Description of icons?

[Fraoch]

Hello:

I'm a first-time user of Rockbox and I installed 3.9.1 on my wife's old disused iPod Nano 2G.

I filled it up with music using Banshee on Ubuntu Linux 11.10.  My early experiments with a few select tracks worked well.  This time I loaded it up completely and now I want to update the database.

Seeing as it's close to 4 GB, it's obviously going to take a long time (any idea how long?)  I think I see an icon that's indicating that it's updating the database, but I'm not quite sure what that icon is.  For that matter, I have looked and looked and I can't find a description of any of the icons across the top of the screen.  Some of them are self-evident, some of them aren't.

On the right of the screen is an icon that looks like a lightning bolt.  I assume this is the "updating database" icon because I didn't notice it before I started updating the database.

Does anyone have a listing of the icons and what they mean?  Sorry if this seems like an obvious question but I have read the manual and searched the site and I didn't find anything.

This is the default (?) cabbiev2 theme.

Thank you.

[JdGordon]

That lightning bolt means "flash access".. i.e something is accessing the flash drive inside the player

[gbl08ma]

Also, keep in mind that when changing themes, the icons and their position might change, so it takes a bit of adaptation. I think the only thing that can be shown by a theme when something is loading, is the disk/flash access icon - at this moment, this is valid for cabbiev2 and any other theme. That icon changes with the theme, and I'm sure that if some theme designer wanted so, it could be made to e.g. change an huge rectangle on the screen whenever the disk is loading. The way the disk access/shuffle/repeat/[any setting] is represented is pretty much up to the theme designer - and they don't need to be represented if the theme doesn't have code to.

Since, like I said, Rockbox has huge UI customization options, the Rockbox Manual doesn't go into much details about the meaning of icons and such. In my opinion, the best way to learn what each icon in cabbiev2 represents is by playing around with the settings.

[Fraoch]

Thanks for the responses - I think it's safe to say this is the database builder doing its thing then.

I'm not sure triggering database building on all 4 GB of files at once is a good thing though, that icon has been on almost 24 hours straight now and still no sign of any new files.  I even had to recharge the player while it was doing this.

[gbl08ma]

Strange... I have around 400 music files (3,1GB), all with metadata, on my 4GB Nano 2G, and a full database update (after initialization, that is your case) takes no longer than 10-15 minutes.

However, if you're using lower quality files, then there will be more music files in less space, and it might take a longer time. But 24 hours, is simply too much. See if you can start over.

(unless the flash activity icon is because of something else, like buffering, but in that case, it shouldn't be continuous)

[Fraoch]

Yep, something's up, it's been 27 hours now and still no new files.  So I restarted it and have selected "initialize database", which should wipe the old one clean and build a new database.

Fingers crossed...

[saratoga]

Loading the database will only take a few minutes. If it keeps going that long its probably crashed. 

First, check your file system for errors.  Then if that doesn't fix it, go into system > debug and enable metadata logging.  Then when it gets stuck, check the metadata log in the root of the player and see what file it was stuck on.  If removing that file fixes it, post a bug report with a link to the file so that we can fix whatever bug that file triggered in the database.

[Fraoch]

Thanks for all the help.  After several attempts at building the database using the "initialize database" routine I finally got to the point where it indicated "Building database...XXX files found".  At first 176 or so files were found and they kept getting added slowly.  Things looked good.

However the count passed the amount of tracks I knew I had (800 or so) and when I reached 2000 I turned the player off.  A previous attempt stopped at 13 000 some-odd files, way more than the number of tracks I have.

I turned metadata logging on.  I'm not sure how to read this file, Rockbox doesn't know what to do with it and I can't read it in Linux, so I'll post it here in hopes it's worth something.  Something doesn't look right with the file, it's only 336 bytes.  I've added a .txt suffix in order to post it here.

My metadata is a bit unusual but it shouldn't be too bad, all MP3s with ID3v2.3 UTF-16 tags along with APEv2 tags that store MP3Gain normalization data.  There are a few with ID3v2.4 tags though.  The filenames are all good for Linux/Unix.  There are a few files with unusual characters that cause problems in Windows (tracks by Björk and Motörhead for example) but these display and play properly in Linux.  If I could read the metadata log I'd remove the offending files but I can't.

[saratoga]

I assume that post means you didn't find any errors on the file system?

[Fraoch]

Is there a utility that checks Rockbox's file system for errors then?  I assumed you meant "is there anything wrong with the music files".

[saratoga]

Is there a utility that checks Rockbox's file system for errors then? 

Built into your PC's operating system, yes. 

[Fraoch]

Ah.  I checked it using Ubuntu's "Disk Utility" program - it indicated the file system was clean.

There were two partitions - a 99 MB partition and a 4.0 GB partition.  I could only check the 4.0 GB partition as the 99 MB partition does not have a recognized format.  The 4.0 GB partition is formatted as FAT32 (as expected) and it can be checked.

fsck (Linux's command-line file checking utility) reported a tiny error, but again was not able to check the 99 MB file system - the 99 MB partition was /dev/sdd1 and the 4.0 GB partition was /dev/sdd2:

Code: [Select]

fsck from util-linux 2.19.1
e2fsck 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010)
fsck.ext2: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks...
fsck.ext2: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sdd1

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem.  If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
    e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

mark@Sauron:~$ sudo fsck /dev/sdd2
fsck from util-linux 2.19.1
dosfsck 3.0.9, 31 Jan 2010, FAT32, LFN
/Playlists
 Start does point to root directory. Deleting dir. 
/metadata.log
  File size is 336 bytes, cluster chain length is 0 bytes.
  Truncating file to 0 bytes.
Reclaimed 10 unused clusters (40960 bytes).
Free cluster summary wrong (0 vs. really 10)
1) Correct
2) Don't correct
? 1
Leaving file system unchanged.
/dev/sdd2: 1429 files, 965220/965230 clusters

I did try to correct the small error - it didn't seem to have an effect because fsck reported "Leaving file system unchanged" despite my request to correct.

Oh...looking at fsck, I think I see why the metadata log file is corrupted.  I filled up the 4.0 GB completely, there's no empty space to write the log file.  Oops.

I'll delete a track, rescan the database and try to write the log file again.  For that matter, I'm thinking it's unwise to leave the device with 0 B of free space...

Again, thanks!

[saratoga]

Theres no point in trying to generate a log file from a corrupt file system.  Its just going to contain nonsense. 

[Fraoch]

For that matter, I'm thinking it's unwise to leave the device with 0 B of free space...

Well that was the key.  I deleted a small track, initialized the database and Rockbox took off like a rocket, finding ~4000 files in about 30 seconds.  Then it slowed down and took a second or so to find each file.  I think it was using some sort of temp space or filling up the log file and it ran out of file space again.

I deleted a much longer track, leaving about 7 MB of space free.  This time it found something like 13 000 files in about a minute and advised a reboot to enable (never seen that before!)  I rebooted and got a "Commiting database X/9" popup and got into Rockbox after X got to 9 (took a minute).

The database works perfectly now!

Thanks for all the help.  I apologize for the noobishness.

Note to others...leaving ~0 bytes of storage space free is a bad idea.