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HOWTO: Make your MyDocs ext3

Boo,

Thought I'd whack these instructions here which I figured out after many days in case anyone wanted to do the same... obviously use them at your own peril.

Why would you want to do this?

If you use an ext3 aware operating system (like Linux) you probably think FAT sucks already.
Maybe you'd like to use the following "illegal" characters FAT doesn't support in your file names (like music tracks)... " * : < > ? \ |
How about Unicode support?
Files bigger than 4GB!
And plenty of other reasons why FAT sucks balls.

What side affects should I know about?

Windows doesn't understand ext3 so maybe using ext2fsd will work to mount it once converted.
If you don't use Windows you'll need a *nix OS that understands ext3, I think even Mac OS X does.
Once converted you'll end up with a blank MyDocs you'll need to copy your files back on to.
Since your MyDocs files need to continue to be owned by user:users (which is 29999:29999 like they are now)... when mounted over USB you'll need to make sure you create/edit files/folders as this user.
If you see me walking down your street you are required to immediately buy me a beer on the spot.

What should I do to prepare?

Backup your phone settings to your MyDocs in case you do this wrong and the thing reboots to infinity or comes up thinking every letter in the alphabet is a SQUARE.
Since your MyDocs is about to get trashed I'd back up the whole thing over USB (don't forget the hidden files and folders that begin with a dot!).
I'd also install openssh-server and do the commands over SSH, that way you can copy & paste them in with ease and make less mistakes.
Eat salmon.

Can I moan at you if it didn't work?

Oh yeah, moan for me :P

ONWARDS...

The bit that says "Nokia N900" can be any volume label you like and will show up when the N900 is connected over USB (hopefully with the nice icon of the N900 if you copy the autorun.inf and its icon back).
No reboot should be required.

Code:

sed -i '1d' /usr/sbin/mmc-mount

echo -e '#!/bin/sh\ncase "$(sfdisk -c $(echo $1 | cut -c1-12) $(echo $1 | cut -c14))" in\n  43|83)\n    mount -t auto -o $3,noauto,nosuid,noatime,nodiratime "$1" "$2" > /dev/null\n    ;;\n  *)\n    '$(cat /usr/sbin/mmc-mount)'\n    ;;\nesac' > /usr/sbin/mmc-mount

sed -i 's/\(| 1e\)/\1 |43|83/' /usr/sbin/osso-mmc-mount.sh

umount /home/user/MyDocs

sfdisk -c /dev/mmcblk0 1 43

mkfs.ext3 -m 0 -L "Nokia N900" /dev/mmcblk0p1

osso-mmc-mount.sh /dev/mmcblk0p1 /home/user/MyDocs

chown -R user:users /home/user/MyDocs

How the hell? (optional reading, extra credit... YAY FOR YOU ^_^)

Since on boot the N900 looks for the first type 83 partition and thinks it is /home we used 43 instead (the old Linux Native partition type ID).
Since the N900 was stupidly hard coded to only mount FAT partitions we had to tweak a couple of scripts so ext3 can be mounted (either type ID 43 or 83) for both the eMMC and any MicroSD you insert.

Steven

Re: HOWTO: Make your MyDocs ext3

Thank you so much (': I'll try it after work

Re: HOWTO: Make your MyDocs ext3

I tried to convert my MyDocs and sd card to ext3. The commands I used were

Code:

sed -i '1d' /usr/sbin/mmc-mount

echo -e '#!/bin/sh\ncase "$(sfdisk -c $(echo $1 | cut -c1-12) $(echo $1 | cut -c14))" in\n  43|83)\n    mount -t auto -o $3,noauto,nosuid,noatime,nodiratime "$1" "$2" > /dev/null\n    ;;\n  *)\n    '$(cat /usr/sbin/mmc-mount)'\n    ;;\nesac' > /usr/sbin/mmc-mount

sed -i 's/\(| 1e\)/\1 |43|83/' /usr/sbin/osso-mmc-mount.sh

umount /home/user/MyDocs

sfdisk -c /dev/mmcblk0 1 43

mkfs.ext3 -m 0 -L "Nokia N900" /dev/mmcblk0p1

osso-mmc-mount.sh /dev/mmcblk0p1 /home/user/MyDocs

chown -R user:users /home/user/MyDocs

and

Code:

umount /media/mmc1

sfdisk -c /dev/mmcblk1 1 43

mkfs.ext3 -m 0 -L "SD card" /dev/mmcblk1p1

osso-mmc-mount.sh /dev/mmcblk1p1 /media/mmc1

chown -R user:users /media/mmc1

There were no errors while doing that, even the automount works perfectly. But now when I connect the phone to my Ubuntu pc I don't have any permissions to the files inside. I tried to "sudo chmod -R (myusername)" the folders but it wasn't successful, I'm a noob with permission settings. :) Should I revert back to vfat or is there anything I can do?

