OESF Portables Forum
General Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: Anonymous on February 23, 2004, 01:19:27 pm
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hi-
I have a new SL5600.
I\'d like to use the /mnt/card (SD flash) device as general purpose storage,
but whenever I try to use it, it automagically gets set to read-only mode
somehow. even after I remount it in read-write mode, some other process
forces it back to read-only...
help, any hints?
ron
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You will either need to fsck or format your sd card.
If it keeps getting corrupt, then you may have a dodgy card.
You did not say what sd card you have, or what filesystem you had on it.
Peter.
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I\'m having the same problem. Mine is a Lexar SD \"High Speed\" 256 MB card. (I\'m also running a 5600.)
I\'ve formatted the card with mkdosfs, mkfs.dos, mkfs.ext2, mkfs.msdos, mkfs.vfat, and I\'ve had the problem every time. It seems to accept ~2 MB of files, then it goes read only.
I tried to write a \"slowcp\" script to move bite-sized chunks, then pause. I tried adding a umount/pause/mount/append. I tried lots of things. It seems that once it goes Read Only, the only way to get write access back is with a reboot.
I\'m running the Sharp ROM. What are you running, Ron?
....Oh, yeah, and the Preimptive kernel from the downloads section here.
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The SD support in the 5600 seems worse than the 5500 to me. I have got a cheap brand 128MB MMC card which works fine in my 5500 but does the read-only thing in my 5600 after only a few seconds of writing. I also have a 64MB Viking MMC which also works fine in my 5500 and generally does in my 5600 except when I write large amounts of data to it. For example I cannot use it as the storage for the voice recorder.
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hi-
The 5600 is still nearly \'stock\' (no real changes, just put \'bash\' and tcpdump on it).
The SD cards come formated as VFAT, it is a a Lexar 256MB card.
I tried to reformat as ext2, but it wll not remount.
I reformatted as vfat, and it mounts OK.
Good guess on the media error. \'dmesg\' reports select errors.
Maybe I need to slow down an access time option, anybody
got an idea if this can be done?
ron
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The \'sync\' option on the SD card mount command might help. You need to put this in the FATOPTS variable in /etc/sdcontrol
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My sandisk 256mb had all these problems and more. Athough many people report similr cards as working fine. I got a lexar 256mb as nobody at the time had ever reported problems with them.
True to form my lexar card has given me no problems at all, I can store several thousand news group messages for offline viewing, or stick large movie files on it. All of which would kill the sandisk card, but work without issue on the lexar.
Recently, I have seen one other poster with lexar sd problems, so now it seems like it\'s a lottery, no manufacturer can supply a card which is guranteed to work with the zaurus.
If you can exchange the card, then do so, and hope the replacment is a good one as there is no way of knowing ( serial no\'s etc don\'t seem to mean squat).
Adding the sync option is a compromise that is not necessary on a fully compatible card.
I still have the \"faulty\" sandisk card, it works fine in my digital camera, and as a test device on my 5500. It will not format to ext2 however and will become corrupt within minutes if I try to use it heavily on either of my zauri.
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A good test for your sd card is to xtract a large tar file onto it. Do a suspend and run a find / -name \"rubish\".
if you get an io error your card is not compatible with the zaurus, or the zaurus can just lock up while extracting the tar file, and then become \"read only\" on reboot.
All sd cards may behave well and appear ok if they are just lightly used.
Any hardware I buy gets more that light usage :evil:
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The \'sync\' option on the SD card mount command might help. You need to put this in the FATOPTS variable in /etc/sdcontrol
Well. that didn\'t work... :cry:
I did get ~16 MB transfered (first test only) before it crashed, though. That\'s a huge improvement.
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Hrm.... looks like it was the 7.3 MB \"mega mix\" mp3 that did it in. Maybe that was too much for one session....
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Hi-
My \"Lexar 64 MB\" SD card works fine (it has a single FAT12 partition).
My \"Lexar 256MB\" SD card is hosed after several megs of use (single FAT16 partition).
I had to download \'fdisk\' to display the partition types.
I guess the SD cards are not very reliable, eh?
ron
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I returned the Lexar card and laid down an additional $17.00 for the Panasonic \"Super High Speed\" 256 MB card. I walked out to the parking lot, cut open the package, and tested it by coping over all 93 MB MP3s.
Flawless!
I\'ve been running a 64 MB swap partition from this card all day with no problems. (Well, no problems from the Z, only problems I\'ve caused myself.) I suspect there\'s a problem in the Lexar 256 MB card.
As far as I can tell, the Panasonic card was worth the extra money for stability alone.
Now, Panasonic claims \"up to 10 MB/s\" for this card. Anyone got a benchmark for SD performance from the Z? I\'m wondering if the Z is even capable of moving more than 150 kb/s on that port.
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Not too sure if anyone else has seen this, but with my 256 sd card formatted with ext2 i found that voice recorder could not record to the sd card. But it works if I point it internal and have a symbolic link pointing the x-wav dir to the sd card. heh just wasted ages changing rights everywhere
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I have a new SL5600.
I\'d like to use the /mnt/card (SD flash) device as general purpose storage,
but whenever I try to use it, it automagically gets set to read-only mode
somehow. even after I remount it in read-write mode, some other process
forces it back to read-only...
ron
Any further progress made on this problem? I have a lexar 64MB SD card and am experiencing the same problem.
Has anyone made it back from this problem, or am I eternally screwed?
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See my post above about returning the Lexar card and replacing it with the Panasonic card.
