260 into recovery mode (lock switch @ hold, press record button and then power on).

You need to do the install from MSC mode, not recovery mode.  Did you do all of the below in recovery mode or MSC mode?

(and fwiw, my wife had a Sansa e240r which she bought from BestBuy; she was totally offended by the Rhapsody poo, she got in touch with Sandisk tech support, the tech instructed her in how to remove the crapsody stuff. So, I wonder how that removal impacts RockBox....).

I doubt they actually told you how to convert an R into a non-R (since its complicated and cannot be done using their software), so the install should be the same as any other R player.

[mmmmna]

In Linux, I can read the contents of the boot partition, I can write the Rockbox structure into it, but sansapatcher can't find the e260.

I have started the e260 into recovery mode (lock switch @ hold, press record button and then power on).

You need to do the install from MSC mode, not recovery mode.  Did you do all of the below in recovery mode or MSC mode?

Ah. There is the problem. I will redo the attempt later tonight.

I did that all in recovery mode.  The current version of the online manual does NOT state to use MSC mode nor does it state to use the boot partition:

Installing the firmware

   1. Download your chosen version of Rockbox from the links in the previous section.
   2. Connect your player to the computer via USB as described in the manual that came with your player.
   3. Take the .zip file that you downloaded and use the “Extract all” command of your unzip program to extract the files onto your player.

      Note: The entire contents of the .zip file should be extracted directly to the root of your player’s drive. Do not try to create a separate directory on your player for the Rockbox files! The .zip file already contains the internal structure that Rockbox needs.

Note: If the contents of the .zip file are extracted correctly, you will have a directory called .rockbox, which contains all the files needed by Rockbox, in the main directory of your player’s drive. If you receive a “-1” error when you start Rockbox, you have not extracted the contents of the .zip file to the proper location.

Where the wiki indicated extracting to the 'root', root is a directory that is (usually) available in any partition, so I had to choose one partition or the other as the location of for where 'root' being discussed was located. My difficulty was that at that moment, I had happened to be reading about the recovery mode and I just assumed that was the proper partition for the stated 'root'.

If I might offer a suggestion?

In the wiki, maybe you could describe what the proper target partition would contain on a normal (OEM) e200 series? Like this:

  Note: The entire contents of the .zip file should be extracted directly to the root of your player’s drive. Do not try to create a separate directory on your player for the Rockbox files! The .zip file already contains the internal structure that Rockbox needs. The proper location should already have several directories (folders) similar to the following:
ALBUMS
ARTISTS
VIDEOS
...

(and fwiw, my wife had a Sansa e240r which she bought from BestBuy; she was totally offended by the Rhapsody poo, she got in touch with Sandisk tech support, the tech instructed her in how to remove the crapsody stuff. So, I wonder how that removal impacts RockBox....).

I doubt they actually told you how to convert an R into a non-R (since its complicated and cannot be done using their software), so the install should be the same as any other R player.

Not sure today what actually resulted: that deleting session took place over a year ago, that unit has since failed and was exchanged under service contract; we are back at square one (e.g. stuck with Rhapsody) on the replacement.

[Chronon]

Hi.  If you read the Prerequisites section (2.2) in the manual there is, in fact, a warning that the USB mode must be set to MSC prior to installation.

Warning: The following steps require you to change the setting in Settings →  USB Mode to MSC from within the original firmware. Never extract files to your player while it is in recovery mode.

I'm not sure what you mean by the boot partition.  The Sansa e2x0 series presents as two partitions when connected via MSC.  One refers to the main partition that Rockbox will be installed on, the other is actually the microSD slot (removable disk). 

The installation instructions never tell you to enter Recovery Mode, so I'm not sure why that has any relevance here.  Additionally, if you simply establish an MSC connection (Sansa as a UMS device) and use Rockbox Utility to install, then everything should be installed properly.

[mmmmna]

I'm not sure what you mean by the boot partition.  The Sansa e2x0 series presents as two partitions when connected via MSC.  One refers to the main partition that Rockbox will be installed on, the other is actually the microSD slot (removable disk).

Every time I've booted with the USB cable connected to a live Linux session, I see only one partition shown in the GUI of PCLinuxOS. Maybe you know of more, but I see one partition in MSC mode and a different partition in recovery mode. Hence those comments about the boot partition were related to the task I was performing, in the manner in which I had been performing the task. If my distribution isn't showing all the partitions, well, I don't know of it.

Rockbox utility does not run on my installation.


