E2 Images on Internal HDD

[Steve_M]

Have managed to get the AAF and HD Freaks E2 Images running off the internal HDD rather than USB.

It involves re-formatting the internal HDD so any recordings etc will be lost so transfer anything you want to keep.

The guides I've used have been produced by FSC830 over at AAF and have been uploaded here for convenience.

Firstly, I booted the original firmware and re-formatted the internal HDD.

Next I created four partitions on the HDD using AAF Maxiboot Installer, one for storage (/dev/sda1), two to hold the E2 Images (/dev/sda2 and /dev/sda3) and one for swap (/dev/sda4).
This was done using the attached E2_Internal_HDD.pdf guide.
Note that there is a mistake on page 4, 'Use the tune2fs -L RECORD' should read 'Use the jfs_tune -L RECORD'

I have a 500Gb Hdd installed so I used 500Mb for the two E2 images, 2Gb swap and the remainder for storage.

Once the partitions were created, I booted up the original firmware to make sure that the internal HDD had been mounted OK.

Next I loaded the AAF E2 Media Center Edition onto the the first E2 image partition (/dev/sda2) and HD Freaks V6 onto the second (/dev/sda3) using AAF Maxiboot Installer in the same way you would install an image to a USB stick.

Finally I modified the bootargs using the AAF Recovery tool not as the guide suggests but as detailed on page 37 of the AAF Recovery Tool guide (sticky at top of this section).

So now, when booting using Maxi Uboot I have the following boot options:

SATA 1 AAF Media Center Edition
SATA 2 HD Freaks V6
USB 1 (For testing images)
USB 2 (For testing images)

By having the E2 image on the HDD I find it boots faster and is much more responsive. It also removes the USB stick from the front of the box.

[dizz]

Thanks mate, I've got a serial lead coming this week so i'll try to do it this way.

Just a couple of questions. How do you select the original firmware when booting? Do you still upgrade the original firmware/plugins with usb as normal.

[ManikM]

nice i might give it a go - it will make it seems less "test-y" and more official.

can all firmwares share the "remaining" disk space when recording stuff.

or does each image have to be allocated space for recordings....?

[Steve_M]

Thanks mate, I've got a serial lead coming this week so i'll try to do it this way.

Just a couple of questions. How do you select the original firmware when booting? Do you still upgrade the original firmware/plugins with usb as normal.
Once you have AAF Maxi U-Boot installed, apart from the original firmware, you now have extra boot options. The default boot is set at 'flash' which is where the original firmware is but by using the up/down keys on the remote you can choose to boot from an E2 image on a USB stick partition instead or in my case now a partition on the internal HDD or USB stick.

Yes you can still upgrade the original firmware in the normal way.

[Steve_M]

nice i might give it a go - it will make it seems less "test-y" and more official.

can all firmwares share the "remaining" disk space when recording stuff.

or does each image have to be allocated space for recordings....?

They share the same but original firmware stores recordings in /HDD/ directory and AAF E2 stores it in /HDD/movies and can't see anyway of changing it.

[ManikM]

Steve which image do you find good? are they stable?

[Steve_M]

Steve which image do you find good? are they stable? At the moment I prefer the AAF Media Center Edition. For just watching TV I still use the original firmware but AAF E2 has a DVD player for playing my .iso files which works very well. With the AAF E2 I can select bonus features and chapters from the film menu which I can't using the HD Freaks. It also plays .mkv files which for me the original firmware never has. The AAF image does still crash occasionally but nowhere near as often as it used to. One gripe is that the AAF panel seems to take ages to become available after the image has booted.

On the whole I am happy to have the original firmware in flash and E2 in an HDD partition and can't see any reason to change. If I wished, using ART I could change the default boot.

By the way, like you I would like to see an E2 sub-section since the E2 images are now getting a bit more robust and useable.

[ManikM]

Thanks, i have now got this working!

NO MORE USB dangling out the front.

nice work....its taken me about 4 hours in total...


UPDATE, ive just noticed i cant record to the STORAGE partition when i have one of the images booted up - hopefully its just a config issue.