Pandora Sd Card Structure

[Alpha2]

Does the Pandora autoformat cards that aren't pre-prepared?

 

[SomeGuy99]

Microsoft Bob - source of Clippy, the help dog and the taskbar balloon notification.

Masterminded by Melinda Gates, but of course they weren't married at that point.

 

[skeezix]

Ntfs was working but i think we fubard the ntfs3g driver so we'll have to patch it in again asap doh

jeffphone

 

[God Ginrai]

Microsoft Bob - source of Clippy, the help dog and the taskbar balloon notification.

Masterminded by Melinda Gates, but of course they weren't married at that point.

Hey, I liked Microsoft Bob. It's their best product, IMHO. (If you don't count game consoles)

-God Ginrai

 

[fearofshorts]

I hope NTFS will also be supported without too much hacking. Ideally it will be built into the base distribution.

FAT32 drives me nuts with the 4GB file size limitation that it has. I capture HD programming OTA with MythTV and when I travel I like to take a few unwatched files with me. 1 hour shows are 6 to 8GB in size. I really don't care to re-encode the files. (Assuming Pandora will handle it fine... and if my lowly 1st gen Atom netbook can handle playback with VLC, I am optimistic that Pandora will handle it fine too.)

I could use EXT3 I suppose, but I (gasp) use Windows 7 a lot too, and it is nice to have a universal format that can be used on all my machines.

Well, NTFS may work... but from what I've read it can be a bit buggy on linux systems. Maybe you should try UFS- it works on linux, vista and 7 perfectly.

 

[Asiyura]

Well, NTFS may work... but from what I've read it can be a bit buggy on linux systems. Maybe you should try UFS- it works on linux, vista and 7 perfectly.

I'll go for UFS or HFS (UDF could be another alternative) since my main comp is on OSX, that way, no filesystem problem.

 

[EvilDragon]

NTFS-3G is working once you install the Community Codec Pack which will also install codecs for Movie- and Audioplaying as well as MPlayer

I packaged it up already, will let some others test it, but after that, it will be uploaded

 

[Mithrildor]

NTFS-3G is working once you install the Community Codec Pack which will also install codecs for Movie- and Audioplaying as well as MPlayer

I packaged it up already, will let some others test it, but after that, it will be uploaded

Great that this codec pack is avaible for the Pandora

 

[EvilDragon]

NTFS-3G is working once you install the Community Codec Pack which will also install codecs for Movie- and Audioplaying as well as MPlayer

I packaged it up already, will let some others test it, but after that, it will be uploaded

Great that this codec pack is avaible for the Pandora

Well, we wanted to support everything out of the box - but due to licensing issues, this is not possible (similar to Ubuntu where you have to enable the restricted codecs).

But installation is easy: Put PND on card, run it, done. After that, you can delete it

 

[verm71]

But installation is easy: Put PND on card, run it, done. After that, you can delete it

Sounds like a PND that modifies the NAND. I don't want to open Pandora's can of worms, but I hope that such PND behavior will be limited to system updates and core functionality and that SuperClickAndGrabIt.pnd, ClickTheSameOneToMakeItDisappear.pnd, ClickTheBlueOneNotTheRedOne.pnd and EatThisButNotThatExceptAfterYouEatThePowerPellet.pnd won't be messing with my NAND, because it's not likely those will be on my Pandora for very long. But if they messed with my NAND for their own personal little business (shouldn't everything be statically linked anyway?) , we're headed for the library-equivalent to DLL hell on Windows.

 

[EvilDragon]

But installation is easy: Put PND on card, run it, done. After that, you can delete it

Sounds like a PND that modifies the NAND. I don't want to open Pandora's can of worms, but I hope that such PND behavior will be limited to system updates and core functionality and that SuperClickAndGrabIt.pnd, ClickTheSameOneToMakeItDisappear.pnd, ClickTheBlueOneNotTheRedOne.pnd and EatThisButNotThatExceptAfterYouEatThePowerPellet.pnd won't be messing with my NAND, because it's not likely those will be on my Pandora for very long. But if they messed with my NAND for their own personal little business (shouldn't everything be statically linked anyway?) , we're headed for the library-equivalent to DLL hell on Windows.

Don't worry, this is only until we setup some proper repository for updates, etc.

No PND should change the NAND. And you will know if it does - as it needs a password to do so

 

[peca]

But installation is easy: Put PND on card, run it, done. After that, you can delete it

Sounds like a PND that modifies the NAND...

...No PND should change the NAND. And you will know if it does - as it needs a password to do so

Then it is in RAM only and after reset it's gone, or what? OR maybe codecs will be installed on the card?

 

[dflemstr]

But installation is easy: Put PND on card, run it, done. After that, you can delete it

Sounds like a PND that modifies the NAND...

...No PND should change the NAND. And you will know if it does - as it needs a password to do so

Then it is in RAM only and after reset it's gone, or what? OR maybe codecs will be installed on the card?

You either enter the password or don't get any codecs.


