Rockbox Technical Forums
Rockbox General => Rockbox General Discussion => Topic started by: mrufino1 on November 18, 2007, 02:00:32 AM
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Hi, My first post here, and apologies for it being LONG. I purchased a used 80gb ipod video last week to install rockbox. I love it, much better than using itunes! However, for video, I have read that using the ipod firmware is better, and I have found that to be true. Anyway, I use ubuntu, so I want to play ogg and flac files, etc.
So here is my question- since I began using the ipod firmware, I have "crashed" rockbox twice, where it won't load up- the bootloader gets stuck. It happened the first time because something on my computer froze and I disconnected the ipod (at least, I am thinking maybe that's why it crashed). I restored the ipod and reloaded rockbox and all of my music.
Now, tonight, I was using the player in the car, worked great. I went into an appointment, came back out, started up the ipod, and the bootloader was stuck again! So, here is my question- first of all, I was eventually able to delete the rockbox folder after unzipping a new rockbox folder onto the ipod, and all is functional again. On my previous installs, I unzipped the rockbox folder to my computer first, then copied that, rather than unzipping directly to the ipod as suggested. Now that I followed those directions all is well.
In the future, if I am loading video via itunes (that is the only way to load to use the ipod firmware, right?), should I have the ipod in disk mode or ipod firmware? I have been leaving it in rockbox and using itunes, would that corrupt something? It loaded the video with no problem and has worked for the past few days, but as I said it suddenly wouldn't load rockbox. Is it okay to switch between the original firmware and rockbox like this? I thought that I read that it was.
Thanks again, sorry for the long post but I want this to work!
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It would be much more useful if you supplied some details. When the bootloader gets stuck, what does this actually mean? What can you see on screen? What version bootloader and build do you have?
If you want to transfer films for the OF to use, you must do it via itunes. Rockbox doesn't have a USB mode on portalplayer targets, both the OF and diskmode are Apple software.
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The bootloader getting stuck wasn't my question really, but it says this:
Rockbox Boot Loader
Version: 2.0
IPOD Version :0xFFFFFFFF
TOSHIBA MK8010GAH
Partition 1: 0x0B 76183 MB
Loading Rockbox...
Error!
Can't load rockbox.ipod:
File not found
Hold MENU+SELECT to reboot
then SELECT+PLAY for disk mode
I found the answer on some other posts- I copied a folder to the ipod, rather than unzipping it.
Sorry if I wasn't more clear- my question is, if I am on my windows machine and connected via itunes, is it better for me to have the ipod booted in the original firmware rather than rockbox or does it make a difference? I am trying to figure out why my rockbox would have worked and then suddenly not be found, but it wasn't as a result of being connected to the computer- I was listening in my car, went into an appointment, came back out, turned on the ipod and that error message came up. Anyway, it is working now after unzipping the rockbox folder on there- I had to rename the rockbox folder that was already on there in order to delete it. There were all sorts of files in there that were named using characters I've never seen (certainly not the English alphabet!). I was wondering if being booted in rockbox then connecting to itunes maybe put those files in there, and somehow eliminating the rockbox.ipod file. But then it shouldn't have worked after being connected to the computer.
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If you want to transfer films for the OF to use, you must do it via itunes. Rockbox doesn't have a USB mode on portalplayer targets, both the OF and diskmode are Apple software.
In addition, if you have garbled filenames try running chkdsk on the ipod when in disk mode. It sounds like some part of the filesystem got corrupted. Perhaps you unplugged it from USB without ejecting first?
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Yes, I unplugged without ejecting the first time this happened, but not the second time. How do I run chkdsk? Is that on the ipod itself or am I doing that in my OS (ubuntu)?
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You run it from your computer with your ipod attached.
Since you're using ubuntu, the command is not chkdsk - it's fsck.vfat.
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Thanks, if it happens again I will try that.
Does anyone have any advice on my question about which OS the ipod should be booted into when using itunes to transfer videos? I just need to know if having it booted in rockbox, then attaching it to my windows computer and using itunes is corrupting the rockbox file at all. Thanks for all of the help so far.
