Barry Allen - here today, gone tomorrow

Dog's dinner

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Due to certain issues (which I won't go into here), I removed Barry Allen from the cf card, along with all the images (which Barry Allen sometimes found, sometimes didn't). At least I thought I did.

Even though Barry Allen was absent from the list of extensions, the red Barry Allen flash screen appeared when I restarted the Dreambox - sometimes with and sometimes without the options to boot into any of the images.

So I removed the cf card, deleted barry allen again, via the telnet function on the dreambox control centre. I then turned off the dreambox at the mains a couple of times, shoved the cf card back in (while the dreambox was off).

Hoping everything was fine, I opened the dreambox control centre and searched for the cf card. Didn't find it of course, but I did discover masses of Barry Allen stuff in a directory called autofs/sdb1 which I thought I'd just spent time deleting.

Questions
!) How can I check whether the cf card is empty - it's hard to know which directory it might be nested in (autofs, bin, boot, dev, sdb1 etc.)?
2) is it alright to delete images directly from the MB_Images directory (via dreambox control's ftp function)?
3) Is it alright to delete the ba directory (which includes masses of stuff connected with the different images (nabilo, newnigma etc)?
4) How do I format the cf card so that Barry Allen is installed on the card, not the hard drive?

I shan't mention the hours spent searching the web for answers to these questions.
 

fazers

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Good-evening , i think the best to remove barry allen is to change image flash . with BA you can remove image , sorry for my english . I have 8000 dreambox , oozoon in flash and BA usb stick . I use Nemesis 2.4 . Are you sour BA is in CF ? or DD if you are one .
Good-evening .
 

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Thanks for taking the time to answer, fazers! Not quite sure what you mean when you suggest "change image flash". If it means installing a new image over the present one (the normal Dreambox image, not nabilo or anything), than I'd prefer another solution if possible. I did that at least four times a week or so ago.

You ask if I'm sure barry allen was not installed to the cf card. Yes, I'm sure, because the installation log didn't mention "cf card found installing barryallen there!".

But I'd still like to know whether it's possible to see whether anything is on the cf card. I only ask because people say that the card has to be completely clean before Barry Allen is installed on it. If there are remnants from previous installations, then it won't be clean. That's also why I wondered about how I could format the card.

People also recommend removing any traces or Barry Allen leftovers on the hard disk - i.e. the files in the sdb1 directory.

I shan't be doing anything more with this tonight. Have to wait til tomorrow.
 

Gerry55

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Dog's dinner
Format the cf card in windows, then install Barryallen it will format the cf with Linux before the install.
 

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Thanks for the tip, Gerry55. I bought a CF card reader today from our local Clas Ohlsson. Big mistake. The instructions say, don't bother to hunt for a driver if your operating system is Windows XP or 2000. But if you do want a driver, the address they give you to find it doesn't get you anywhere. The place doesn't exist. The manufacturer does though - it's in Taiwan. When you look for a driver, your particular piece of hardware isn't listed, and even if you do click on one which looks like it, you'll only download a driver detective, not the driver.

They're getting mine back tomorrow.

Otherwise, I don't see how I can get Windows to format a cf card. It doesn't appear when it's plugged into the dreambox, and without a functioning card reader/writer (which I didn't know I needed until yesterday), it can't be formatted.
 

Gerry55

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I think you are making a Dog's dinner of this, just put cf card in a card reader and format it to fat32
 

oldfart

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also, have a read of the BA instructions- translation in progress - probably a week to go
 

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Just cottoned on to what you meant by reading the BA instructions. I have read them - twice I think, and dipped into them several times to find the command strings.

I bought a new card reader today, which worked, and I formatted the original cf card. The second card didn't need formatting. But the dreambox still refuses to acknowledge the presence of a cf card, despite turning the thing off before inserting and removing them. Just doesn't seem to know whether they're there or not.

Partial success with the old hard drive. Connected it to a computer, deleted the volume, installed a new one, and now its recognised by the dreambox control centre. It still won't mount, though. According to the telnet responses, the path is /dev/sdc1 rather than /dev/sda1. I've tried mounting it using both. Telnet says it can't find either of them ("can't find mount/dev/sda1 [or sdc1] /media/hdd").

Tried doing it via the dreambox setup/system/hard drive menu, but that resulted in another green screen.
 

oldfart

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fdisk -l (lowercase L)
lists your devices - start from there
you can edit the /etc/fstab file to include any device and force it to be mounted wherever
 

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Thanks for the tip. Now fdisk -l has never listed a CF device (I've run the command about 20 times over the past few weeks). I also ran a useful command, dmesg. It's s'posed to tell you what devices Linux discovered during bootup. I then ran lsmod to detect modules. Now I'm sure the results of these commands are telling me vital information. It's telling me for example that I've got a live Dreambox keyboard - which is news for me. Wonder where it is.

