Mark, If I unerstand well, it is now possible to clone two empegs through this? If so, how?
Thank you so much for your great job.

I'd love to know that too, since I've had the ubiquitous serial number problems with the clone tool, and I'd prefer Ethernet anyway...

To clone one empeg onto another, the easiest way (for me) is to have a third machine running Linux, with mirrordir software installed.

First, use the serial port to login to the target empeg ("empeg2") and issue the "rw" command (yes, I know.. I'm working on making this easier..).

Then, from the Linux box on the network:

mirrordir -v ftp://empeg1/ ftp://empeg2

Come back a few hours later, and you'll have two completely identical empegs, except for kernels and other stuff stored in the flash.

Of course, there's a bug I just found in kftpd that causes mirrordir to have trouble every 64 files or so.. that will be fixed shortly in Hijack v121

-ml

Mark, not sure if this has been asked for already, but any chance PASV mode will be supported?

Ooopps not quite correct..

You'll also need to "EXCLUDE" /proc/ from the mirrordir copy.

Or just copy the fids instead:


mirrordir -v ftp://empeg1/drive0/ ftp://empeg2/drive0/

>Mark, not sure if this has been asked for already,
>but any chance PASV mode will be supported?

Not any time soon. The difficulty with PASV is that it's just too easy to lock up the single-threaded kftpd, requiring a reboot to recover it.

The only real need ("want?") for PASV is for accessing an Empeg through a firewall. And the existing khttpd can do this instead, for retrieval at least. I hope to add HTTP POST (for uploads) eventually as well.

Cheers

Here's how to mirror an Empeg, excluding /proc/:


mirrordir -v --exclude-regexp '.*/proc/.*' ftp://empeg1/ ftp://empeg2/

Is their any possibilty of having a multi threaded kftpd/khttpd at some point or is it just too hard/memory intensive ?

Thank you very much Mark.
Now, does anybody know of any mirrordir utility running under win32, or maybe can/wants to compile it to run under win32? Unfortunately I have no Linux box at hand, and I guess many here would greatly benefit from this cloning method, expecially now that the clone utility in Emplode has some bugs still to be fixed...

Thank you!

>any possibilty of having a multi threaded kftpd/khttpd ?

Maybe. Mostly, it's a resource thing.. not a lot of memory to go around, and I just want(ed) basic remote access capability. But I suppose I might add a sys_fork() call in there someday, just to try it out.

The "real" khttpd() server in linux-2.4.xx (totally unrelated to mine) actually just runs as a single thread, but manages multiple connections using internal status queues and non-blocking I/O. But it's also a lot bigger, and doesn't do as much as the one in Hijack.

...

Hi.

Smartftp is supposed to be able to do this using it's global queue feature which does allow you to store a remote file (even multiple files) on a second remote system.
However, I was unable to get it to work for me right now, but that might be due to my firewall (I only have one ftp server on my home network, so I had to choose an external one for the second connection).

cu,
sven

I was just looking at that! I use SmartFTP too and hope it had that among its may features. Tomorrow I'll finally be able to put my hands on my new empeg, and I'll post a report of my cloning attempts.
Thank you!

Okay, Hijack v122 is out.

Notable changes since v119:

-- kftpd/khttpd now spawn sub-threads for each new connection, so you can click on a tune to play it (streaming audio) and continue browsing in another window.
-- hard drive detection code modified to wait for the master drive, regardless of the 1/2 drive setting in the hijack menu.
-- mime-type added for convenient viewing of tags files under /drive?/fids/
-- fixed bug in ftp that caused every 64th transfer to fail, as seen when using mirrordir to clone players
-- added fsync() after each file download, sync() after each ftp session is terminated.

Available from http://empeg-hijack.sourceforge.net/

Cheers

-ml

Mark, you're a star...

In the worst case, one could download all *1 files to PC and use them to generate a script that transfers *0 files one by one with PC as intermediate storage. Kludgy, but will work.

Ok, I am afraid I need a review of what are the relevant files in the Empeg. If all I want to do is to move my mp3s and database (meaning playlists and martist/titles/yrs/notes ecc) from one player to another, what are the files I should move? Where are them and what are them?
And for the equalizer settings?
What about times played, etc?
For a proper copy I would also need to copy the config.ini. Am I forgetting anything else?

Tony, maybe this could go in the FAQ. Sorry if there is. I checked and did not find it...

Actually, I think it would be nice if there was some sort of guide to the content of the empeg tree structure, highlighting those dirs that contain something relevant for those users who want to play around with it. What do you think?

Thank you very much in advance for the great help!

This isn't a complaint or anything, but is there a way to turn off the Hijack Version popup on the empegs boot? Its not a big deal or anything, it just cuts off my penguin animation ; )

-Greg

Your music, playlists, and the infamous "database" are all under the /drive0 and /drive1 directories.. those are what must be copied over.

-ml

Don't worry too much about the popup, it's just temporary. I'm actually using it to test something, and waiting to see if anyone reports a broken system as a result.

It'll go out from on top of the penguin sometime soon.

-ml

Hehe ok. Do your work man, your awsome at it. Good luck ; )

-Greg

Great. So, I'll make a copy of the entire tree structure under /drive0 and /drive1 on my PC running windows, and copy it back to the new Empeg. I'll let you know how it goes. Thank you!