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Rockbox has no USB mode. When you make a USB connection to a computer Rockbox reboots into Apple's Disk Mode. So, there's no fault of Rockbox as far as USB communication goes. However, the USB mode within the Apple firmware seems to be quite a lot faster than that achieved in Disk Mode, so a lot of people prefer just to reboot into the Apple firmware when transferring lots of data.
As was suggested, a more likely culprit is removing the iPod from your system without properly unmounting, ejecting, etc.
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Well, a few minutes ago, more weird issues- I was out walking with my ipod, everything was fine, using rockbox with no problem. I got home, turned it off, put it on my shelf. I was reading the rockbox manual to learn more about themes, etc., and went to turn the ipod back on to start exploring a little. The ipod was not connected to the computer at any time today or yesterday and worked fine both days all in rockbox. Now, my font was again tiny. I went to browse the fonts, and it said there were no font files present. So I plugged the ipod into my linux laptop to check the folder, and it won't mount or even get recognized. I went to the command line, no indication the ipod is even connected. Strange. So I plugged into my windows laptop, ipod is recognized right away. I browsed the rockbox folder and the fonts folder, among others, is now renamed with very strange characters, empty squares and such.I And there's more- windows will not let me access the rockbox folder to delete it, so I renamed the folder and unzipped a new rockbox folder on there. I still cannot delete the renamed folder, however, and now the computer will not eject my ipod, saying it can't be stopped. What the heck is going on? Why are these files continually being correupted without being connected to a computer? The ipod works fine in ipod firmware, so I am not understanding what is the issue here. I DEFINITELY would rather use rockbox than the apple firmware. Thank you, sorry this has been dragging on so long.
EDIT: I was able to open itunes on the windows machine, eject the ipod, then I reconnected it to the linux computer and it is recognized.
SO:
The issue seems to be different from my original question about firmwares (which has now been answered with "It doesn't matter, it always goes to disk mode.", thank you for clarifying that). The issue seems to be, "Why is the rockbox folder being messed up without being connected to a computer?" As I said, files are being renamed in there. Replacing the folder seems to work, but I don't want to have to do this every day. Thanks again for all of the help so far, let me know if there is more info needed.
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Have you run either chkdsk or fsck.vfat as was suggested? This really sounds like filesystem corruption to me. It's not surprising to me that it won't let you delete the folder/file. Your file allocation table apparently contains invalid information and the OS therefore doesn't actually know where to find the data. The problems will probably worsen if you do not fix them.
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I'm sorry, I did not run that- I am trying to do it now. I am new to linux (and not too good at dos either_ so I am trying to figure out how to do this with some help at the moment.
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Actually at this point you might have to reformat the ipod and start all over again.
Use the itunes function to restore the ipod to a fresh factory condition (which will erase all your music and video files) then re-install rockbox.
You should now be able to use itunes OR just drag and drop files to
put the music back on the ipod. (itunes for anything you want to be able to
play from the ipod OF, and just drag and drop for anything that will play via
rockbox. Good idea to create a separate folder for the rockbox only media files,
the ipod OF and itunes should ignore this).
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I have done that once before as well, I don't mind doing it if it will actually fix the problem permanently. So are you saying that the root ipod drive should contain the original 3 folders, the .rockbox folder (does it need to be hidden?), and a folder that I make that I then put all of the folders into with my music? If I just have my music files in the same root ipod folder, is that what could be messing things up?
Also, the IPOD keeps coming up as read only, on windows and linux
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You should be able to change the write permissions in linux by using chmod. There's also sometimes an option in the context menu (right click) to change the read/write mode of the drive.
Are you saying that you reformatted and have since been diligent about unmounting or ejecting your iPod before disconnecting it?
