Text editor, XBox

po0k

I've been rooting around for one.
I want to edit .ini files (Evox.ini etc.) on Xboxes.

Anyone know where I might get one?
Or even if it's possible through telnet?
What commands are available in the EvoX/XBMC/Avalaunch telnet implementation?

silverlining

Unleashx Dashboard has a file explorer which will automatically open *.ini, *.txt and *.xml files in it's own text editor. I think XBMC has one too and I'd be very surprised if avalaunch didnt.

Unleashx is my dashboard of choice btw

po0k

Yeah, I'll test UnleashX at some stage

Armen Tanzarian

just ftp to your pc and open it notepad, edit away.
It would be more of a pain in the ass doing it through an editor supplied with a dashboard (no keyboard support)

silverlining

It's simple to make up a USB to Xbox adapter for attaching a keyboard and it works in all the dashboards I've used. Just buy an xbox controller extender cable from Game (about €5), and buy a PC USB extender cable. Then just join them together (the wires are even the same colour). Mine has been taped together for months now with no problems but a solder job would abviously be better.

You can also use this to plug in all manner of USB devices if you have a version of Linux installed (and you can use whatever text editor you like then

BTW I just tried x-dsl (xbox damn small linux) from www.x-dsl.org and it is very impressive (MUCH faster than any of the other distributions). It's great to be able to use Firefox to download straight to the xbox but you really need that keyboard adapter to use it comfortably. It has all the other desktop essentials too and it has a really simple method to install apps from the DamnSmallLinux repository (got mplayer working in about 5 minutes).

Armen Tanzarian

I did'nt realise that most dashboards have keybord support, I dont pay much attention to dashboards. Im using EvoX. I had a distro of Gentoox on my last xbox, it was ****, it was a pretty early release tho maybe its time to give it another try

silverlining

Armen Tanzarian wrote:

I did'nt realise that most dashboards have keybord support, I dont pay much attention to dashboards. Im using EvoX. I had a distro of Gentoox on my last xbox, it was ****, it was a pretty early release tho maybe its time to give it another try

Well, most have some sort of keyboard support even EvoX (usually just that you can use the cursor keys and enter to select items from the menu) but UnleashX has a built in text editor which works fine with the keyboard. The virtual keyboard in UnleashX is pretty nifty too for small edits if you dont have a keyboard.
I havent tried Gentoox as the developer doesnt support softmods and it uses the KDE desktop which is bound to be slow on the xbox. The x-dsl distro is installed by just copying 40MB of files onto E: and you then have a fully functional desktop PC...I'm gonna try a bittorent client tonight

Armen Tanzarian

Ok, so Unleash X is the only one with full keybord support?, I'm not a huge fan of the virtual keyboards, if its only a smal edit its prob handy if your not beside your pc. IMO.

Let me know how you get on with the Bittorrent Client, That would be so handy.

silverlining

Unleashx is the only one I know of with a text editor built in to it's file explorer but you can also use it to rename files etc. XBMC has a file explorer too and you can rename files/folders with the keyboard but it doesnt have a text editor. Avalaunch also has a file explorer but no text editor. EvoX has no file explorer or text editor but the keyboard cursor keys work like a joypad.

Other unleashx benefits include an ftp client built into the file explorer (supports ftp boost mode too for faster transfers), a game saves manager, integrated media player, a legal auto update system for the latest builds, extraction of zip and rar files, compression of files to zip/rar, access to memory cards as file storage devices and it's very fast.

Install it as an app in evox if you want to play with it

As for the Bittorent client, I had some issues with it. It was very easy to install and I decided to try it with a small 50KB file. I tried to download the torrent file using x-dsl to my F: drive but it would not take it because the torrent filename was too long for the FATX formatted F. To get around this I downloaded the .torrent file to the x-dsl ram disk which uses the linux filesystem so that worked fine. Then I ran the bittorent client and chose the ramdisk again as my destination folder. The client opened a window and connected but the progress never went above 0% so no luck there but I discovered later that my friends PC on the same broadband connection was downloading a torrent but had stopped the night before and hadnt worked since so I'm hoping that the problem is somehow down to the broadband connection and not the client. The other issue is filename length but to get around this without using the ramdisk you'd have to format a linux partition on your xbox HD which is probably not that difficult or you could create up to a 4GB partition (that's the filesize limit with FATX) as a disk file on F and format that as ext2 and mount it as a drive.

po0k

FATX is a slightly stripped down version of FAT32. It doesn't have a 4GB limit.

