iLiad Bricked My Iliad

[Adam B.]

So I did it....I managed to brick my iLiad with the shell script I wrote for managing MP3's. Now, it'll just stop at the last bar of the loading screen. It's odd, because it didn't touch the root file system, only the /mnt/card directory... I guess I'll have to call customer support and go through that ordeal.

I don't know how I'm going to be without it for a few weeks (months?)

[TadW]

Originally Posted by Adam B.

I don't know how I'm going to be without it for a few weeks (months?)

Adam, are you kidding? The real question is how are we going to be without you?????????????

This is a drama. What can we do?

[Adam B.]

Money isn't the problem, I can pay to have it reflashed (although, it sucks). My biggest concern is with iRex's turnaround time. Unless you can speed them up, I don't think there's anything you can do.

[Alexander Turcic]

Adam, I am sorry to hear ;(

Did you know that iRex has recently started to offer what they call "sample-quality" units? Perhaps they can send you one while yours is being reflashed? From Matthijs:

We have some 'sample-quality' units that we would like to loan to a selected group of developers so they don't need to use their own iLiad for potentially dangerous (although its not that dangerous anymore) development. Some kind of agreement on what you're planning to improve would be needed for this though...

If you're really serious; contact me via PM.

[Adam B.]

I did see that. I've made a post on the iRex forum about what happened. Maybe they will offer...

[jayk]

Adam,

Replied on the IRex forum - did your script produce anything on your mmc? Have you tried booting without any cards in the device?

JayK

[Alexander Turcic]

Adam,

I don't see anything inherently dangerous in your script; but is it possible that mpc did something unexpected which could have led to you bricking your device? Specifically, what about these commands:

/mnt/card/mpd/bin/mpc clear
/mnt/card/mpd/bin/mpc update
/mnt/card/mpd/bin/mpc listall | mpc add -
/mnt/card/mpd/bin/mpc playlist > playlist.txt

#!/bin/sh
##MPD Playlist Script for ContentLister
killall mpd
/mnt/card/mpd/bin/mpd mpd.conf
cd /mnt/card/Music/Playlist/
rm -rf *
/mnt/card/mpd/bin/mpc clear
/mnt/card/mpd/bin/mpc update
/mnt/card/mpd/bin/mpc listall | mpc add -
/mnt/card/mpd/bin/mpc playlist > playlist.txt
int=1
file=playlist.txt
while read i 
do
      
      mkdir /mnt/card/Music/Playlist/$int
      cd  /mnt/card/Music/Playlist/$int
      touch manifest.xml
      echo "<xml>\n<package>\n  <metadata>\n    <dc>\n      <Title>$i</Title>\n      <Description></Description>\n      <Date>2006-11-16T08:28:46</Date>\n      <Identifier>\n      <Language>\n      <Type>\n    </dc>\n    <y>\n      <startpage>run.sh</startpage>\n      <version>000</version>\n    </y>\n  </metadata>\n</package>\n" >> manifest.xml
      touch run.sh
      echo "/mnt/card/mpd/bin/mpc play $int" >> run.sh
      chmod a+x run.sh
      int=`expr $int + 1`
done < "$file"

[Adam B.]

It wasn't mpc. It was my script. The playlist directory wasn't there, so it stayed in the working directory and deleted everything.

[NatCh]

Ouch, that massively stinks.

I guess you can't just replace the files in the working directory to fix it, then.

[Antartica]

Originally Posted by Adam B.

So I did it....I managed to brick my iLiad with the shell script I wrote for managing MP3's. Now, it'll just stop at the last bar of the loading screen. It's odd, because it didn't touch the root file system, only the /mnt/card directory... I guess I'll have to call customer support and go through that ordeal.

Ouch! Those are horrible news!

The only thing I can think of is that something got written to /root and filled the root filesystem...

Certainly, the reflash utility is severely needed :-/.

Good luck with the Customer support. Hope you get your iliad back soon.

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by Adam B.

It wasn't mpc. It was my script. The playlist directory wasn't there, so it stayed in the working directory and deleted everything.

I c. OUCH.

[b_k]

ow.
Btw, doesn't the shell used on the iLiad (it's busybox ash, right?) have something like a 'if ... else-if ... end-if' construct? I think you could check the return code of the 'cd' before doing any more 'rm -rf's.
But I think you have already figured that out.

And I know why I don't make any experiments with my iLiad atm. I'm happy it's running at the moment and I don't plan on sending it back to iRex more often than necessary. (one time was enough)

[Adam B.]

Originally Posted by b_k

ow.
Btw, doesn't the shell used on the iLiad (it's busybox ash, right?) have something like a 'if ... else-if ... end-if' construct? I think you could check the return code of the 'cd' before doing any more 'rm -rf's.
But I think you have already figured that out.

And I know why I don't make any experiments with my iLiad atm. I'm happy it's running at the moment and I don't plan on sending it back to iRex more often than necessary. (one time was enough)

It does. I know what I did wrong, so I'll be able to prevent it in the future.

I can't help it, it's in my nature to tinker, and try to get everything I can out of every device I have. Especially when it's currently lacking as many things as the iLiad...

[nekokami]

Argh! Hopefully iRex will rush a sample unit to you and also give you quick (and, I would hope, free) turnaround on the flash.

[Adam B.]

As I mentioned on the iRex forum, I don't expect them to eat the cost of the reflash. It was my mistake, and I take responsibility for it. And as nice as a sample quality unit would be, I think they're looking for more serious, business oriented developers to give those to... I'm just a geek with a toolchain.