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Yes, I have been diligent about ejecting it properly. I am in the process of restoring the factory settings and trying fresh. When I originally installed rockbox I unzipped the file to my computer then dragged that folder onto the ipod, so since the directions state to unzip directly I will follow exactly, and I will put all of my music files in a folder called "music" on the ipod's drive. Will that be of help? Maybe for some reason when I browse files or play something since everything is in the ipod root directory it is screwing something up? Also the fsck wouldn't work, it kept saying that the ipod was a directory, and chown didn't work, didn't try chmod. We'll see how it all goes this time! Thanks again, let me know your thoughts.
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Unzipping directly to the iPod definitely works. But unzipping to your computer and moving the .rockbox folder to your iPod should also be fine. You don't have to take any special measures to make it hidden. I think linux automatically hides folders that begin with ".", but you don't have to worry about that.
I also don't think that having a bunch of files or folders in the root of your FAT32 partition should cause anything like the problems that you're seeing. I hope what you're seeing isn't hardware related.
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me too! Hopefully with this restart and reinstall, things will work. If not,...!!!!
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Also the fsck wouldn't work, it kept saying that the ipod was a directory, and chown didn't work, didn't try chmod.
Do
sudo fsck.vfat -a /dev/sda2
where /dev/sda2 is your iPod's partition with all your files on it. Unmount your iPod before doing this.
The "-a" switch means "repair all errors automatically", as opposed to asking you what to do every time it finds an error.
rockgod24, please don't hijack other people's threads.
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mrufino1:
What key do you use to shutdown and/or restart your iPod when in Rockbox?
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to shut down, I hold the play key. To restart, select and play. I believe that is what I read to do- I guess I need to check again, hopefully it wasn't that!
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No, that sounds fine, though Menu+Select from within Rockbox is not recommended unless your player is frozen, it is very much like pushing the reset button on your computer - an unexpected power-cycle which doesn't give the operating system a chance to save state.
If you want to reboot Rockbox you should shutdown with a long press on play and then power back on with the Select button whenever possible.
I was just curious if you were constantly Menu+Select rebooting your player and never allowing Rockbox to store a .cfg file...
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This all happened again, and now I am running fsck.vfat, following a post from the ubuntu forum about using it on an ipod- it seems to be stuck though, how long should that take? It worked once, and I may have repeated what I did (it was fixing things again though). Is running this checking for disk errors and blocking off bad sectors? This time I caused the problem in one of several possible ways- My ipod has not been mounting every so often, and putting it in a windows machine and ejecting it from itunes solves that. But I noticed it was showing up in /media/sda2, so I would load things on then reboot the ipod to disconnect- probably not what I should have been doing. Also, I was trying to save a playlist in rockbox earlier, and that is when it crashed- first it said that the playlist directory was gone, then when I rebooted the dreaded black screen showed up. SO, to sum up, if fsck.vfat works, is my disk now healthy and if I reformat will everything hopefully work as it should? Thanks a lot, sorry to be such a screw up-Mark
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Yes, rebooting the iPod while mounted to a USB port is not a good idea. That's definitely a good way to generate filesystem errors.
If you're planning to reformat then I would probably not run fsck.vfat since you'll be generating a new filesystem anyway when you format the drive. If fsck.vfat detects and fixes all of the errors in the filesystem then a format may not be necessary. But formatting is a surer way to fix your filesystem woes since you're building a new one from scratch.
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For some reason my ipod randomly mounts under ubuntu, but if I put it on a windows computer and eject it from itunes it then mounts fine. This is now the third time I am having to reformat this though, I'm not sure why this keeps screwing up. the fsck seems stuck. When I run it, it does its thiing, then I get my prompt again. When I enter sudo fsck.vfat -a /dev/sdd2 to automatically repair the filesystem, it goes through some things, then for a bunch of files with strange characters it says Truncating file to 0 bytes, then seems to just sit there. I unplugged it one time and it said I/O error, does this step just take a long time and appear to be inactive or is there something wrong? Thanks-Mark
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I'm not too familiar with this specific tool, but I could imagine that a badly broken filesystem could cause some problems or make it take much longer to execute. How long have you let it run?
