I hate fat16
 

I had a 512MB mmc... and I said I will get a 1GB mmc to hold my maps for maemo-mapper.... if the partition is under 512MB, the allocation unit size is 8KB, that means any file under 8KB will fill 8KB of space on the partition... if the partition is over 512MB the allocation unit size is 16KB. almost all the map tiles are under 8Kb and they will fill 16KB of space, so about same number of tiles will fit on my new and bigger mmc as the one I hade before...

%&*#^%)!!!

-i

so... what's stopping you from formatting it as ext3?
I'm pretty sure the 770 can read those.

seems like a good idea but does't work. I just did that and the nokia 770 will not mount that partition... so I'm stuck with fat16

That's strange. Mine mounts it Ok.

ext2? differnce between the two is journaling. If it won't do ext3, maybe it'll do ext2

until now I tried 2 partitions on the card, one ext3 for extended root fs (200MB), and one for the all other stuff - including maps (800MB). the second one was fat16 I tried to make it ext2 or ext3 but wont mount. I will try to make one BIG partition ext3 for extrootfs and the maps (800MB) and one small for fat16 (200MB).
I will let you know, but this scenario I suppose will work fine.
-i

I guess the bigger question here, should be how are you making the partitions? IN linux, with the 770 it'self, or in windows?

-c

I'm doing everything on the 770, I'm connected to 770 using ssh and I'm using:
/var/lib/install/sbin/cfdisk to create partitions
/var/lib/install/sbin/mkfs.ext3 to format them

ioan,

How are you trying to mount it? If you've replaced the single partition on the MMC card with an ext2/3 one then /etc/fstab will need to be modified to let the 770 know about the format change.

HTH,

Andrew

Hi Andrew,
I did not know that I have to modify the /etc/fstab ... can I make it to read a ntfs partition? <g>
I will try to explain what I want to do and the solution I have... at least for a while.
You saw that app that I made to download the maps for the maemo-mapper under windows and then transfer them to the 770's mmc. Fat16 for this is out of question because will not hold too many files...
First thing I did was to make one big (1GB) ext3 partition on mmc (used as extended root). I booted my windows pc in ubuntu, mounted the win hdd, transfered all the map images to the mmc... but the 770 wasn't able to read. I changed the user.group for all those files to 29999.29999 (if I remember right this was the user.group ubuntu showed as the owner for the files made by 770)... but the 770 still didn't read the files... (by the way, took me more to figure this out than to make the app. to download the maps lol). after lots of tries with no results ... I made an 800MB partition ext3 for extended root and the maps and a 200MB fat16. I copy a part of the maps on the fat16 partition, then from console I move them to the ext3 partition. I copy new ones to the fat16, and I move them... and so on and so forth.
If you (or anybody else) has a better idea on how to copy 130k files from a windows pc to the 770, I'm ready to try.

Thanks.
-ioan

ioan,

There's a line in /etc/fstab:

The "vfat" here indicates the first partition on the MMC card is FAT-formatted. Changing this to "ext2" or "ext3" should then work (will need to be root).

Obviously Windows will no longer natively read the MMC. What are the directory limits for FAT32?

HTH,

Andrew

if 770 is able to read fat32 will be great! fat32 has the cluster size 4KB (4 times smaller than fat16). In fat32 1000 files with size 1kb will fill 4000 kb (3.9Mb), in fat16, same 1000 files will fill 16000 kb (15.6Mb) so it is a BIG difference!

-i

Well, when I repartitioned my MMC card, the first partition was formatted FAT32 - seems to work ok :)

Given the 770's using the standard vfat code from the Linux kernel mainline I can't see any reason it shouldn't, either.

yes, fat32 works fine, so my advice to anyone who wants to store the maemo-mapper's maps to the memory card is to format the partition they use for maps in fat32 (don't forget to backup your files first), this way they will save a lot of space.
thanks Andrew

-ioan

Since the maps used by Maemo Mapper average maybe 4k per file, and since the variance of the file sizes is so high, there are actually many many files that are much smaller than 4k, so I personally store my maps on a partition that I have specifically formated with ext2 to use 1k blocks.

That would be my personal recommendation, although I don't expect the average user to have the know-how or the patience to expend the effort necessary to set up this type of a partition (and mount it whenever running Maemo Mapper).

I agree, though, that FAT32 is definitely better than FAT16 for Maemo Mapper.

fat32 with 512 bytes sector size
 

WARNING everything you have on the mmc will be lost. Make sure you backup everything.

If you use maemo-mapper and the map tiles fill up your memory card, you should format your memory card with this command from windows command promp:

format e: /FS:FAT32 /A:512 /V:MMC

e: is the drive letter where windows mounts your card.

-ioan