I Agree with Shiro that ext3 is linux and Linux is the best way to go period! (ext4 is actually better if your kernal supports it because of the extended crash journal created under ext4)
WARNING - If you have no or little linux experience then do NOT follow any of this!!
But I still disagree that it is the only way to go and that it is the most reliable too. I/O errors still occur with any external drive whether it be HDD or USB. The reliability of the IO all depends on your particular devices. There is no easy fast rule with this.
Most of the IO problems I have ever experienced are actually caused by Enigma2 and not the device itself. Which is a strange thing to say when there is not much in the code to suggest this, and the crash logs dont suggest this either. However if you move control from Enigma2 to the kernal, the problems vanish completely. So how then must it be the devices and not Enigma2 and how it enumerates them?
I still even now run epg and picons and the swapfile from a flash drive formatted to ntfs. Apologies for earlier post that said it was fat32, it isnt its ntfs.
Arrrghh - I hear Shiro cry!! - And I agree, if it was a problem then I would have it ext3/4 , picons and epg on the HDD.
However, the budget 4gb flash drive has been in use for over 3 years now and still does not crash. You have to also consider that flash memory is volatile and the suggested read/write operations before bad blocks start to appear is about 1000 times. That said the microcontrollers inside flash drives (yes they have them as do SD cards) carry algorythms to move the data about and roughly even out the use of blocks over the whole flash. So writing and reading a file 1000 times does not mean the same block is witten to 1000 times. If the card/device is under half full it will last very much longer. In my case it is still fine 3 years on.
So I still Agree with what Shiro says about supposed reliability and if you are a new user to the linux system to make sure you eliminate possible frustating errors from the start. BUT, it is not the only way and fast hard rule.
I have my ntfs USB mounted via fstab from the kernel and mounting is not controlled by enigma2. I mounted it using the system bus rather than the symlink.
I have also Samba shared all my mount points so that I can add them as network drives in windows and access everything without even using an ftp app. If you do this you NEED to make sure your network is not externally accesible from the internet - so be careful with this. YOU WERE WARNED.
I have added this information soley for users to refer to, and not for you to use without running out of options. The use of fstab is recommended only for people with good experience and is not recommended for new users. Issues in corrupting the fstab file can result in your image not booting at all. It MUST be in LINUX LF format and not DOS or NOTEPAD CRLF!!! (LF=Line feed,CRLF=Carriage return Line Feed. Both are line terminator used in text files, however Linux does not support CRLF - users can run DOS2UNIX via telnet to convert CRLF to LF if they know how)
My Fstab /etc/fstab:
I mount the two hard drive patitions by their device ID's so that they stay in the same order. I also mount my network drives in fstab (they are samba (CIFS) and not NAS). I have created symlinks in /media/net - you can do this using the images mount manager.
Code:
rootfs / auto defaults 1 1
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs noauto 0 0
tmpfs /var/volatile tmpfs defaults 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs defaults 0 0
UUID=XXXXXXXX-XXXX-4ae5-ad4a-XXXXXXXXXX /media/hdd2 auto defaults 0 0
UUID=XXXXXXXX-XXXX-4436-bbc6-XXXXXXXXXX /media/hdd auto defaults 0 0
//192.168.1.XX/avis /media/net/avis cifs username=username,password=password,_netdev,rw,iocharset=utf8 0 0
//192.168.1.XX/music /media/net/music cifs
username=username,password=password,_netdev,rw,iocharset=utf8 0 0
My Samba Config /etc/samba/samba.conf:
I have a password for the vu flash configuaration (yes this too is a network drive in my system)
Code:
[Configuration]
comment = Configuration files - take care!
path = /
wide links = yes
write list = PASSWORD root
create mask = 0755
read only = yes
public = yes
guest ok = yes
[Harddisk]
comment = The VU harddisk
path = /hdd
wide links = yes
read only = no
public = yes
guest ok = yes
[Harddisk2]
comment = The 2nd VU harddisk
path = /media/hdd2
wide links = yes
read only = no
public = yes
guest ok = yes
[Movie]
comment = Recordings
path = /hdd/movie
wide links = yes
create mask = 0755
read only = yes
public = yes
guest ok = yes
[UnoUSB]
comment = Usbstick
path = /media/usb
wide links = yes
create mask = 0755
read only = no
public = no
guest ok = yes
I know this may be of use to some people, but again advise newbies to follow Shiro's advice