OK, I am downloading all my 15Gb of stuff from the empeg to my PC, hoping to upload it back on the new one. Using ftp server implemented in hijack and SmartFTP in Win2k. WHat happens is that every some fids downloaded (never the same number) I get a "Connection Failure" for no apparent reason, and have to restart the download form where it stopped.
Unfortunately I don't get any more detailed error message. Little chances it is due to the lan connection, or to smartftp, since are both working perfectly with other applications. Is there something I can do to see of there's a bug somewhere?

The v121/v122/v123 versions of Hijack should not have this problem -- it was happening due to a bug in the parsing of the "PORT" command.

-ml

I am using Hijack version 123 . I was using ports 923 and 922 for the kftpd. Now I am using the standard ports, and the connection seems to be faster and more stable. Is it possible that the ports used were the problem? No firewall is being used between my pc and my emepg. Just a simple connection thorugh the quite new and extremely expensive Cisco Swicth that is where I work, and quite high quality ethernet cables that have been working with no problem at all so far. So I guess there should no be problem with cambling and other networking devices.

No, TCP takes care of all that stuff anyway.

Well, if you connect to the serial port with kftpd_verbose=0 in config.ini, then it should only dump messages when there's an error. And I'll need to see those messages to have any hope of diagnosing the problem.

-ml

Ok, I think I found out what the problem is, more or less. Basically while downloading I get caught by the "freeze" bug. Empeg stops responding to commands on the front panel, but that is apparently related to a slowdown of the connection as well, which eventually gets dropped. The bad thing is that it happens unexpectedly, and in thelast ten minutes it did not even allow me to retrieve the directory list!

For the player freezes, the situation seems to improve when you use the "reserve" keyword thingie to free up a little extra memory in config.ini. You'll have to search for syntax etc.. I forgot what I set..

I had the player "unfreeze" for the first time. I froze (during a transient info slide), but when it got to the end of the playlist it unfroze again.

Hi.

Section Startup, parameter ReserveCache=n where n is the number of (approximately) 32kByte chunks to reduce the cache by. Details at riocar.org developer info

cu,
sven

OK, Thank you mlord and Smu. Last night I tried everything I could, but the player would just freeze when trying to ftp anything from it. As I said, it became harder and harder even to just get a directory list. With this solution you suggested I got it to work again. Just to be clearer to those who may need it as well, I just added these two lines at the very beginning of the in the config.ini

[Startup]
ReserveCache=32


Now the ftp seems to be working fine. Hopefully I'll manage to retrieve all the remaining gigs, and upload them, in the new player. I'll let you know!
Thank you.

Ok, downloaded the remaining 8Gb from Drive1 and all the 3Gb from drive1, without any problem. Definitely that setting of the cache mem solved the problem. Thank you so much!!
Now, what are the possible problems of leaving that line in the config.ini?

Regarding ReserveCache option in config.ini:

Now, what are the possible problems of leaving that line in the config.ini?

Well, just one: The player software need to read from the disc more often than it would without that setting.

cu,
sven

Ok, do you/anybody have any suggestion of what would be a good value?
Anyway, now I am uploading everything back on the sencond empeg, no cache setting, and everything is going wonderfully smoothly. I just hope that when I reboot everything is how I expect
Also, the "site rw" command worked perfectly too. Using Hijack 124. If this whole backup goes fine I think Tony could insert this simple procedure in the backup as a very good replacement for the clone utility!

AMAZING!
It worked perfectly! So, in case somebody needs it as well now that many have a second empeg, here are the few simple steps!

On the SOURCE Empeg
1) Install proper sw versions (Currently/Tested on Emplode 2.00b7 + HiJack 124)
2) Start your favorite ftp client (I used SmatrtFTP on WinXP) and enter the Empeg
3) Download the two direcotries Drive0 and Drive1, including all subdirs, to your local hdd.

On the DESTINATION Empeg
4) as 1)
5) as 2)
6) Send the custom command SITE RW to make the hdds writable
7) Copy the Drive1 and Drive2 directories from your PC HDD to your destination player, overwriting those in the DESTINATION Empeg
8) Send the custom command SITE RW to make the hdds read only
9) Wait 5 seconds at least that so that 8) is completed
10) Unplug and plug back your empeg.
DONE! Fids, Playlists, Dbase, all safe on your new unit!

What was not backed up with this method: EQualizer Settings, Time, Timecode, Date Settings. Maybe something else I did not notice yet.

A big big thank you to Mark Lord for such a great tool as HiJack!

Another thing left out: times songs are played. All counters are set back to 0, now.

One note: with v125 it is no longer necessary to "wait 8 seconds" for the SITE RW and SITE RO commands.. they are now synchronous with the FTP responses. This means they are now scriptable as well.

This only applies if you can see the "Mounting.." popup windows when issuing a "SITE RW/RO" command -- older versions of hijack lack these indicators.

The data not saved by this method is the settings, stored on a different partition. You can ftp those as well, though, by copying /dev/hda2 and /dev/hda3 (using FTP) from one system to another.
Probably only one of those is needed, but I don't know which one.

cheers

It's hda3. Hda2 is a spare 32MB partition for user programs, etc.

I meant v125, not v124, in my last post (now edited).

Mark, I'm having problems with the khttpd in v125. When I try to grab the root directory the connection just hangs. When I try to grab a file or directory, I get an "Invalid file" error and the URL in my browser gets maybe 30 or 40 slashes appended to it. Very strange behavior.

The dirlist from / is fixed in v126, along with a ton of new features in the same (roughly speaking) space.

Cheers