Simple Script to move content to CF Card (works around WLAN - CF Performance Bug)

[torben]

Hello together,

at it is known, there are CF memory cards, which interfere with WLAN Performance. Due to this, transferring Data via the iLiad Companion (for example) directly to the CF Card does hardly work in these cases. See also http://forum.irexnet.com/viewtopic.php?t=1572.

To work around this problem one can use the following strategy:

Lets assume, you want your Books and Documents on the CF card, while you have the Notes and Newspapers on a MMC/SD Card. The basic idea now is to copy all data to the MMC/SD Card in the first place and then, in a second step, move it from there to the CF Card. This general idea is from the above mentioned forum thread.

In the ZIP file attached to this thread you find a pair of scripts to automate this process. What I did was uploding them into the Notes folder I have linked to the Notes key. Enclosed are two scripts:

"01mmctocf" copies all data from the /books and /documents Folder from the MMC/SD card over to the CF card. After this is done, it completly empties both folders on the MMC card to make room again for your next downloads.

"02usbtocards" is another example, which basically imports data from an USB stick and distributes them over both CF and MMC/SD cards. Specifically, it searches for a subdirectory "/iliad" (note that this is case sensitive) and thus works with /iliad/books, /iliad/documents and so on.

Both manifext.xml Files currently show German Titles, you might want to translate that to suit your needs. (Question: Is it possible to have multilingual manifest.xml files?)

Just extract the ZIP file for example into your Notes folder, the 01 / 02 in front of the directory names ensure, that these options appear near the top of the list. Then, after a sync, you just hit the notes key and execute the script.

Note, that except from the flashing busy-light and the progress indicator at the bottom of the screen you will not get any visible feedback. Just wait until the progress indicator disappears and the lights stop flashing and you'll be fine.

Of course it is possible to use the same semantics with other scenarios, one just nees to adapt the paths in the run.sh files according to the desired setup.

The culprit of course is that a single transfer is limited by the amount of free space on the MMC/SD card. Given todays prices of these cards I just decided to buy a 1 GB card for this.

In theory, the same procedure is also possible when using the internal memory as a buffer - be aware of the limited transfer amount then. Even with only a few installed programs, you quickly drop below 40 or 50 GB of free space even without any documents on the iLiad.

Performance looks ok so far. Measured with Midnight Commander i get rates around 500 to 1.000 kb/sec when moving between the cards. This is not lightning speed but - according to iRex' tech support about all you usually get.

There is one drawback: The list of recently downloaded documents will not list the files you have copied - it would look in the original destination, where the files no longer exists. If you want to look at that list, you'll have to do it before you move the data over to the other card.


Greetings,
Torben