HD-FOX CF Host UPD

Black Hole

Black Hole

May contain traces of nut
I have been having sporadic problems with my HD-FOX1 CF installation (HD2 and HD3 don't get used much, HD1 is used almost every night after bedtime and before getting up of a morning).

The CF gets used (principally) for network-shares-automount to provide USB access to the HDRs, and occasionally these would not be present in the USB list - only "drive1" (the UPD itself). These spasms tended to recover themselves though, so I was curious but not overly bothered, and the dlna-servername package made it much more convenient to just use the network option temporarily.

However, the latest spasm has lasted several days now despite reboots and cold starts, even restarts with the UPD unplugged, so I thought I would investigate. Browser access to HD1 produced nothing at all. Telnet access provided the command line, but nothing under /mnt and the /mod link was broken.

I fired up my quick tool for Linux - an old netbook - but the management tools installed by default leave much to be desired. It did not list anything on the USB ports available to be mounted, but the UPD showed up in the device list. I gave up with that and moved on to PartedMagic booted on my notebook PC.

Again the UPD ("PNY USB 2.0 FD") shows up under /media, but not available to mount. Clicking it gives me "Error <i>org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.UnknownFailure</i>" and "Directory does not exist!".

Unless anyone has a bright idea, it looks to me like the file system on this device is shot. Bear in mind it would have been FAT32 converted to Ext2.

I should chuck it, but I will try rebuilding it (and while I am at it bring the CF up to date). Fortunately I can rip the automount settings from the other HDs.
 
Hmm. GParted shows an Ext2 file system with appropriate numbers in the used and unused fields. It also says it has an msdos partition table (I think that's right).

I think I'll see what happens if I plug in the host UPD from one of the other HDs.
 
Oh. After that non-fix, the HD recognises the UPD has content, and lists the custom folders, but no media (eg the modsettings folder), and the custom folders appear practically empty. There's a load of stuff in lost+found though. The WebIF is offering to download the full interface.

So the question is this: is this UPD dicky, or have I hit a problem with using a UPD in this kind of duty?
 
That was a filesystem problem. The EXT filesystem check is what will have dumped the things into lost+found. The corruption could have just been one of those things or could be related to degradation of the underlying flash.. no easy way to tell.
 
Quick update: can't get automount working, WebIF etc is OK now but not got around to investigating.
 
Bingo! I now have network access to all three HDRs, one of them used to be on/off (more off than on) before all this.
 
This has been mentioned before, but I don't recall a positive response.

What I think is needed, particularly for HD-FOX running CF from a Ext2 UPD, is an easy backup and restore process so that some kind of image can be created on a PC (by network connection to the HD-FOX, or even just plugging the UPD into the PC) and used to create a new UPD if and when necessary. Or, even better, a self-contained process which creates the image on a networked HDR-FOX.
 
...and has finally stopped working in as much as it was reported as not connected, then came back when rebooted but with nothing under [ModSettings], and trying to connect to the WebIF produces a page of random (binary?) characters and some ASCII talking about inodes and stuff.

Time to start again with a new UPD.
 
No one else knows either. Follow the link at the end of BH's post to find out what the obscure, single user, initialisation UPD means.
 
Ah, yet another name for a USB stick. They don't look remotely like any pen I use, so why call them a USB Pen Drive? Similarly I don't understand Thumb Drive, they don't look at all like my thumb. Sigh. The standard name is USB Stick, or USB Memory Stick if you must. At least having the work USB in there is important.
 
Stop being silly. Of course they make thumb and pen shaped thumb and pen drives. Where's raydon when you need him.
 
Owen Smith said:
The standard name is USB Stick
Click to expand...
Says who? The last thing it looks like is a twig. Who decided OP means original poster? How many people know what that means first time they see it? This is a non-issue, and those who get hot under the collar need to ask themselves why they worry about it. You call it what you want, I'll use a TLA.
 
Memory Stick is/was a brand name for a type of flash memory originally marketed by Sony IIRC so using it as a generic name for USB flash drives is a little awkward, especially as the original memory sticks did not have a USB interface. In my world people normally call them flash drives but understand you if you say memory stick (just like understanding the term 'Hoovering').
 
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