ext3 filesystem on my sdhc card????

I am using Ubuntu Jaunty and Banshee 1.4.3 to sync my music collection to my Fuze. Banshee recognizes this device as a USB mass storage device where Ubuntu sees that it is a music player. The filesystem on the sdhc card is FAT32 but I am having bizarre issues syncing to it. ie; not all of the tracks are copied, some directories are renamed for some odd reason. I think it has to do with the primitive nature of FAT32.

Can the Fuze read an ext3 filesystem? If so, I’d love to format my sdhc as ext3 and probably achieve more success with Banshee.

Thanks!

It can not. FAT32 is the only filesystem that is supported.

Well then this is not very Unix-friendly because FAT32 is an abysmally archaic filesystem.

Actually, it is very Linux friendly because FAT32 has been supported in Linux for ages. Look at it this way: it’s better than NTFS.

However, I will say this: Ubuntu has not worked very well for me – and this is one of the things that didn’t work for me (I actually found myself reformatting the Fuze after trying it out in Ubunutu Jaunty Jackolope or whatever they call it). I’d suggest another distro that actually WORKS – say, PCLinuxOS or Ark or Yoper or…

I’m using PCLinuxOS.

ext3 filesystem, or even ntfs, would be a bad idea for this type of device, due to file security. Whilst that’s a good thing on a computer, on an external device like this, the simpler the better, and fat32 knows nothing about file ownership, etc.

mkfs.vfat defaults to FAT16, btw…

I’ve found Ubuntu to be an awesome distro and this is a headless server with RAID and all my data on it so scrapping it for a new distro is out of the question. But when I used rsync to copy my tunes, “NOFX” became “nofx”, an album named “80-85” became “8085” and so forth. I contend this is a FAT32 issue and have the means to test it on an external USB drive formatted ext3.

 Couldn’t it also be an rsync issue?

Also, who ever said that Sansas (or any mp3 players) were particularly Unix-friendly? 

I’ve never had this issue with rsync on any other filesystem!

The box says that the Fuze is Linux friendly, but it doesn’t say anything about any other UNIX.

I’ve never had any trouble using my Fuze with Linux, and i’ve always used the default FAT32 filesystem on the Fuze. In fact, the only OS I have available to me is Linux. I will stand by what I said, though: Ubuntu is not a distro that has worked well for me, and my Fuze proves it (it’s been reformatted almost every time I used it with *Ubuntu).

First of all, there is not much difference in Linux distributions when it comes to mp3 player support, imho. There is of cause many other reasons for people to choose and prefer a certain distribution - but this is not the ideal place to discuss it. And it will probably be of little help to the OP.

Back on topic. I believe, ext2/ext3 filesystems will never make it to a portable mp3 player because fat/vfat is a reasonable choice already. And it is well supported by Linux. The problem of renaming files/directories may well be related to the use of MTP mode connection (even on M$ systems). But even in MSC USB connection - which I use exclusively and without any such problem - I’d like to mention that there are several different mount options for vfat under Linux resulting in different file names.

What is your USB connection setting? How do you copy your files? How do you find/access them on the fuze?

This is strange. I use Linux Mint 7, which has the same insides as Ubuntu,  and Fuze without those problems, though I might be lucky not to use the files with dashes between numbers.

@ewelot wrote:

Back on topic. I believe, ext2/ext3 filesystems will never make it to a portable mp3 player because fat/vfat is a reasonable choice already. And it is well supported by Linux. The problem of renaming files/directories may well be related to the use of MTP mode connection (even on M$ systems). But even in MSC USB connection - which I use exclusively and without any such problem - I’d like to mention that there are several different mount options for vfat under Linux resulting in different file names.

 

What is your USB connection setting? How do you copy your files? How do you find/access them on the fuze?

 

I have Banshee mounting the Fuze as a USB storage device and the USB mode on the Fuze is “Auto”.