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It has been running for about 15 minutes on this try, but there does nto seem to be anything happening- the hard drive light on my computer is not doing anything. Maybe autorepair does take a while. My concern is that I have to leave and my laptop (where it is currently connected) has some overheating issues, so if I leave it I may come home and it will have shut down (but then again , maybe not- it is unpredicatble). I guess I have no choice but to try to leave it running and check tonight.
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I have no idea what state your file system is in. If it is very badly damaged you are probably better off reformatting and going from there.
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If you do a format, I would suggest doing a bad block check as well. This will flag any physically damaged parts of the disk as "out-of-bounds", and make sure nothing gets written there.
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How would I go about doing that? Is that a utility in itunes when I restore the ipod? That probably sounds like it is what is needed, and what I thought the fsck was going to do.
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D'oh, sorry. Just add the "-t" option to fsck.vfat - i.e. sudo fsck.vfat -at /dev/sdd2
Yes, the command can take a while. The bigger the hard drive, and the more things wrong, the longer it takes.
If you're in a hurry and it's still going, you can interrupt it with ctrl-C.
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I'm restoring it now, I will try that in a minute. The fsck did finish before to follow up my earlier post. While we're at it, any ideas on why it randomly decides not to mount in linux? The problem there is that then if I disconnect it, it sounds like I am causing errors. I know it is SUPPOSED to automount in ubuntu.
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You're restoring, as in via iTunes? This should restore everything to factory configuration. Though it is probably still worth running the fsck.vfat command that cool_walking_ wrote.
I don't know why it should randomly not mount. That's peculiar.
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I am wondering if my ubuntu laptop is messed up. But it is weird. I installed ubuntu on my other laptop the other day but can't get the wireless working yet (wired ethernet is broken- calling dell in a few minutes about that one since they broke it!). I am going to try the fsck again in a minute- I accidentally set the ipod to japanese...
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The problem there is that then if I disconnect it, it sounds like I am causing errors. I know it is SUPPOSED to automount in ubuntu.
I'm not sure on the meaning of "disconnect" here. Automount does not include any sort of "auto-unmount". Are you "safely remove"-ing the disk?
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No, but what will happen is that ubuntu is not mounting it (or in some cases it is in the media folder under a name like "sda2") but the ipod itself says it is connected. Therefore, there is no way to safely disconnect it (and I mean physically disconnect it). When I just reformatted it now, the ipod showed up right away on the desktop. I am funning fsck.vfat -at etc. on it right now, takign a while, but if I understand you right, that will find any bad sectors on the drive and in the future avoid writing to those? If that is the case, could that avoid this in the future?
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I don't think bad blocks will randomly stop it from mounting, so no, I think that's caused by something else.
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Any possible reasons you can think of? So far I have not really found anything. As I said, I am wondering if it is the physical computer? My ubuntu may be screwy too because I am still learning it. I may want to do a fresh install one of these days soon. Is there any possibility that the ipod firmware may have something to do with it? It was 1.2.1 when I got it, then 1.2.2 on last restore, now 1.2.3- maybe they did something that would have made it more difficult? The searches on the ubuntu forums didn't really lead me to any understandable answers.
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Well I'm thinking it must be a problem with either the physical USB port, or the Apple firmware. The output of "dmesg | tail" just after plugging in your iPod may be useful. Though this is straying into being off-topic, so maybe it's best to take it over to http://linuxquestions.org and/or http://ubuntuforums.org.
EDIT: hrm.. it works fine in Windows on the same PC? I'm really not sure then...
EDIT AGAIN: err.. A Windows machine? So you haven't tested it in Windows on the same box? Then.. back to thinking hardware problem with the PC.
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No, but what will happen is that ubuntu is not mounting it (or in some cases it is in the media folder under a name like "sda2") but the ipod itself says it is connected. Therefore, there is no way to safely disconnect it (and I mean physically disconnect it).
Yes there is.
You need to establish which disk device the ipod is (it sounds like it's common /dev/sda from your text above), but an "fdisk -l" should help you confirm it - an ipod should have two partitions, the first one is quite small (around 100MB or so), and the second takes up the rest of the disk.
