A little background:
Rio Car
Hijak kernel v 300
player 2.00-beta11 developer image

Everything had been working fine. I can't think of anything that would have changed to start causing problems, but my player has ceased to boot properly.

The kernel boots fine, and detects the drive fine (I currently have hijack configured for a single drive for fast boots, but changing this does not affect the problem).

I then get on the console:

Starting player



khttpd: listening on port 80

kftpd: listening on port 21

  player.cpp        : 385:empeg-car 2.00-beta11 2002/02/08.

player(9): memory violation at pc=0x02034964, lr=0x0216cabc (bad address=0xa2179

aa0, code 2)

(long register dump and stack backtrace snipped)

Restored terminal settings

Remounting first music partition read-only

Remounting second music partition read-only

No secondary hard disk

Abnormal player termination

Player received signal 11

Starting player

... (lather, rinse, repeat)

On the empeg screen, I get the Hijack logo, the empeg boot logo, then the empeg startup screen appears. The status line loops between "Loading music database" and "Loading playlist" (with a few others too fast for me to notice as more than a flicker) as the player software continually restarts.

There is a delay between the player version message to the console and the flaming death. In this delay, I can kill the player with a Ctrl-C and it will gracefully drop out to a shell prompt. On a cursory investigation, things at this level appear sane.

Any hints/tips/suggestions/fixes/questions/etc would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
-Thomee-

Something might have become corrupted somehow.
I'd try a reload of the .upgrade file and see if that makes a difference. Oh, and I'd go with beta13...

/Michael

That's what I would have tried first, except for one problem. Without the player app functioning, I can't connect to the player with Emplode (or Jemplode, which is what I usually use), so I can't install upgrades.

If anyone has some instructions for how to get around this, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks,
-Thomee-

The Rio Upgrade Wizard that comes with Emplode?

Mark
20GB MKII 090000916

The upgrade functionality isn't dependent on a functioning player app - it's all in ROM in the empeg so that you can't hose it.

You need the serial cable, then it should just be a question of double clicking the upgrade file and follow the instructions. Full upgrade info is in the FAQ, here.

/Michael

And make sure to actually follow the instructions, especially as when to plug the empeg in (and when not to) is concerned.

*sigh* I feel like an idiot now... I should have remembered that. Anyway, I upgraded to beta-13, so it's a fresh install (also not currently running a Hijak kernel as a result), but I still get the same problem.

-Thomee-

Just to be sure that the .upgrade file is OK, what does md5sum give on the upgrade file (did you use the developer version or consumer?)

Here's what I have for md5sums (the developer I know work, as it's what I use)
639b4eeabce44d8932cb0efdcc1853b9 car2-consumer-v2.00-beta13.upgrade
f58d87146886657fda8d13dec1fc773e car2-developer-v2.00-beta13.upgrade


It might be also be something funky in the dynamic data partition - you might try nuking it, description here, but you may want to wait and see if anyones else offers other clues...

/Michael

Elessar, I believe the answer to your question can be found either here, or here. I know that neither of those describes your exact situation, but one of them might solve your problem.

Don't go nuking your dynamic data partition until you've tried those two things.

It lives! It lives!

The first suggestion (starting with no playlist) solved the problem. I'm a bit puzzled now, though. That question implies that the problem was with the track it was trying to play. However, I hadn't added any new tracks any time recently, and I'd played through every track on the player multiple times. Should I suspect a problem that hadn't managed to crash the player app previously, or that a file has gone bad? How should I go about locating a problematic file without listening through every song on my player? (Not that I have a problem with listening to everything, but it'll take a while )

Thanks again to everyone for all the help!

-Thomee-

I don't know that it was specifically a problem file or not. But you could start with an FSCK perhaps (search the FAQ for that term).

The drive checks out fine.

At this point, now that it's working and I know how to deal with the problem, I'll probably just leave it be and see if it was a one time sort of problem. If it happens again, then I can do a bit more of a postmortem and see what the problem is (use Hijack to check the flash area for current position, etc).

Thanks again for everyone's help

-Thomee-