FrodoPlayer on read only drive/ or 2nd partition

knubile · 11-27-2004, 10:05 PM

There some serious progress on running WinXP Pro on a CF card read only. See this thread.

In short,the system will be resuming from the same hibernation file over and over again, regardless of its state when it's shutdown(even if you cut the power). So the state FrodoPlayer was in at the time the system is set read only, will be its state at every startup. The only way around this is to have it's config files(or just state file) on a seperate partition. Maybe a small one, the last 10megs of the CF card.
The best solution would be for the EWF API to be used. I haven't looked into to deep, so I'm not totally sure if it can be used to just commit a single file or not.
Has anybody else looked into this?
Frodo, what do you think would be involved in having the file that remembers the state of the application in a location other than FrodoPlayer. For example D:\UserData\FrodoPlayer\state.ini

frodobaggins · 11-27-2004, 10:45 PM

Well first off, you're going to want FrodoPlayer on a writeable drive.
That way you can do DB updates etc.
But even if FrodoPlayer is on a writeable medium, if frodoplayer thinks it has hibernated, it is going to start up from that hibernate state.

This is going to take some thought on how to make it work cleanly.
Frodo

Bravellir · 11-28-2004, 04:51 AM

It could save state every x seconds ( configurable by the user ), so that even on power loss it would resume back to ( almost ) last state. This process of state saving would have to be quick enought to not interfere with system. But then a cf card might not be the best medium for the FP state file, because of number of writes.

frodobaggins · 11-28-2004, 05:49 AM

It's not a very hard problem to solve. I just have to figure
out exactly what to do, and to do it gracefully.

knubile · 11-28-2004, 10:32 AM

What about the db and state file on a writabe partition on the CF card. How big does the db get?

jcdillin · 11-28-2004, 10:46 AM

with 3,000 songs my DB is 1.8MB

knubile · 11-28-2004, 10:49 AM

Well, that's not bad at all. With a 1gig CF card, keeping even 50megs on a second partition isn't hard at all and that seems like it'll be plenty of space.

SWC · 11-28-2004, 12:39 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by jcdillin

with 3,000 songs my DB is 1.8MB

13,226 files here and my db is 13.8MB. So it obviously doesn't scale probably depends on the complexity of your id3 tags etc. I have all but maybe 100-200 of them fully tagged.

jcdillin · 11-28-2004, 12:44 PM

yeah all of mine are tagged fully as well. of course thats a MDB for ya. least you can open it and take a look at it.

knubile · 11-28-2004, 08:02 PM

Even 14megs is nothing. i'm thinking a sub 500meg install of xp is enough for frodoplayer,phonecontrol(.net), and destinator. 256megs for a hiberfil.sys(256megs of ram). Now that leaves 256 megs on a 1gig CF card. That's plenty of extra space for any config or state files. Databases too.
512 megs of ram will change things for sure. This may not be a neccessary solution for some, but many of us are concerned with laptop drives in sub freezing temperatures. I for one have heard some pretty scary noises come from my laptop drive, and we haven't even hit -10C yet. I don't want to risk it at -30C.

knubile · 12-02-2004, 03:52 PM

So what do you think Frodo? Are the state and db files in a configurable location easy enough to handle?
While write protection is disabled, define in the settings where the state file and db should be written. Then enable the write protection and voila!
Not a bad idea have these configurable anyways. It will allow people to delete their frodoplayer install without losing their data. Easy to move that data to another system with their mp3/video collection too.
I could help out if you want. Is FrodoPlayer opensourced?

knubile · 12-03-2004, 03:21 PM

*bump*
Not sure if this slipped under the radar.

User Name		Remember Me?
Password