Once you've identified it like that, you can use the "eject" command to get your ipod to report that it's safe to disconnect :
eject /dev/sda
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Thank you, that will help if this happens again.
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This was surely caused by improperly unmounting your iPod in ubuntu. Your problem may be that you are disconnecting your iPod right after clicking eject, You must first wait for the it's safe to disconnect now message.
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Well, I am totally lost. Everything was fine, I had my ipod plugged in earlier, it has been showing up fine and did so this time too. Once I transferred my tracks onto it, I right clicked the ipod icon on the desktop (ubuntu 7.1), clicked eject. Ipod says OK to eject. I waited another 20 seconds or so, to see if there was something from ubuntu saying it was OK to eject it. Nothing, so I unplugged it. Listened all the way home in the car (hour and a half). Everything was fine. I got home, plugged my ipod into speakers, and the font was suddenly tiny on rockbox. I went to settings, clicked browse fonts, nothing happens, font folder is suddenly inaccessible? Then, I clicked on the file I wanted to play, and a message came up saying it couldn't access the playlist. I clicked again, and it started playing, but the font was screwy. Now I plugged the ipod into my laptop, the ipod is saying do not disconnect but the ipod is nowhere to be found in ubuntu. None of the dev folders or media folders show anything. What the heck is going on? The only thing I can think of is when I boot into the ipod OS, it screws something up that happens next time I plug it into ubuntu. Yesterday I was watchign a video in the ipod firmware. But why would it work one minute and the next minute the fonts are gone, when I haven't connected it to the computer yet?
So anyway, what the heck is going on? I hate to think I am going to have to give up on rockbox, but it seems like that may be what I have to do because this is not working for me.
I have the 80gb ipod video, and I bought it used on ebay a month ago. Could there be something wrong with the ipod itself?
More importantly for the immediate, how do I disconnect it from the computer right now so I don't mess things up further? Thanks for reading this long, frustrated post, please help!!!
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I (hopefully) am attaching a screenshot to show what the rockbox folder now looks like- you see all of these characters that are not normal. SOmething is doing this to it- what is it? The fonts folder is clearly renamed. As I said, I ejected it from linux, what is going wrong? I was able to disconnect the ipod from linux using the eject command as stated in a previous post, and then booted the comp into windows, connected to the same USB port and it showed right up. I know apple did something to the new ipods that will not let them work with linux- this isn't true of the 80gb video ipod is it?
UPDATE: I attached the ipod to my other ubuntu laptop, it is not mounting there either, couldn't eject it there doing the same thing I did on this laptop, so I rebooted it (it was in disk mode when I attached it, but it should still be mounted by ubuntu, right?). Connected it back to my laptop runnign windows (the original one running ubuntu if you can follow- my emachines 6805), windows recognizes it again right away. itunes is not on this windows machine. I renamed the .rockbox file, but can't delete it- I replaced it with a new rockbox file and new fonts and the ipod is working right again. Is it possible that ubuntu and ipod just do not get along? I am going to ask that at ubuntu forums as well, it seems like others have this problem, but I can never find a simple answer.
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Looks like filesystem corruption again.
I have a 5.5G iPod, and have never had any problems like this. I didn't update to the new 1.2.3 Apple firmware, as it seemed quite useless. I suppose if you updated, maybe that broke something, but I doubt it.
Also, last I heard, the new iPods do work with Linux.
How did the bad blocks check go?
EDIT: errr... devs? Does Rockbox actually take note of the bad blocks flagged?
EDIT: Have you been using different builds? Maybe there was a filesystem bug once?
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No bad blocks found, and when the ipod was restored, no file system corruption found either. Why does this keep happening? This has happened many times, and it is with any of the firware updates that has been on it, so I don't know if that is it. But again, it is working on windows (as far as mounting). Rockbox keeps getting messed up like this though. I am in a quandry here with ubuntu- I love the way it runs, but I do not have the desire to keep fixing things, and I am not a computer programmer. However, I HATE vista (not on any of my machines, but my wife has a new vista laptop which runs SLOW), and I like ubuntu better than xp too. But if none of my stuff is going to work with it, I may have to give up.
