USB wont mount

[French]

I am trying to reinstall the firmware but now my usb stick wont even mount...
It just flickers once when I put it in then goes dead and the pbo's box office logo hangs.

Is there a way I can mount the flash disk through telnet and then install the .img file through it?

[digitalemu]

Should mount by itself with no problem. Mine was formatted as fat32. Could be an incompatible USB drive as it seems to completely hang the box. Get a Kinsgston USB drive as they tend to work well for most hardware.

[aasoror]

Should mount by itself with no problem. Mine was formatted as fat32. Could be an incompatible USB drive as it seems to completely hang the box. Get a Kinsgston USB drive as they tend to work well for most hardware.

You are missing some background (http://www.patriotmem.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12563&postcount=6).. French did some customization of his box. So the fix isn't that straight forward as the original post might indicate.

[snappy46]

Here's an idea but some knowledge of linux will be required. If you look at the img firmware file you will notice some bin files in there. One seems to be for video upgrade (video_firmware.install.bin) and another one for audio upgrade (audio_firmware.install.bin). If everything else fails I would put the install.img (extracted files (all of it with the directory structure) onto the PBO box internal drive if you have one using telnet; if not put the files on the USB connect to PBO box and see if you can mount it using telnet using the linux command (mount). It might be a little tricky to find the USB mount designation (try sdb1, sdb2 etc..). Look at the Busybox linux you might be able to find the USB mount designation usually given.

If you make it that far you will have to make the bin files (video_firmware.install.bin) and (audio_firmware.install.bin) executable. After that trying running any of those two and see what happen. There might be other files in the install image that might also help with your problem; look for any other bin file and follow the same process. You may want to try the file in the bootcode update folder; there is a bin file in there that look promising.

Hopefully something will work to get you to point where a normal upgrade can be done.

This is all hypothetical and I could be totally wrong with this approach but if your media player is just a brick right now I guess you have nothing to lose. It is good that you can still telnet to your PBO box this tells me that your linux kernel is working fine.

Good Luck

[IanC]

Have you disconnected the internal hard drive, then booted with the USB stick in?

I seem to recall reading posts where that solved a similar problem for others

[aasoror]

Have you disconnected the internal hard drive, then booted with the USB stick in?

I seem to recall reading posts where that solved a similar problem for others

This might work, an important part of the system is mounted read only (so it would be hard to brick the box). removing the HDD, and hard reset (using power switch) may enable the box to pickup the USB stick.

[French]

USB light dosent come on...dont have any hdd installed either
When I use umount to check for drives it dosent even pick up the flashdisk :(

[French]

I think the problem came when I tried to install busybox 1.15.2 over 1.3 and not on an external/internal sata hdd and somehow it removed/corrupted some files used for mounting the hdds

[foxeye]

Can you still telnet to the box? Perhaps try putting back the original Busybox?

[French]

Hi foxeye, just saw your reply on the other post, I can still telnet, it looks thou like it removed the package folder in the tmp directory

/tmp/package/samba/lib/smb_anonymous_head.conf
/tmp/package/samba/lib/smb_user_head.conf
/tmp/package/script/samba-security: not found
/usr/local/etc/hdd/volumes/: No such file or directory

dont know if this is probably the problem?

how would I try and reinstall the original files / busybox 1.3

[French]

read this here http://www.mpcclub.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22327

What works for me (hope in your case too):
1. Connect RS cable to the PBO (see this http://obrazki.elektroda.net/81_1155551047.jpg),
2. Turn on any terminal like application, connection at 115200, 8-N-1,
3. Turn on PBO and long press ESC key,
4. Now, you will be able to put some commands, type 'erase -m',
5. Restart PBO with USB stick connected to the PBO with the firmware (install.img file),
6. Either on the terminal and on TV you will see the PBO starting in recovery mode and flashing itself.
7. When finished, restart PBO without USB stick.

just no clue how to start with this, anybody else tried it already?

[foxeye]

Hi foxeye, just saw your reply on the other post, I can still telnet, it looks thou like it removed the package folder in the tmp directory

/tmp/package/samba/lib/smb_anonymous_head.conf
/tmp/package/samba/lib/smb_user_head.conf
/tmp/package/script/samba-security: not found
/usr/local/etc/hdd/volumes/: No such file or directory

dont know if this is probably the problem?

how would I try and reinstall the original files / busybox 1.3

I got the original Busybox off my PBO. pm me your email and I'll send it over. Perhaps do what you did before, but overwrite the 1.15 one with the one I send you. (Tried to upload it to the forum but a 96k limit on zip, and the file is 384k)

[French]

tried replacing it and doing what I did b4 but it keeps saying read-only file system etc when I try to replace the original busybox, sigh :( dunno what I can do more

[aasoror]

tried replacing it and doing what I did b4 but it keeps saying read-only file system etc when I try to replace the original busybox, sigh :( dunno what I can do more

Have you tried contacting Patriot ..? don't think they would mind reflashing it for you.


read this here http://www.mpcclub.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22327

What works for me (hope in your case too):
1. Connect RS cable to the PBO (see this http://obrazki.elektroda.net/81_1155551047.jpg),
2. Turn on any terminal like application, connection at 115200, 8-N-1,
3. Turn on PBO and long press ESC key,
4. Now, you will be able to put some commands, type 'erase -m',
5. Restart PBO with USB stick connected to the PBO with the firmware (install.img file),
6. Either on the terminal and on TV you will see the PBO starting in recovery mode and flashing itself.
7. When finished, restart PBO without USB stick.

just no clue how to start with this, anybody else tried it already?

This is recovery using serial connection (from the serial connection pins inside the PBO), I would highly recommend against trying that.

[foxeye]

so I noticed that on the root there is a file called linuxrc that is a symbolic link to /bin/busybox. Now I'm not sure its full function but perhaps if we map it to the original busybox we may see some improvements. Info I found on linuxrc...


12.4. linuxrc
linuxrc is a program that is started in the start-up stage of the kernel prior to the actual boot process. This allows you to boot a small modularized kernel and to load the few drivers that are really needed as modules. linuxrc assists in loading relevant drivers manually. However, the automatic hardware detection performed by YaST is usually quite reliable. The use of linuxrc is not limited to the installation; you can also use it as a boot tool for installed system and even for an independent RAM disk–based rescue system.

So my suggestion is as follows,
Copy the original busybox I sent you to /usr/local/etc
make the root filesystem writeable.
set a new symbolic link i.e ln -sf /usr/local/etc/busybox /linuxrc.
Now I have not played enough in root to know if this will stick, that is to say, if you reboot the machine does it revert to previous, or will the link persist. Another thought occurs...if liluxrc is linked to a file that is on a partition that needs to be mounted, would it be available at boot-time. Unfortunately all of this is theoretcal in my head. I can't test it myself to say it will or won't work :( Perhaps other who have tried altering the root can comment.


[Edit]:This was my original post. I had another thought, so read this suggestion last :)
I assume you are doing the mount -o remount,rw / bit to make the system rw. What is the error when you try to copy the file there? is it that the system is read only? or that the memory could not be allocated (or something to that effect?) Perhaps 1.15 is larger and the system thinks the flashable memory is too full to complete the copy process.

All I can think, and I'm not sure you want to risk it, is delete the 1.15 version from the space, and then try to copy the older 1.3 version back. Probably you will want to make sure the old one is already rwxr-xr-x before doing that as I think the chown and chmod functions come from busybox.

Lastly I think post on that forum where the guy is flashing his PBO and perhaps he can give more detailed instruction on the rs232 connection (perhaps a photo of the innards). That would definitely get you out of this pickle