[Ifp-driver-common] Re: formatting a UMS iRiver for use on linux

[Javier M. <li...@ma...>]

* Trey Gruel <dra...@ni...> [040213 16:46]:

Hi iriver mates :) I'm reading the list again.
It sure is a nice coincidence but we all (the onews writing this thread,
anyway) seem to use Gentoo :))

The patch I had done is included in love-sources
http://www.linuxmall.us/~lovepatch/love-sources/
Although I have problems with all the 2.6.2+ versions, hence, I use
gentoo-dev-sources over which I apply a tad amount of patches I have
over here.

If you still need the patch, you can still get it from the address I had
initially posted ->
http://perso.wanadoo.es/smarcet/015_iriver_NORMB.patch

>> This forced me to do a format (which I did on my friend's window box).=
=20
>> When I did this, windows would only format 109M when my player is a 128M
>> player.  Before it was formated for 128M. =20

>> Anyone have any suggestions on this one?

>That's windows setting aside some space for the "Recycle Bin".  To get=20
>that space back you need to tell windows to let you not use the recycle=20
>bin for that drive.

>(Using XP as a guide as it's the only windows I have accessable ATM)

[...]

>I think other versions of windows do it the same way, but I'm not 100%=20
>sure.

>As a side note, does anyone know whether or not mkdosfs or mkfs.vfat in
>Linux will work for formatting an iFP for UMS use?

I'm pretty sure I had already written about that on this same list
around the same time I posted the patch.

The best way I found to have an acceptable MBR on the iRiver player,
without those silly four primary partitions which windows creates, out
of which only one is usable (/dev/sda4 on linux), is to simply do a
'fdisk /dev/sda', supposing that's where you have your iriver --it might
be /dev/sd{b,c,d,e,...} depending on whether you have other scsi devices
on the system (yeah, the iriver is not scsi but usb, what happens is
that usb-storage, which the iriver uses, is implemented over the scsi
layer-- ... err, sorry for the length of the message.

=46rom the fdisk prompt just remove all the partitions, leaving the iriver
completely unpartitioned, save the changes and instead of creating the
filesystem wih mkfs.vfat or using windows, simply unplug the unit from
the usb port and turn it on. Supposing you already had the UMS firmware
installed, a message will show up on the screen explaining that the unit
is being formatted.

After all, if it formats itself, it sure knows how to do it better than
any OS. If you plug in it to the USB after the format is over, you'll
have to make the two dirs the unit needs on its root folder, called
'RECORD' --where it'll save radio and line-in recordings--, and 'VOICE'
--where it'll place voice (mic) recordings--.

Beyond those two you can create whatever you want, with the only limit
of keeping below 1024 the number of folders on the root dir --I haven't
tried that, it's said in the manual which came with my unit--.

By the way, after being formatted by itself, I access it from /dev/sda,
as if there were no partitions.

Also, as pointed out by some of you in another message, the iriver does
not show the files in alphabetical order, but in the order we copy the
files. That means that if the first folder you create is 'VOICE',
that'll show up first, if you then create 'Albums' or whatever you want
to make, that'll come in second, if you then create the other needed
folder 'RECORD' that'll show up as the third folder on the root. So not
even the mandatory folders need to be the first ones.

Knowing these you can order the folders and files the way you want by
just moving the folders and files around. The copying from the PC to the
irivr is slow, but once the files are on the usb unit, you can move then
freely in real time.

Another ebenefit of the UMS firmware I found is that you can edit the
ID3 tags after you copied the files as you can copy them back to the PC,
be it yours or any other to which you might plug the unit, unlike the manag=
ed
firmware which does not let you copy back mp3s files to the computer
once they are on the unit.

All in all, I see no reason to not use the UMS firm.

Just in case you are interested, this is the line I put on my /etc/fstab
to mount my iriver player:

/dev/sda    /mnt/ifpdev     vfat    noauto,sync,noatime,user,nonumtail,shor=
tname=3Dmixed,codepage=3D850,iocharset=3Diso8859-15    0 0

/dev/sda is the iriver device
/mnt/ifpdev the folder where it is mounted on
noauto means the unit is not mounted automatically at boot time, after
all it is not plugged all the time
sync is to not delay the write operations, but do them at the moment the
are requested, so that there's no delay to umount the unit or anything
else
the othere parameters affect the treatment of large filenames (beyond
8+3); you can read more on the mount(8) man page.


If you have any other problem simply say so, and please send a copy of
the message to my e-mail address, just in case I forget checking the
list again :)


--=20
Javier Marcet <ja...@ma...>