On another note: What's up with all of these scripts already? Bash scripts here, perl scripts there... I know that we're all a bunch of hackers, but for stuff that's going to be used long-term in a product shouldn't be something hacked-together IMO...
(Looking in the Pandora repositories that I searched through for more information about 'installer PNDs', FYI... not much info to be had)

 

[multiplex]

On another note: What's up with all of these scripts already? Bash scripts here, perl scripts there... I know that we're all a bunch of hackers, but for stuff that's going to be used long-term in a product shouldn't be something hacked-together IMO...

There's nothing intrinsically hacked-together about scripts. They're quick to write, easy to modify, and just as robust and user-friendly as they're written to be, same as any other program. sh scripts are the duck tape of Linux distros, as I'm sure you're aware.

 

[EvilDragon]

On another note: What's up with all of these scripts already? Bash scripts here, perl scripts there... I know that we're all a bunch of hackers, but for stuff that's going to be used long-term in a product shouldn't be something hacked-together IMO...

There's nothing intrinsically hacked-together about scripts. They're quick to write, easy to modify, and just as robust and user-friendly as they're written to be, same as any other program. sh scripts are the duck tape of Linux distros, as I'm sure you're aware.

Heh - the whole startup process on any Linux system is built on scripts

 

[dflemstr]

On another note: What's up with all of these scripts already? Bash scripts here, perl scripts there... I know that we're all a bunch of hackers, but for stuff that's going to be used long-term in a product shouldn't be something hacked-together IMO...

There's nothing intrinsically hacked-together about scripts. They're quick to write, easy to modify, and just as robust and user-friendly as they're written to be, same as any other program. sh scripts are the duck tape of Linux distros, as I'm sure you're aware.

Heh - the whole startup process on any Linux system is built on scripts

Well yes, but that's on the system level where the scripts almost degrade to DSLs. I mean, a script inside "/etc/init.d" follows a strict structure and basically consists of one "case ... in" statement, and stuff like "grub.conf" has its own syntax entirely. Using Zenity and Bash for administration tools, however... That's either extremely daring or extremely 1337.

 

[WizardStan]

But installation is easy: Put PND on card, run it, done. After that, you can delete it

Sounds like a PND that modifies the NAND...

...No PND should change the NAND. And you will know if it does - as it needs a password to do so

Then it is in RAM only and after reset it's gone, or what? OR maybe codecs will be installed on the card?

If I understand correctly, the PND file contains an IPK file. When you "run" the PND file, it simply calls "opkg install <ipkfile>". Opkg then asks you for a password. Opkg is the package repository program for Angstrom. It will open the IPK file and install the files into the OS where they need to be, checking for dependency, all that stuff. A PND normally wouldn't be able to modify the NAND, it's only because it's using an IPK package file to update the OS that it can. In theory, other PND files could use the opkg system to install or remove packages, but that would be a bad thing for them to do, and you'd know it was happening because opkg always asks for a password. If you run a PND file and it's asking for a password, question it before you do anything.

 

[1magus]

NTFS-3G is working once you install the Community Codec Pack which will also install codecs for Movie- and Audioplaying as well as MPlayer

I packaged it up already, will let some others test it, but after that, it will be uploaded

Great that this codec pack is avaible for the Pandora

Well, we wanted to support everything out of the box - but due to licensing issues, this is not possible (similar to Ubuntu where you have to enable the restricted codecs).

But installation is easy: Put PND on card, run it, done. After that, you can delete it

Actually you have to do this with Sony on the PSP to enable WMA playback hehe.

 

[valhalla]

Well yes, but that's on the system level where the scripts almost degrade to DSLs. I mean, a script inside "/etc/init.d" follows a strict structure and basically consists of one "case ... in" statement, and stuff like "grub.conf" has its own syntax entirely. Using Zenity and Bash for administration tools, however... That's either extremely daring or extremely 1337.

Try this on a common linux computer

$ ( for BIN in /usr/bin/* ; do file $BIN ; done ) | grep "script text executable" | wc -l

on a quite fresh arch linux box I've found 187 scripts, lots of them POSIX shell, some perl, some python, plus another 4 in /bin, and I haven't installed lots of programs yet, just system, compilers and little else.

Installers for distributions are another thing that tended to be based on scripts, often with interfaces based on dialog.

Yes, the use of zenity is rarer, probably because people who write scripts tend to be proficient with the command line and realize that being dependant on having X11 running can be a nuisance, but this is not a problem for pandora.

 

[Mjlink]

On sd.. Format it fat32 style

Make a directory 'pandora'
in that make directories 'menu' and 'desktop'

stick pnd files in one of those (menu or desktop)

I've been sticking emu roms in /roms/SYSTEMNAME ie /roms/atarist and /roms/scummvm

keep your eyes open for patches as well.. Should be a codec pack along soon, and I think we goofed a couple minor things in the shipping firmware (doh!) that might confuse a few apps, so likely we'll have a firmware patch pndfile along soon

maybe I should code a .. 'there's a new firmware available, want to fetch it?' thing...

jeff

Might be a good idea to sticky this thread now.

Came in handy but had to LOOK for it.

Peace, Cannabis, & Pandora,

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