sd card apps

[Anonymous]

Just got my sd card.. I guess you can use opera to download the apps onto the sd card, but will it work (similar to cf) if you put it in reader to your pc. I formatted the sd with ext2 which I know is used by linux (and symbolics etc). can windows write to ext2 file system is my question?
if so, its simple, create a directory on the sd card, and copy all of the packages there. for the ipk install, tars, gunzip etc.

Thanks

[offroadgeek]

no, windows will not be able to recognize the ext2 formatted card, and will (usually) tell you that the card is not formatted or corrupted and offer you to format it (to fat, fat32 etc).  If you want to share you SD card with your linux and windows boxes, it\'s best to format it as fat (not fat32).

[Anonymous]

Hmmm, then you need to either install to the smaller cf card (32meg) and do a copy on the zaurus box. or download from internet right?

Thanks

[derekp]

You can also use umsdos filesystem on your sd or cf card.  This will let you have a Linux compatible filesystem (symlinks, etc), and still be compatible with windows too.  You will need to cross-compile and install the umsdos.o and msdos.o modules, and also the umsdos tools (umssync).  Check the kernel Documentation directory for details.

One problem with umsdos, though, is it doesn\'t support vfat long filenames.  If you have a Linux long filename, the name under windows appears highly mangled.  There is development patches you can apply to get umsdos working with the vfat filesystem however (uvfat?) , but it\'s not even alpha quality yet (I could only get it to work for a few hours before getting major corruption), so you\'ll be better off sticking with plain umsdos over fat for the time being.

[Anonymous]

Hi,
 I was playing around a bit tonight with file transfer etc. I wanted to see my sd card. Now, again, it is mounted as ext2

/dev/mmcda1 on /usr/mnt.rom/card type ext2 (rw). Agreed.

Now, I had the zaurus in my cradle , and invoked file transfer. I was able to transfer .ipk files from my desktop to the sd card. My desktop runs win/xp, and it copied the files successfully.

How would it transfer from windows (ntfs) to ext2 ? If this does work , which it appears to , I simply download my packages to my workstation , and then use file transf to put them all in the sd cards Documents/Install_Files and I\'m ready to go.

I must admit Im surprised, as the posts indicated the incompatiblities between ext2 and both vfat and windows

Thank you for your thoughts
Greg

[lardman]

How would it transfer from windows (ntfs) to ext2 ? If this does work , which it appears to , I simply download my packages to my workstation , and then use file transf to put them all in the sd cards Documents/Install_Files and I\'m ready to go.

Yes.

I must admit Im surprised, as the posts indicated the incompatiblities between ext2 and both vfat and windows

The problem is that Windows cannot mount and write to ext2 filesystems (though it can read from them with the correct software). But this only applies when Windows tries to mount the card itself. If you are using your Z as the conduit it\'s fine as the Z accepts the data in whatever format Windows sends it (samba, sftp) then writes it to the ext2 fs itself.


Si