EDIT: I did a chkdsk in windows (dos) and it found errors and it fixed them. So, my question remains, what keeps doing this?
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No idea.
If you're ejecting it properly it shouldn't happen. I have the exact same iPod as you do, and the exact same PC setup - it's never happened to me once.
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Two thoughts just came to mind- is it possible it is something in the bootloader? I seem to remember reading something about the new bootloader not being developed by the rockbox people? Maybe I'm wrong, but it came to mind. Also, when I boot into the apple firmware, how long am I suppoosed to leave the switch on hold and how quick do I put it on? I just saw the post about deleting the config file- is it possible that that is what I have been doing? And when I connect it now, should I be doing it in disk mode? The only thing I can think that is happening is that I am doing something wrong, I really can't see how it would be a hardware problem that only happens sometimes. But just some thoughts. If it is the bootloader, is there a different one? And also, is it at all possible that I would have better luck with an older build of rockbox?
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There are two bootloaders available for the ipod in order to make it load an alternative firmware. There is the Rockbox bootloader, and Loader2 (which is from the iPodLinux project). We only support the Rockbox one (obviously). The bootloader is extremely unlikely to be the cause of your problems. It's the thing we release least often for any target - thus most people all end up running the exact same version - and I've yet to hear of another person having your issues.
With regards to turning on the hold switch:
1) No - clearing your config settings won't cause file corruption like you're seeing. It just resets everything in the rockbox config.cfg file back to the shipped settings.
2) In order to boot into the original firmware, you turn on your ipod by hitting either select or menu, and then *immediately* turn the hold switch on. If you wait for the backlight to come on - you've waited too long, and will clear your settings in Rockbox.
With regards to Original Firmware / Disk mode :
It doesn't really matter which you use - although a lot of people find the OF faster than disk mode when transferring a lot of files. This only really matters on a Nano where the difference is enormous - it's no so pronounced on the iPod Video.
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Man, no easy answer here! I appreciate the help, this is very strange.
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Next time your loading up your iPod - instead of ejecting from the Ubuntu desktop - trying do it from the command prompt instead. (It might after all be a bug with the HAL layer in Ubuntu). I tend to do this out of habit (because I've only recently moved to Ubuntu - so I'm still used to doing it from the command line).
You'll need to do this first :
sudo umount /media/IPOD
(Note: /media/IPOD maybe different on your box - check to make sure where your iPod gets mounted.)
followed by :
sudo eject /dev/sdb
(Again, /dev/sdb may not be your iPod device - the properties of the icon on the Ubuntu desktop should help you figure out which device is the right one).
If after doing this the problem goes away - we know it's a Ubuntu problem, not a Rockbox or iPod one.
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Great, I will definitely try that. After your last answer, I was thinking that this has to be an ubuntu issue and since I am new to linux and ubuntu, I do not fully understand the ins and outs of the file structure, mounting, etc. I am working on it, but it is not my area of expertise. The ipod shows up on windows all of the time, but when the file system is corrupted that is when I get the black screen on my ipod saying rockbox is not there and then windows says it can't read from the disk. So my thought is that when ejecting it from linux something is happening to the file system. I will try what you said and report back in a few days with hopefully good news.
EDIT: I did it now and it seemed to work, so hopefully that keeps up-thanks.
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Hi, I don't mean to respond to my own old post, but I just wanted to say that I gave up on rockbox after all of that, and tried to use apples firmware, but just couldn't stand it. I was about to sell my ipod last week when I decided to give rockbox one more try. I have a different machine now, a better understanding of ubuntu (still not great but I can get around better than I could in November), and when I installed rockbox this time everything seems to be great. I don't want to jinx it, but I felt I should say this since so many people tried to help me before. I was using an emachines m6805 with the 64 bit ubuntu and no knowledge of it really. Rockboxed ipod shows up pn my desktop every time now on my IBM (and 32 bit OS, don't know how much different that is but all of my drives automount now). So I just wanted to say thank you and I am glad to be back with rockbox. Hopefully it all continues well.