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Subject: Re: C200 corruption & made to work (not quite a mini-howto)

Re: C200 corruption & made to work (not quite a mini-howto)

From: Tony Godshall <togo_at_of.net>
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2008 19:00:19 -0800

Doh, sorry about the cruft at the top.

This is what I meant:

- intent as before, but slightly edited -

Hi folks.

This is my first post to this list.

I've been running rockbox on Sansa e200 and c200 for a while now, and
on Archos before that.

While the e200s are slicker, and better for video, I prefer the c200
for podcast listening: I can delete a podcast by touch (ie. while
driving). It is a complicated sequence (hold center two beats, hit
down 8, hit center, hit center) but it works.

I've been a little loathe to recommend rockbox to others given I've
had some time with corruption that's mysterious on installation but
then with some random-walk frustrating reinstallation etc tends to go
away and then the unit is reliable.

Anyhow, I recently bought a few C240s and C250s to give as gifts and
they were invariably corrupt on the first go, but then I was able to
make them work, and then I worked out the install procedure that
worked for me reliably. I'll produce it below, but I'll note what I
think is the primary issue first.

It seems that the factory format for partition 1, as well as the
device's own reformat is incompatible with linux. It appears to work
at first sometimes, but after the first write on sansa (e.g., choosing
a different font), the format becomes corrupt and all subsequent
writes either fail or produce files that do not read properly, lost
chains, etc.

Formatting partition one as vfat32 in linux makes it work fine.
mkfs.vfat -c -F32 -n "Sansa C240 Rockbox" /dev/sdb1

OK, so here's my recipe (hope this helps others):

sansadev=/dev/sdb1
sansamnt=/mnt/sdb1
mkdir -p ~/rockbox
cd ~/rockbox
wget --force-directories -c
download.rockbox.org/bootloader/sandisk-sansa/sansapatcher/linux32x86/sansapatcher
build.rockbox.org/dist/build-sansac200/rockbox.zip
download.rockbox.org/daily/fonts/rockbox-fonts.zip
www.rockbox.org/twiki/pub/Main/IconSets/Iconsets-full-20070429.zip
download.rockbox.org/useful/rockdoom.zip
download.rockbox.org/mpeg/elephantsdream-q6-128x96-192kbps.mpg
umount $sansadev (if ubuntu automounted it)
chmod ugo+x ~/rockbox/download.rockbox.org/bootloader/sandisk-sansa/sansapatcher/linux32x86/sansapatcher
&& ~/rockbox/download.rockbox.org/bootloader/sandisk-sansa/sansapatcher/linux32x86/sansapatcher
i(enter)(enter)
mkfs.vfat -c -F32 -n "Sansa C240 Rockbox" $sansadev
(unplug, power off, plug in, wait for it to mount, ... damn, it powers
itself off, unplug, replug, powers off again, unplug,
hold-down-turn-off, turn on, plug in, ok, now /proc/partitions looks
good )
mkdir -p $sansamnt && mount -t vfat $sansadev $sansamnt
d=/home/tony/rockbox/tmp/
rm -Rf $d ; mkdir -p $d; (cd $d && unzip
~/rockbox/build.rockbox.org/dist/build-sansac200/rockbox.zip && unzip
-o ~/rockbox/download.rockbox.org/daily/fonts/rockbox-fonts.zip &&
unzip ~/rockbox/www.rockbox.org/twiki/pub/Main/IconSets/Iconsets-full-20070429.zip
&& unzip ~/rockbox/download.rockbox.org/useful/rockdoom.zip && rsync
-u ~/rockbox/download.rockbox.org/mpeg/elephantsdream-q6-128x96-192kbps.mpg
$d/. --progress )
rsync -ruv $d/.rockbox $sansamnt/. && rsync -ruv $d/. $sansamnt/.
rsync -rv $d/. $sansamnt/. --checksum (force checksums)
umount $sansadev
(unplug, turn off, turn on, rockbox works, hooray! now to turn off
the stupid unreadable little icons, change the font to something more
readable but not too big, make it red to save my night vision, etc.,
etc. without reformatting, this would have corrupted the device right
away)

By the way, fixing the (also apparently not up to normal convention)
partition table is *not* a route to success. I have one or two that I
have no idea how to recover. They just say No partition found and hang

Tony Godshall
Alameda, CA
Received on 2008-12-15

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