The mount info looks like this:

/dev/sdd1 on /media/FUZE SDHC type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,shortname=mixed,uid=1000,utf8,umask=077,flush)
/dev/sdc on /media/SANSA FUZE type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,shortname=mixed,uid=1000,utf8,umask=077,flush)

The problems with your filenames might be beacause of how you’re mouting the shares over the network. SMB for example will default to the lowest common denominator when it comes to filenames, such as all lowercase and no extended (supported) symbols. Try mounting the shares as CIFS instead of SMB, but this is all assuming your problems come from a Samba server sharing the music over your network (this is exactly how I do things), so this might be completely the wrong solution for the problem at hand.

Also, in this day and age of HAL, you shouldn’t ever need to add a MP3 player to fstab, it should all be automagic.

@gdanko wrote:


@ewelot wrote:

Back on topic. I believe, ext2/ext3 filesystems will never make it to a portable mp3 player because fat/vfat is a reasonable choice already. And it is well supported by Linux. The problem of renaming files/directories may well be related to the use of MTP mode connection (even on M$ systems). But even in MSC USB connection - which I use exclusively and without any such problem - I’d like to mention that there are several different mount options for vfat under Linux resulting in different file names.

 

What is your USB connection setting? How do you copy your files? How do you find/access them on the fuze?

 


I have Banshee mounting the Fuze as a USB storage device and the USB mode on the Fuze is “Auto”.

 

The mount info looks like this:

/dev/sdd1 on /media/FUZE SDHC type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,shortname=mixed,uid=1000,utf8,umask=077,flush)
/dev/sdc on /media/SANSA FUZE type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,shortname=mixed,uid=1000,utf8,umask=077,flush)

 

 

Thanks for the info. At first I would recommend to preselect the desired USB connection mode. The “Auto” setting has been reported to possibly give some unexpected results, although I never tried by myself. If you intent to operate the fuze as an mp3 player (e.g. using amarok, rhythmbox or other MTP enabled applications) then you should select MTP mode. If you stick to simple MSC mode - as I do all the time - then setting MSC is highly recommended.

The only translation of file/directory names which happens on MSC USB connection is the handling of upper and lower case depending on the vfat mount options. Note that both reading and writing filenames can be affected and the appearance of file names on the fuze during folder browsing must not match the case of names visible on your mounted drive under Linux. This might well account for your first problem (“NOFX”).

I get the best matches by “win95” mount option on file transfer to and from the fuze. I never used utf8 mount option. Note that I’m running my Linux box in de_DE.UTF-8 locale.

If you do not copy files with the cp command but instead run some sophisticated GUI application then there is a fairly good chance that the application does some file/directory renaming on the fly during ripping files off the CD and maybe on copying too. This could result in the removal of the “-” character. I don’t use banshee, so you have to check its options by your own. Also I’d like to encourage you using cp to transfer some test files to the fuze and check if this works. Good luck!

Message Edited by ewelot on 06-29-2009 03:17 PM

EDIT: I didn’t insert the smiley above. And I don’t see it inside the editor window. Strange …  

Message Edited by ewelot on 06-29-2009 03:22 PM

The system automounts them. Theyre not in fstab,

Reformat the card by hand.

mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/mmcblk1p1

Make sure that’s the right device name by checking dmesg :slight_smile:

Test some more, and if you still have any problems, zero the device (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk1), repartition, and then reformat it. If you still have troubles with the card, return it to the store.

Now this is a 16 gig card. FAT16 won’t go beyind 2 gig right? Logic would say Linux is smart enough to make it FAT32.

@mngrif wrote:

Reformat the card by hand.

 

mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/mmcblk1p1

 

Make sure that’s the right device name by checking dmesg :slight_smile:

 

Test some more, and if you still have any problems, zero the device (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk1), repartition, and then reformat it. If you still have troubles with the card, return it to the store.

Just to remind you - don’t forget to have a backup of your data before formating the card! Personally I would prefer to do a filesystem check with fsck.vfat first.

@gdanko

Don’t worry about the automounter. You can savely unmount the device and mount it again (as root) with the options YOU want. Later you might give some better hint to the automounter or add some static entry to the fstab file. As I said before, there should be no upper/lower case conversion in short and long file names if you choose the correct mount option and use the cp command.

Remember, Banshee is transferring the data, not me. I am using Banshee to manage the music/podcasts, etc. I did as you suggested though,

mkfs.vfat -F32 -n +FUZE SDHC" /dev/sdc1