Re: HOWTO: Make your MyDocs ext3

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keneraali (Post 1053412)

I tried to convert my MyDocs and sd card to ext3. The commands I used were

Code:

sed -i '1d' /usr/sbin/mmc-mount

echo -e '#!/bin/sh\ncase "$(sfdisk -c $(echo $1 | cut -c1-12) $(echo $1 | cut -c14))" in\n  43|83)\n    mount -t auto -o $3,noauto,nosuid,noatime,nodiratime "$1" "$2" > /dev/null\n    ;;\n  *)\n    '$(cat /usr/sbin/mmc-mount)'\n    ;;\nesac' > /usr/sbin/mmc-mount

sed -i 's/\(| 1e\)/\1 |43|83/' /usr/sbin/osso-mmc-mount.sh

umount /home/user/MyDocs

sfdisk -c /dev/mmcblk0 1 43

mkfs.ext3 -m 0 -L "Nokia N900" /dev/mmcblk0p1

osso-mmc-mount.sh /dev/mmcblk0p1 /home/user/MyDocs

chown -R user:users /home/user/MyDocs

and

Code:

umount /media/mmc1

sfdisk -c /dev/mmcblk1 1 43

mkfs.ext3 -m 0 -L "SD card" /dev/mmcblk1p1

osso-mmc-mount.sh /dev/mmcblk1p1 /media/mmc1

chown -R user:users /media/mmc1

Don't revert! fat is *****.

Quote:

Since your MyDocs files need to continue to be owned by user:users (which is 29999:29999 like they are now)... when mounted over USB you'll need to make sure you create/edit files/folders as this user.

Re: HOWTO: Make your MyDocs ext3

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keneraali (Post 1053412)

But now when I connect the phone to my Ubuntu pc I don't have any permissions to the files inside. I tried to "sudo chmod -R (myusername)" the folders but it wasn't successful, I'm a noob with permission settings. :) Should I revert back to vfat or is there anything I can do?

This is why ext3 is a poor choice for a large % of users, it lacks the ability to not care about ownership.

Unless your linux desktop user id and your maemo user id are numerically equal, you're going to keep running into ownership problems. Files that you write while connected via USB aren't going to be visible and/or writable to maemo applications, and vice versa.

You can get around this by transferring everything via wireless ssh, but it's much slower than connecting directly.

My Linux PC and my Linux phone talk via FAT32. Sucks doesn't it.

Re: HOWTO: Make your MyDocs ext3

Quote:

Originally Posted by spanner (Post 1053421)

Ahem. I'll just leave this here.

Read then check reply number 4 and 20.

Re: HOWTO: Make your MyDocs ext3

Quote:

Originally Posted by vi_ (Post 1053425)

Ahem. I'll just leave this here.

Read then check reply number 4 and 20.

Whoa. That worked just perfectly!

Re: HOWTO: Make your MyDocs ext3

Is it safe to change user name and UID in maemo? What will break? Updates or some programs that explicitly reffer to UID/username?

Did someone test this?

Re: HOWTO: Make your MyDocs ext3

On your Linux system add a new group called tablet and make sure it uses GID 29999.

Then add your normal Linux desktop user to that group, you should then be able to read/write to any file on the MyDocs / MicroSD partitions (since they're not just user owned by 29999 but also group owned by 29999 and presuming the files are read/write for both user and group you'll be OK).

---

Alternatively you may find you already have a 'users' group on your Linux system probably using GID 100, you could change this on your linux system to 29999 or change the 'users' group on the tablet to be 100... but who knows how that might affect the tablet.

Any more thoughts on the most recommended way?

Re: HOWTO: Make your MyDocs ext3

Hi girls !
I have problem, within formatting phone reboots and did not format anything .. After start i don't see "Nokia N900" in File Explorer, but via MC i can reach /home/user/MyDocs (in windows it mounts as "unformatted" (and yes, i have Ext2FSD installed))
Any idea ?

EDIT: OK, I formatted it in Windows (via Partition Manager) to ext3, windows find it, in midnight commander i can find it, but i cannot mount it (it says "invalid argument")