DM500c on DW2.0 runs out of HD space straight away? anything safe to delete?

[Midnight Tboy]

Heya,

ok so I finally got my firmware flashed to DW2.0 and everything up and running seemingly fine.

At first I thought everything was fine, all sport channels etc there. Wasn't till later that noticed an unhappy son did not have Disney channels, so decided to have a tinker. wasn't till later that basically found out that it just takes a good 3 or so scans to get everything found by bruteforces.

Now one of the first things I did, was noticed that the evocam was on 2.12 by default, but noticed that there was 2.17c out so downloaded that (apologies if got the v numbers or names slightly wrong as box is downstairs and switched off at mo ).

I then thought, hmmmm lets download a few other bits while here, so tried to dl a bunch of games, a few apps such as streaming etc. Without paying much attention really to the space free % at top as saw file sizes are small like a few kb each. I noticed then that some things were saying installing etc...but when went into games not a single thing was installed. So I thought "hmmm perhaps it needs a reboot to register the new progs" and did so....the machine didnt reboot as normally saw in the prev reboots.

On restart, I then saw there was still no games shown, and also, whenever I choose from cam 2.12 to 2.17c, when went back into menu it would show 2.12 as being active still... exactly the same if I tried to choose Old driver instead of New...it would just ignore what I chose and be back on new.

I then tried to go to Menu Option 5, shut down and reboot dreambox. Before the machine shut down to reboot I noticed an error message popup box on screen with the shutdown DW logo (no info shown on the error box tho as layout was messed up).

Figured somehow I screwed the image and restored to factory settings and started the scan afresh. This time around I only dl'd 1 tiny game at first, and sure enough it showed listed, then I dl'd the updated cam only. now it was changing correctly as it should. So I then thought to duplicate by basically dl'ing too much....that's not hard to do - only took 1 more prog to be full. And bingo - same result, errors on shutdown, info and configs etc not being saved. Uninstall addons option didnt seem to work, and was surprised theres no "clean up" options to be used.

I then ftp'd onto box to take looksie as hadnt done that yet, and found a couple of the files and manually deleted them. It was of course up and running again.

Now this time I deleted the 2.12 fully, and kept only the 2.17c on there...I then wondered about trying the mgcam (or whatever its called) latest ver wondering if was any better at not requiring restart like the 2.12 seemed to need. Trouble is there isnt even enough room to just have both evocam and the other ones.

Are all the DB500c's this bad for space free after the 2.0 image is on? As theres not enough room for any customisation at all on there really. Or could it be cos I'm using a clone and the clone has a little less available ram to play with? From a factory reset its something along lines of 500kb free, and presumably need double the download amounts to allow extraction and installation.

I browsed a few of the folders via ftp to see if there was anything obvious that could be taken off to save space. I noticed that theres a var_init folder which I presume is what reloads back on when do a factory reset....that also has a copy of the old 2.12 cam. Although all the files are protected in those folders, would I be right in thinking it would be safe to delete at least that file? that would free up about 200odd kb at least which is better than nothing. Obv it would mean if did a factory reset I would have to dl a cam but it should be ok.

So, other than my grumpy rant about lack of space to swing a virtual ant never mind a cat, anyone know what bits on the image are safe to delete and still keep fully functional, like other country infos, sat infos, redundant folders and files that sort of stuff???

hope you can help.

On the upside, I now have no room for any evocam, but have the other cam installed seemingly fine...and I do have the disney channels But now lost since the factory reset a cpl of the sky sport channels lol!! doh!!

cheers,
Tuck


ps silly me - of course I dont mean HD space but cant edit the title of topic. meh!

 

[ellie1998]

you can easily edit the read only part but you will need a copy of linux (it's free ) I have posted info here.
https://www.digitalworldz.co.uk/index.php?threads/158580/

then you can move your current emu's into it and the icons folder which will leave you with plenty of room (about 1Mb).
I can post the info on how to move the files if you think you will actually do it, not going to write it out if no one is interested though.

Have Fun

 

[Midnight Tboy]

Heya,

thanks for the alternative...tho I've deliberated on many occasion whether to install linux on one of the pcs I've always resisted the temptation so far. For sake of deleting about 800kb its prob not worth all the time to install linux on pc in first place

I was thinking however, that I wondered if it would allow me to set the attribute on the file manually within flashfxp to then allow me to delete it (if find which files I dont need of course ).

Surely I cant be the only one who's had problems with lockups and bad settings and the likes just because there is next to no room to play with and change cams?

even possibly getting rid of the entire init folder (if it does indeed only set back all settings for a factory reset....just mean would have to keep that rs232 handy in case summat goes wrong in future

 

[beady]

The thing about var_init is that the first time you boot a newly flashed image, everything is copied from var_init into var. So it is needed. I suppose once var is populated, you could delete var_init from the image, but it wouldn't actually get you any more space.

The dreambox has three 'partitions' on the flash. Think of them like hard drives in windows. The first one contains the kernel, the second a read only filesystem that contains all the programs, and main directory structure (including var_init but not var), and finally one containing var, which is read and write enabled. When you first flash, the contents of the var_init directory on partition 2 are copied into partition 3. It's this third partition which you can install or delete stuff into.

The partitions have fixed sizes (they're all on the same flash chip, with hard coded start and end points), so deleting the var_init (from partition 2) doesn't change the start position of partition 3 (the writable one you are running out of space on), so you get no extra space on which to install more stuff.

It's possible to transfer stuff out of the var partition and into partition 2, to free up more space. That would require linux (you have to dump it and edit offline). So you could find out which cams worked well, put them into partition 2 (which has better compression than 3) and rebuild the flash image. You've got to be very careful about not overwriting too much though, etc etc. It wouldn't be trivial,but it's certainly possible.

Alternatively, if you're feeling brave, you could have a go with this(shameless plug), and get all the space you can dream of.

As for installing linux, a VMWare virtual machine will do just fine for the job above, and you don't have to worry about losing Windows. Who knows, maybe you'll like it.

 

[Midnight Tboy]

thanks for the replies again.

never realised they were treat as seperate fixed partitions so there goes that idea tbh I think its prob more hassle than its worth - just ideally fancied having both the evo cam and other on at same time so could flic thru them and se which is preferred....I'll just have to get put up with deleting the installed cam before dl'ing the next each time

Don't mind really so much but was v surprised at how little there was to play with.

So long as I can have mainly installed - 1 working cam, the VLC plugin (when I find where it is), and Ngrab software (which I think is preinstalled)....then thats all I need....the rest is just messing about, such as games just for the sake of having them Hope at least those 3 will fit

On a digression - I dl'd the guide to running VLC, and it talks about copying the vlc.so,vlc.cfg and vlc.xml files into the var folder. I checked my own installation of the latest ver of VLC (v0.8.6d) and in its folder could not see any of those files? Though I might have missed it I couldnt see the files needed in the download section either? tho it was late so could be having a blonde moment. Hope the size of them files are tiny tho

Thanks,
Tuck