Chronon, saratoga:

Yeah, things went a bit better when I wasn't in recovery mode. When I went through the online instructions, I saw the "USB Connection" part, mentally reviewed that I know it connects, so I skipped the details. For me, that is another mistake on my part, but I still might have tried running in recovery mode even if I had read the details... I'm used to stuff being MUCH more complicated than this. Other folks might not be predisposed like I was, to always starting in recovery mode.

Readers: as of this post, you just turn on the e2x0, connect the USB cable to the Linux host PC, and extract the rockbox archive and run sansapatch. My latest system messages all said I was good to go after the I read and obeyed the above prerequisite.

Right now, I'm not able to start Rockbox, which is a different problem from the topic of this thread, so I am searching for FAQs.




Ok, I didn't get anywhere in the FAQs, my searching the forum didn't produce anything in the first 2 pages (I'm impatient).

I ran sansapatcher as root, no errors this time:

[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]# ./sansapatcher
sansapatcher v0.6 with v4.0 bootloaders - (C) Dave Chapman 2006-2007
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

[INFO] Scanning disk devices...
[INFO] e200 found - /dev/sdb
[INFO] Reading partition table from /dev/sdb
[INFO] Sector size is 512 bytes
[INFO] Part    Start Sector    End Sector   Size (MB)   Type
[INFO]    0             580       7813119      3814.7   W95 FAT32 (0x0b)
[INFO]    1         7813120       7854079        20.0   OS/2 hidden C: drive (0x84)
Enter i to install the Rockbox bootloader, u to uninstall
 or c to cancel and do nothing (i/u/c) :i
[INFO] Bootloader installed successfully.
Press ENTER to exit sansapatcher :
[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]#
[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]#

I rebooted the sansa several times, but it always boots to the Sansa firmware. Should the rockbox directory structure be extracted as root? I extracted .rockbox as user, and is visible during MSC session if I view hidden files in konqueror.

When I start the sansa e260 in recovery mode now, after successfully patching it, all I see is a single file, version.txt, which KWrite sees as a binary file. FWIW, the version.txt reads:

Version Info: Product Rev.: PP5022AF-05.51-S301-02.18-S301.02.18A-D
Base Code: 05.51-S301-02.18-S301.02.18A-D
ODM Ver.: S301-02.18-S301.02.18A-D
OEM Ver.: S301.02.18A-D
Build Type: -D
Build Date: 2006.11.03
Build Number: (Build 32.10)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

[Chronon]

If you don't have a  microSD (not microSDHC) card in your player then your distribution probably just ignores the card reader.  You can just ignore that bit.

Extracting as root shouldn't matter.  You're just placing files on your DAP's drive. 

It's strange that sansapatcher claims it installed the bootloader but there's no evidence of it when you boot your player.

Is there a particular error when you try to run Rockbox Utility? That will probably be of interest to its maintainers.

[mmmmna]

If you don't have a  microSD (not microSDHC) card in your player then your distribution probably just ignores the card reader.  You can just ignore that bit.

Extracting as root shouldn't matter.  You're just placing files on your DAP's drive.

I didn't think that could matter, but sometimes things aren't what I think they should be. lol!

It's strange that sansapatcher claims it installed the bootloader but there's no evidence of it when you boot your player.

Is there a particular error when you try to run Rockbox Utility? That will probably be of interest to its maintainers.

My error is as follows:

[mmmmna@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]$ ./rbutilqt
Floating point exception
[mmmmna@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]$ su -
Password:
[root@localhost ~]# cd /home/mmmmna/Desktop/RockBox\ for\ Sansa\ e260/
[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]# ./rbutilqt
Floating point exception (core dumped)
[root@localhost RockBox for Sansa e260]# 

As a normal user, it just fails; when I su to root and execute, I get a core dump after the failure. I use PCLinuxOS MiniMe 2008 installed to a Dell Inspiron 2200 laptop. If the devs want more info, they can hit me up via PM, let me know.

[mmmmna]

Chronon: should I start a new discussion about my non-booting issue?

[Chronon]

No, I think your current issue still falls under the scope of the topic title.  Essentially, despite sansapatcher claiming success there appears to be no Rockbox bootloader on your player.  Hopefully, someone else will have an idea.  I'm a bit puzzled about what's going on here.

[orionfyre]

Chronon et.al.

While trying to remove my rockbox install under linux it was reporting a success but the boot loader was still there. When I booted into another kernel and enviroment where auto-mounting of USB devices is disabled and I ran ./sansapatcher it removed it that time.

Further investigation has led me to the conclusion that the sansapatcher will report success even though it failed if the device has been automagically (or otherwise) mounted into the filesystem.

