Is it an empeg feature that his kernel boot log indicates that the second drive is /dev/hdb, while everyone in the thread is talking about /dev/hdc.

On a Mark 1 the drives are primary master and secondary master. On a Mark 2 the drives are primary master and primary slave. For software compatibility reasons, the block special devices with filenames "/dev/hdc*" in a Mark 2 image, have the major/minor numbers associated with primary slave, not the ones associated with secondary master.

This is a filthy and bletcherous hack IMO, but that's how it's always been done and everyone else in the world apart from Eternalsun can sync to 2-drive car players. If Eternalsun had a Mark 1 image, he wouldn't be able to sync to it over Ethernet (and these days I don't think it would even boot).

In any case, ps (or better lsof) could be used to see whether any unusual processes are running that have open filehandles on /drive1.

I bunged Eternalsun a player build that does lsof "by steam" just before doing a sync -- at least for the player's own process. It showed that the player had no files open on /drive1. Once he's tried it with no Hijack and no other 3rd-party software, that'll rule out anyone having fd's open on the second drive.

Peter

Incidentally, at any point in this diagnostic process, did we ever have a look at his config.ini? Just to see if anything was strange. Or did we try erasing his config.ini and starting from scratch?

did we ever have a look at his config.ini?

We have it in our text editor at the moment. We can see nothing wrong with it. We note that there's some hijack stuff at the bottom of it (is that a cleartext password?) but nothing that could in any way be a problem.

Peter (Incorrigibly plural)

Might be worth a try to have him remove all the hijack stuff temporarily, especially the password, and see if that fixes it.

Later, we'll decide whether we're schizophrenic or not.

Hmm, Hijack stuff. Password. kFTP server.

ftp myplayer
cd /drive0/var/fids

Will that mark the filesystem in use, the same way as a process with that current working directory would? I bet it wouldn't show up with lsof, either...

Will that mark the filesystem in use, the same way as a process with that current working directory would?

If there's a kernel thread for kftpd that has that directory as its CSD, then yes. Whether that's true or not depends on how kftpd works -- I haven't looked.

I bet it wouldn't show up with lsof, either...

Probably not. (lsof lists the CSDs of user processes on my PC, but not those of any kernel threads.)

Peter

Hijack kftpd/khttpd do not set CWD when browsing. Each file access is from the root level again (nice convenient hack, small performance cost).

It might be possible that they may have forgotten to close a file somewhere, but not likely.

Cheers

Uh..guys....a question from a mere mortal....Obviously this poor lad has been having some terrible problems...to the point that I would not want to ever upgrade the software on my system (Using B2.13). Aside from possible sorting out some minor sync issues via XP, would I ever need to upgrade to a newer realease, and would I ever by chance encounter problems such as the one here if I were to leave 2.13 in my system till hell freezes over?

Please say no!

Thanks...Ed

Ed, I don't think the problems described in this thread are due to the software upgrade. Don't be afraid to upgrade to 2.0b13 or any of the other empeg releases. Everyone else has done so and not had any problems. The situation being debugged in this thread must be something else we haven't nailed down yet.

And since this thread's being brought up again...

Calvin, did you ever check the player for loose solder joints on your IDE header?

I asked for the same problem and someone answered me to stop any process launched by Preinit.

When I stop empacman and Emptris (I start it in a script) then I can sync my player.

I have a MK2a , 1 HDD ....

I first tried to reinstall Beta13, nothing to do ....

The only way I have to sync is that I removed my preinit scripts ....

Thanks, Nosferatu, but I was asking Calvin. He'd said that he had the problem even with the stock software. The problem with other applications preventing the synch is already known and was one of the first things we checked at the top of this thread.

Sorry, It seems even I read all the threads, I haven t all understand ...

I also ran into this problem today trying to sync and the past few days messin with preinit/launcher/TTS.

I ended up taking out launcher and it seems to be working now. I'll play with the different aspects of launcher again to see if it was a certain item that might have caused it.

So, where did this ever get to? I am having a very similar problem.

Thanks.

I am also having a similar problem. Say I drag 80 songs into a playlist, and hit sync. it goes through all the motions, only very fast. It thinks it's complete, but alas, nothing has changed on my player. I am running 2.0 final /w Hijack 340. Also running is emphatic, running on a non - music partition. (Hence no errors on disk integrety check). Oh, I cannot even delete a song. (well, I can, but not if I use the playlists tree. If I used all tracks, it allowed me to delete. Tres bizarre.

I also noticed some bizarre behavior this morning. I was playing a Zeppelin tune I've played a thousand times before and it started to skip. Badly. I hit next, and that song was skipping too. I yanked the player out and slid it back in, all booted and started playing smoothly with no problem. I then wanted to see if emphatic was causing the problem, so I launched it. Then all my keypresses stopped responding except for pause. Very strange.

I've had the problem with skipping/pops with known good songs and it turned out to be a flakey IDE cable. I recrimped it and it's been working fine ever since. I've email Rob to buy a new one but he hasn't replied yet. No hurry anyway as I said it's working perfectly so far.

[edit]If you can connect to the serial port when it's skipping you should see loads of HD errors. This is assuming it happens reasonably often.[/edit]

- Trevor

Cool, I'll try it. Thanks.