Joking apart - unless one has a glossary explaining all the acronyms and abbreviations, you'll be none the wiser running these commands. For example, does this line make sense to you: a
lps_bsbe2 44200 1 bcm 7455, Live 5xc5586 ?

One discovery, though which might be useful. I ran the command mkdir /mnt/cf. It returned a message, "the directory exists already". Well that's something.

No, the obviously most practical thing is to open /etc/fstab in Notepad and take decisive action. Now since I don't know a) what I'm looking for, and b) what I'll do if I don't find it, opening fstab may be akin to stabbing in the dark. I

imagine I'm supposed (or expected) to add a command line to the fstab commands (or whatever they're called in Linux speak). Let's see if we can't figure one out. (No, it's not "please Mr Dreambox, will you please mount my cf card?")

It has to look something like: /dev/cf /media/cfcard auto rw,auto,user,sync 0 0

This may be all wrong, of course. Auto means the card will be mounted automatically (leaving me hopefully out of the frame). But "noauto" gives me some control (ha, ha) over when, where, what and how to mount whatever.

rw means you're allowed to read and write (if you've got root-authority, that is) to the CF card.

user gives me the pleasure of mounting the device if I want to. I could have written nouser, and spoilt the fun. That would hand over my mounting rights to the Dreambox (which I wouldn't trust with the dog, much less mountaineering).

sync (or swim) means commands are written to the card as they're written by the root-authority (me).

And the final two 0s tell the dump not to back up the file system, and not to check it either. The latter command is given the merry acronym, fsck. (You wouldn't believe it, but they've got a file called fscking.raw next door to fstab.)

So, moment of truth. Insert command line into the fstab file. I suppose I'll have to restart/reboot the Dreambox. Exciting times!

...and the result is: nada. As usual, the Dreambox doesn't fail to disappoint. Taking longer than usual to reboot (which is saying something, you can usually do a lap round the block), it still hasn't a clue about a CF card.

Well, the command string was wrong, of course. I'll need another week to sort that one out I expect.

By the way, if you're interested in reading up on the Linux knowledge: How to edit and understand /etc/fstab
 

oldfart

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you can't use notepad to edit fstab
Linux and windows text files have different line end markers.
You have to use a Linux compatible text editor
you *could* use the one bult into the dreambox - but I wouldn't...
use something like notepad++
make sure the 'EOL conversion' is set to Unix (it defaults to Windows)

format the CF card (in your PC) to normal fat (fat16)
 

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Thanks oldfart for the new info. I haven't been back to see whether anybody answered the last post until today. I'm rationing my Dreambox experience. Two hours a week.

I've reformatted the CF card. Windows offers two fat formats, fat32 or just plain fat (with no number attached). I select vanilla fat, hoping it's 16 rather than 8 or 55 or something.

Turned the Dreambox off at the mains, shoved the newly formatted CF card in, turned the Dreambox back on, hoping against hope that it would recognise the CF fat16 card. But no.

So, download Notepad++. Open etc\fstab. The configuration looks more or less like this:

#automatically edited by enigma2, Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:36:38
rootfs / auto defaults 1 1
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs defaults 0 0
/dev/mtdblock2 /boot jffs2 ro 0 0
tmpfs /var tmpfs defaults 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-uuid/e1cdf5ab-0346-4850-b014-b9327d08f548 /media/hdd noauto defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-uuid/415c8b73-701a-4a7c-bebb-4b86e447d233 /media/hdd noauto defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-uuid/56366435-fda7-4f1a-9cc9-1130eff042fc /media/hdd noauto defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-uuid/30FC72FDFC72BD22 /media/WDC WD3000HLFS-0 noauto defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-uuid/95fa9ae6-cb62-43f1-9ac0-0f65c46f3b0e /media/hdd noauto defaults 0 0
/dev/cf /media/cfcard auto rw,auto,user,sync 0 0

Now last week it was saved as a Windows Notepad file, so it's probably already disconfigured. Still, if it's not working, whatever I do can't do much damage.

The last command line was what I introduced last week.

Step one: remove it.

Step two: set EOL conversion to Unix. Click 'save'. Reboot Dreambox (probably unnecessary).

Step three: add new command line again, manually: /dev/cf /media/cfcard rw,noauto,user,sync 0 0 (I use the space tab to insert spaces; struck me though that Linux might prefer the indent tab or whatever it's called, the one with the two arrows pointing in opposite directions).

Step four: wave magic wand. Reboot Dreambox

Step five: telnet fdisk -l.... mmm., as I thought,

Step five and a half. Take lift to 10th floor, look for nearest open window.

I'm slowly running out of patience. I have no idea which of the several variables in the command /dev/cf /media/cfcard auto rw,auto,user,sync 0 0 are wrong, if any. A space too many, too few, wrong code word for CF card? A slash too many? God knows.

That's my two hour ration used up already. (Secret sight of relief - seven whole days before next round of dismal stabs in the dark).

Have a nice Sunday everybody!
 
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