Broken 5G install

[ThreeLibras]

I attempted to install Rockbox onto my 30gb video iPod... and failed miserably. I'm not sure EXACTLY what happened. I ran through the commands on the Rockbox site for re-formatting the iPod to FAT32. (I'm using Mac OS X 10.4.6). Write the partition table, blah blah blah. I then attempted to use the Rockbox installer for OS X (http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IpodMacOSInstaller). This exited with an error. (I can't remember what it said!  )

Oh well I thought, I'll run through the process manually. I once again started going through the steps on the Rockbox site. Everything was going well, finished the process... dead iPod. It just starts up to a screen with the folder icon and exclamation mark. The computer will not recognise that the iPod exists, attempting to use the iPod updater restore function gives me endless errors to the console.log, Disk Utility hangs when I open it and I have to force quit it.

I thought it might be possible to reinstate the original bootpartition.bin that was extracted from the iPod. But when I looked at the file, it was 0kb. In addition, how am I meant to write the file to the iPod when the computer can't see it!? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Llorean]

Okay, first, hold Menu+Select to reboot the ipod, and as soon as the screen flashes off, hold Menu+Play until you're in emergency disk mode.

What you're going to need to do is start over from scratch. Re-convert your iPod to FAT32. Then, just do the manual install. I can't speak for the installer, but I can help if you encounter problems on the manual install. The bootpartition.bin should not be 0k, though, so if that happens come back here. Otherwise, return if you get any error messages and I'll do what I can to help.

[ThreeLibras]

Unfortunately, I can't even attempt to reformat the thing. Even after starting it up into disk mode, the computer doesn't know that it exists. No entries show up under the mount command other than what is normally there.
Without a /dev/disk?s? location is there any way to fix it?

P.S. Sorry it took so long for me to reply

[Llorean]

I'm not sure, but I thought that mount shows you available filesystems to mount. Since you've broken the filesystem, I'm not too sure that would work. (I could be wrong, I'm not terribly familiar with Unix/Linux style commands, even now.) But the device should still be there if it's in disk mode and hooked up to your computer.

What you should do is hook it up while in emergency disk mode, and if the screen changes to "Do not remove" or whatever, then try and use the Apple Update utility to run a restore on it.

[ThreeLibras]

The "Do not disconnect" screen is showing, however, if I attempt the Apple iPod Updater restore, after a while (and many errors to the console log), it says "The iPod could not be unmounted because it is in use. Please close any open files on the iPod and try again."

The console error is:
2006-04-17 11:28:26.563 iPod Updater Extreme[12624] Error 16 from Open
Apr 17 11:28:26 UpdaterTool[12683]: cannot open device /dev/rdisk2, error 16

Maybe I could use this /dev/rdisk2 filename?

The attached file shows that the iPod Updater thinks the iPod is Windows formatted. Not sure if that might help something.
Thanks for the help.

[Llorean]

You might be able to use the /dev/rdisk2 name. I really don't know.

[ThreeLibras]

If I try the rdisk2 name, it says resource busy, and diskutil on the command line hangs when I try and unmount the disk.
I think I've killed it.  :'(

[Llorean]

Naah, there's a way to solve this. It's just that I don't know it.
I mean, if it were a windows computer giving you "device in use" problems, I'd say reboot and try the same thing, but I don't even know if that applies to Macs.

Then, if it were a windows computer and you'd done this to your iPod, there's a very good chance windows would just let you flat out reformat the whole thing (as that's what happened when I did something very similar at one point while trying to get it installed in windows before ipodpatcher.exe existed. DD for windows is somewhat... lacking.) but I'm not really sure how to help you well here. =/

[ThreeLibras]

I might take it to a mates place and see if I can manage to fix it with his Windows computer. At the moment I'm not even particularly fussed about getting RockBox onto it, just an actual interface would be nice. lol
Anyway, thanks for trying. :p

If I have any success, I'll post back and let you know.

[Llorean]

What you *should* be able to do with a windows computer is

1) Boot it into emergency disk mode.
2) Plug it into the computer.
3) Format it NTFS (Or FAT32, but for some reason NTFS worked better for me)
4) Run the Apple Restore utility

This has worked for a few people in similar situations.

[ThreeLibras]

Hello again, I managed to format the disk back to FAT32, then restored it to the default Mac HFS filesystem. I have a fully functional stock iPod now. 
To format the disk to FAT32, I used the /dev/ path name that came up in the console.log, and ran the newfs_msdos command, as per the install instructions.

This is the error I get however, when I attempt to extract the Apple firmware to the bootpartition.bin file

[INFO] Reading partition table...
Bad boot sector signature
Part    Type   Start Sector    End Sector    Size (MB)
   0    0x90     -1073742848    2147481791     1572863
   1    0xbf           9412    -1073733437     1572863
   2    0xfe     -1881115804    -1881100845           7
   3    0x00     -2139062144    -2139062145           0
[INFO] Seeking to sector -1073742848
[WARN] Seek error - reading -1073742848 sectors instead