new way to kill a Zaurus

[labingdaga]

Well I hope I haven't broken my zaurus sl-5500... here's what happend
I've just reflashed to OZ 3.5.1 Opie from OZ 3.5.1 GPE.

  I've read in different places that you can move parts of the root file system to other places.  In the past I've run out of room on the root partition because I installed to many applications, so now after a reflash I move /usr/lib/ipkg to /mnt/card/usr/lib (sd card formatted as ext2) then I symlink ipkg back to /usr/lib. (I usually put ipkg on /mnt/card/root/lib/ipkg, but I forgot this time   )

  Then I thought I'd try to move /var/tmp to the sd card.  That did some funny things at first, but after a reboot things worked fine.  I did notice more messages about not being able to find a file system on /dev/hda, usually there's one this time I saw at least 3.  Another post said this was normall, so I ignored it as usual.

  So I was back up with my Z and things were going okay so I decided to do an upgrade of my system from a cf card.  I got one error about not being able to find opie-console (didn't put it on my card) and a number of interesting items about not being able to find a tmp folder, I didn't like that.  Everything still seemed to be working.

  I figured I'd do a reboot to refresh everything.  so I switched to vt 1 and ran shutdown -r 0, then bad things started to happen.

  At the end of the reboot sequence I saw a brief message of "system restore" then the message and charge lights came on like a reflash and it's been sitting there for about 1/2 hour now.  I would talk about this on an IRC but the firewall at work won't let me.

  Any Idea on how to interupt this process without bricking the Z would be great

Thanks

[labingdaga]

something I forgot to mention was the screen was still on  and it started to go slowly grey while the lights were on.

well after an hour of waiting, i decided i would try to do the reflash commands and see what would happen.  the screen turned off, the lights went out then back on and after the normal reflash time the lights went out.

I still have a Z  

[lardman]

Then I thought I'd try to move /var/tmp to the sd card.

Isn't this on a tmpfs anyway (RAM based filesystem)?

something I forgot to mention was the screen was still on and it started to go slowly grey while the lights were on.

Sounds like the double reset bug.

Glad you've got it working again.


Si

P.S. Out of interest, why move all these things to the SD card? Why not just install additional packages to the SD card instead?

[labingdaga]

Mostly I move the /usr/lib/ipkg to sd card so the feed lists don't fill up the root directory.  The tmp folder was just a test that wasn't fully thought through, but I was hopping to increase the size of my tmp drive via the sd card, and to decrease the ware to the internal storage.

[ksignorini]

Hey.....my Z does this to me on reboot quite often.  Ya, the right hand side of the screen goes grey and greyer the longer I wait.  I've resorted to having to do a hard-reset when this happens.

What is this double-reset bug?

Kent!

[lardman]

What is this double-reset bug?

Just make sure you suspend (either software or hardware button) everytime you perform a hard rest (or reboot? I can't remember, but a search sould find a better description).

If you do two resets without a suspend in the middle you'll see this bug (and you'll require a battery pull iirc).


Si

[ksignorini]

So are you saying that if I do a hard reset, then let the system come back up, then do a hard reset again that this will happen?

So hard reset, play with zaurus, suspend (either through O menu or press On/Off) then back on with On/Off, then hard reset and this won't happen?

Kent!

[lardman]

Yes and yes.

But you're better off suspending before playing as, in my experience, the playing often requires another hard reset :-)


Si