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I know that I have had the same issue with one 256 Lexar SD while another worked fine.
I also had the issue occur with the working SD card when I started using the premptive patch on my 5600. The stock Sharp rom worked.
I found that by changing the mount from the directions at http://www.pocketworkstation.org/ (http://www.pocketworkstation.org/)
mount /dev/mmcda1 -o remount,sync,noatime
helped the readonly issue with the premtive patch. It ends up slowing the write down a lot.
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I have had similar problems with an SD card (can\'t remember what brand it is). But before I used it in my SL5600, I had used it for a while with an iPaq and had no problems. Maybe there\'s bugs in the Zaurus SD driver?
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I just got off the phone with Sharp\'s Zaurus support. They told me that they have not recieved any (many?) tech support calls about this problem. However they did sound highly interested in resolving this issue!
They have asked me to reformat my Lexar SD card and try to get it to work that way. If (when) that doesn\'t work, they have given me a phone number of a Zaurus \"guru\" at sharp who may be of additional assistance. If anyone would like to assist me in attempting to resolve this issue, I would greatly appreciate it.
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There does seem to be a general problem with filesystem corruption on SD storage - for background reading from someone who has really got his teeth into the issue, take a look at http://sdprob.aximsite.com/ (http://sdprob.aximsite.com/) . There are also four tests to check whether a particular card is \'safe\' or not that could be trivially converted to Unix scripts.
Zaurii don\'t feature on this site, but we (as a community) could change that by letting the site maintainer know of our own experiences. It looks to me that he would be happy to add our info.
I agree that buying SD memory is a bit of a lottery - there clearly has been a problem with the Zaurus/SanDisk combination for cards of 256Mb and above, and Lexar was generally considered safe for the Zaurus. It may be that this picture is changing. My own experiences (for what they are worth) are at http://externe.net/zaurus/forum/viewtopic.php?t=812 (http://externe.net/zaurus/forum/viewtopic.php?t=812)
Regards.
P.
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See my latest post in this thread for an interesting turn to the sandisk/lexar sd debate.
http://www.zaurususergroup.com/index.php?n...=viewforum&f=72 (http://www.zaurususergroup.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewforum&f=72)
I just got off the phone with Sharp\'s Zaurus support. They told me that they have not recieved any (many?) tech support calls about this problem. However they did sound highly interested in resolving this issue!
The person you spoke to is either very new, or just wants you to go away happy. :wink:
I would like you to persevere however, and let us all know what their \"current stance\" is on this issue, but don\'t hold your breath waiting for a resolution.
Sharp are very aware of numerous SD problems, and there are many different problems that do not seem to be brand specific.
1) works fine as fat, but not ext2.
2) goes ro after heavy access (all formats).
3) bad blocks (all formats).
4) suspend/resume problems.
5) slows the machine to a crawl during heavy read/write access.
6) crash and reboot during read/write access.
Some of these are related, others are not. There are also many cards that have no problems whatsoever. Some times you can get two cards from the same company which appear to be identical even down to similar serial no\'s. One will work fine, the other will exhibit one or more of the above set of problems.
As others have stated, it\'s not a sharp/zaurus only issue.
Peter.
Peter.
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Hi folks
Zbones has just contacted me regarding your favourite gismo and SD cards, and I thought I\'ll try to answer what *could* be going wrong.
First things first, there are two issues with SD cards: corrupted data and slow write times.
Corrupted data
My guess is that your read-only problem is being caused by an issue like the one that affected Dell Axim X5 users; except in the Zaurus\'s case the card goes read only. As you probably know, SD cards have a form of File Allocation Table, to determine when an area of the card is populated with data. What you probably don\'t know is that there is an extension to this FAT to handle data security (i.e. the \"Secure\" part of SD cards...) Now, our \"friends\" at Sandisk, the well known memory card manufacturers created a series of SD cards branded by themselves and others (including Lexar) with a (shall we say) sub-standard controller on the SD card. This controller caused buffer over-flow errors during a write operation causing corruption to the secure part of the SD card. This can lock the card VIA SOFTWARE to a secured-state, i.e. read only! (Sandisk branded cards have a code on the back in the format NNYYMMnN where NN are characters, n is the series code, YYMM are year & month of manufacture...) Note that Sandisk have revised their cards a number of times during 2003 & 2004...
Slow write speeds
SD cards are just like other memory cards (i.e. CF, MMC, MS, xD, SM, etc) where they emulate an ATA hard drive. Unfortunately, some memory card controllers in devices (like PDAs) are not too compatable with certain brands of SD cards, and what they do is drop the i/o speed to mantain reliable access with the SD card. For example, I own over 600 SD cards. I actually only use 2 - a 256mb SimpleTech and a 512mb Panasonic. The SimpleTech, based on a Hitachi SD memory chip, is 300% faster writing than the Panasonic in my PDA (a Ipaq 2210) but the same speed in my camera (Minolta Dimage Xt). I guess you folks need to identify what cards are faster by timing a large file write to your SD cards and then posting the results...
Hope this helps.
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So my lexar and sandisk cards could well be designed by the same people.
Anybody with a simpletech card care to run some speed tests on a zaurus?
Anybody with an sd card capable of more than 1mb/sec sustained write speed on any zaurus?
I feel a purchase could be on the horizon.
Peter
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I misspoke. The card I was referring to in my earlier post is actually an MMC card that I put in the SD slot. MMC cards don\'t have all the security junk. So, there\'s something else going on as well.