Right click on your device in nautilus and say "unmount" (if you use gnome) then try running your sansapatcher.

[mmmmna]

Thanks for the idea, onionfyre. I use KDE, not Gnome (funny you should mention Nautilus... I left Gnome mostly because when Gnome first started using Nautilus, Nautilus choked the system I was using so badly that I tried KDE and have not returned to Gnome since).

My /etc/mtab and my /etc/fstab before automagic mounting of the Sansa
AND as normal user are:

[mmmmna@localhost ~]$ more /etc/mtab
/dev/hda1 / ext3 rw,noatime 0 0
none /proc proc rw 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts rw,mode=0620 0 0
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw 0 0
/dev/hda3 /home ext3 rw,noatime 0 0
none /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw 0 0
[mmmmna@localhost ~]$

and

[mmmmna@localhost ~]$ more /etc/fstab
## fstab created by Livecd-install

none    /proc   proc    defaults        0 0
none    /dev/pts        devpts  mode=0620       0 0
none    /proc/bus/usb   usbfs   defaults        0 0

# /dev/hda1, size=23438772, type=131: Journalised FS: ext3 (primary)
/dev/hda1 / ext3 noatime 1 1

# /dev/hda2, size=5076540, type=130: Linux swap (primary)
/dev/hda2 swap swap defaults 0 0

# /dev/hda3, size=49624785, type=131: Journalised FS: ext3 (primary)
/dev/hda3 /home ext3 noatime 1 2

# cdrom: SONY CD-RW/DVD-ROM CRX830E
#       /dev/hdb        /media/cdrom    auto    user,exec,ro,noauto     0 0
[mmmmna@localhost ~]$

I haven't the time right now to get same files as root AND after automagic mounting of the Sansa, but might these offer a clue?

[orionfyre]

If I'm not mistaken KDE shows the sansa on the desktop as well, and provides an "unmount" option through it's respective context menus.

If there's no context menu, or you feel like being all hacker-like you can do the following
use cat to list the contents of mtab. pipe that into grep looking for known text of the line we want ("sansa" in this case) further pipe that output into awk to print the first column of that line which is the location of the drive mounted. we use that resulting output passing it into umounts option area.

Code: [Select]

umount `cat /etc/mtab | grep -i sansa | awk '{print $1;}'`

prepend that with sudo if you're using the su layer.

I've added that into my /.bashrc as an alias for umountsansa so that when I type that it un-mounts the drive no matter what device block it was assigned.

[mmmmna]

Yeah, when the KDE UI detects the Sansa, I get a new icon on the desktop called 'Sansa e200 Series' and it's a realistic looking (not generic!) icon.

Sadly, within PCLOS & KDE, the last time I tried to use a 'context menu' to 'unmount' a Compact Flash card (and possibly also the same happened when issuing a context menu 'eject' for a CD, but I'm not sitting at that system right now), I had an error message saying 'only root' could do that. I believe the automounter daemon uses root privileges for mounting the devices, but it also gathers enough information and ultimately assigns the active system user appropriate read/write access to the automagic device according to some demoniacal incantation (or was that a configuration file?). Something like that, I think. In any event, the safest means for removing the automounted devices seems to be the Microsoftian "Safely Remove" option from the context menu.

I prefer to leave the deeper umount and .bashrc things to the distro devs; I've tried such methods and the result has rarely been within the full context of what the developers implemented in the whole UI configuration (meaning that it might work for this one thing, but then this breaks some other portion of the UI experience which I'd rather not disturb).

I will, however, try the 'safely remove' idea, at some point. Right now, too much going on at home versus making a UI change on a media player that already works well enough as-is. I will try to revisit this soon.

[MarcGuay]

Are you sure it's not a Rhapsody model?  Your first post says it is but the title says it's not.  If it is a Rhapsody model, you need to follow the instructions here:  http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SansaE200RInstallation.

[mmmmna]

Actually, my first post says:

my wife had a Sansa e240r which she bought from BestBuy

Been there, done that, know how it feels, empathy expressed.

I am only as sure as these images (which I shot tonight) have convinced me to be: Backside, Version screen, USB Modes. IIRC, the current firmware on my e260 came from a link which I found here at Rockbox. At one time, I had a massive database problem and that firmware had been installed in hopes of fixing the database problem (installing the displayed firmware ultimately didn't fix my database problem, I simply left that firmware version installed and moved ahead; instead, I touched a 'sansa.fmt' file which ultimately fixed my database problem).