Wow, I finally managed to finish moving and get some time to do some more work on the ext3 stuff. I managed to get it patched all the way up to the current version of ext3 for kernel 2.2 (0.0.7a). Aside from any bugs I may have introduced this should be pretty stable. Get the latest version here. The instructions are a little simpler for this version as well.

Please try this out and let me know how it works for you. The major advantage is no more of those painfully long drive checks. Regular drive mounts also happen a little faster. I have been running some version of ext3 on my empeg for a couple of months now with no data loss and this newest version seems to fix the one remount bug I was having previously.

If you are running the older version of ext3 that I posted a couple of months ago the upgrade process is pretty simple. Just grab the newer kernel, e2fsck, and tune2fs from the site above and install them. You will also want to upgrade to the newer journal format by mounting the drive once with this command: "mount /dev/hdaX /mnt -o journal=update".

-Mike

You should probably ship a kernel config diff in your patch which has all the questions answered, in case people care.

I'm building a v299 hijack version of this now.

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I'm building a v299 hijack version of this now.

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Arghh, am I out of date already? I totally missed 299 I'll add a config next time I do an update, in the meantime if you want to build your own kernel just use the empeg-car[1|2] config as a starting point and then take all the defaults except for enabling ext3.

-Mike

then take all the defaults except for enabling ext3.

I know; I'm already running the kernel

I'm creating the 2nd journal now.

And indeed, it looks good. Thanks!

Now I just need to make sure to keep the relevant diffs around; diffing diffs sure can look ugly though.

Interdiff is really useful to create a regular diff that contains all the incremental changes between 2 diffs. It is part of patchutils.

Hi.

If the ext3 support is configurable via the standard kernel config scripts, then could you please update your sources to Hijack 299, and then send me a complete (single) unified diff ("diff -u") between your source tree and the standard Hijack tree?

I'll try applying it, and hopefully if all works well enough it will become standard Hijack code, at lease the 2.2.17+ portions. The ext3 will get incorporated into the Hijack sources, but probably not as the default config for Hijack binaries right now.

Thanks

I guess I'll try it for the next version.

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I'll try applying it, and hopefully if all works well enough it will become standard Hijack code, at lease the 2.2.17+ portions.

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Wooohoo, I've made the big time ;-) If you promise not to release a new version of hijack for at least the next 5 or 6 hours I will get you a patch today.

Thanks,
-Mike

OK Mark, just sent you an email. If anybody else happens to want this the patch is at http://macgeek.dyndns.org/empeg/ext3/empeg-hj299-to-ext3+kernel2.2.17.diff.gz

-Mike

Yeah, I might as well cache a copy for now.

ext3 is working well for me. I suppose though that I do way to fsck a little more frequently than never but I haven't decided yet how I want to deal.

I tried putting ext3 on my player. Everything was going good until I got the following(for both drives):

empeg:/bin# mount /dev/hdc4 /drive1
empeg-EXT3: changing mount type for:/dev/hdc4
EXT3-fs warning: feature flags set on rev 0 fs, running e2fsck is recommended
EXT3-fs warning (device ide0(3,68)): ext3_update_fs_rev: updating to rev 1 becau
se of new feature flag, running e2fsck is recommended
ro
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
empeg:/bin# ro
mount: can't find /drive1 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab

How can I fix this?

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empeg:/bin# mount /dev/hdc4 /drive1
empeg-EXT3: changing mount type for:/dev/hdc4
EXT3-fs warning: feature flags set on rev 0 fs, running e2fsck is recommended
EXT3-fs warning (device ide0(3,68)): ext3_update_fs_rev: updating to rev 1 becau
se of new feature flag, running e2fsck is recommended
ro
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.

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Were you running my older ext3 setup before? That message is just telling you that it upgraded the ext3 journal file on your drive to support the newer ordered data mode (it might also happen the first time you setup ext3 on the volume, I forget). You should only see it once and it is nothing to worry about.

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empeg:/bin# ro
mount: can't find /drive1 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab

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This is unrelated, but happens because there is no mount line for the second drive in the fstab file. The empeg guys didn't add it since the player normally mounts the volume directly. If you don't want to see it again connect to the player of serial and type...

prompt> echo "/dev/hdc4 /drive1 ext2 ro 0 1" >> /etc/fstab

Make sure you get that right with the two arrows or you will overwrite the file instead of just adding to it.

-Mike