I've formatted 250Gig drives with all the extra space as one F: partition using Slayer's EvoX bootcd.

silverlining

Maybe I wasnt too clear about the 4GB partition idea because I dont know the correct terminology. I'm sure I used a Knoppix CD on a PC before that allowed you to create a large file (up to 4GB in size on FAT32 and hence FATX..I think!) on one of your PC's partitions that you could then format to ext2 or FAT32 using linux and mount as a drive. This drive would not have the filename length restrictions that FATX has. I think it's called a harddisk image but I'm not sure. I'm aware that you can have large partitons with FATX as I've a 200GB in mine, F to 137GB, G takes rest but I need more!

I think I found out what the torrent problem was http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=252315 ...azureus seems to have gone mad with the last autoupdate and as that was running on a PC on our network it may have been conflicting with the xbox bittorrent client.

silverlining

Just found the term for what I was talking about, it's called a loopback filesystem and is explained here: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Loopback-Root-FS-2.html

Actually, I think that's how Knoppix works anyway as it has to run a filesystem off a CD.

po0k

XFS partition

silverlining

SyxPak wrote:

XFS partition

wouldnt that be nice on the xbox? but you'd need to format a physical partition for it on your HD and set up your BIOS accordingly...which reminds me, I dont use a BIOS image anymore so I'd have to recompile nkpatcher instead.
Alternately I wonder if LVM works with loopback filesystems? then you could lump several 4GB loopback files together and format it as one large storage device (maybe xfs ) without having to repartition your xbox.

silverlining

Armen Tanzarian wrote:

Let me know how you get on with the Bittorrent Client, That would be so handy.

It's working perfectly now. The new version of xdsl is more stable so there's no need for my bulky old Dell PIII anymore. I can post instructions if you need them.

Armen Tanzarian

silverlining wrote:

It's working perfectly now. The new version of xdsl is more stable so there's no need for my bulky old Dell PIII anymore. I can post instructions if you need them.

Cool, thats sweet, all you need now is to hook up a dvd burner.
I'd wouldnt mind taking a look, if it was'nt too much trouble, if not dont worry

Cheers

silverlining

It's quite easy but you will be limited to 2GB of disc space using this method:
1. download xdsl 0.2 from www.x-dsl.org "Xbox-Damn Small Linux"
2. burn the iso to a CD (I manually copied the files 'cos I didnt have a burner handy but this is probablt easier)
3. launch it from your dashboard and select 640x480 resolution (most compatible)
4. The xdsl desktop should appear which you can right click to bring up the menu (right click=red button, left=green or blue I cant remember)
5. You want to check that it successfully mounted the fatx drives (E, F and G) by opening the terminal (top left corner icon) and typing 'ls /mnt/hda55' (no quotes). 'ls' in unix = 'dir' in DOS and hda5 is the xbox HD, hda55 = partition F, hda56 = partition G and hda50 = partition E (dont ask). If it lists the contents of your xbox's F drive then you can proceed to the install. If not you'll have to mount the partition to the /mnt/hda55 folder by typing 'mount /dev/hda55' then test it by running the 'ls /mnt/hda55' again
5. there should be a 'loopback install' option under one of the main menus when you right click the desktop. This creates a file on your F drive up to 4GB (actually only 2GB becasue there's a prob with the xdsl 0.2 script) which will be mounted as a virtual drive housing all your linux settings and whatever else you want
6. follow the instructions but type in 2000 when asked for the size you want and select the fully enhanced install when asked
7. when you select the reboot option from the menu system and run linux from the CD again it will detect the loopback file and continue to run from there instead
8. Now go in and setup the swap file which is virtual memory. This will allow apps that require more than 64MB to run (you prob dont need this for the torrent client but it will help you to run more than one app at a time). This is an option from the menu again and choose a size of 128MB and place it on '/mnt/hda55'. Reboot for xdsl to pick this up
9. In order to use the easy install of DSL extensions you have to create a folder on E called 'optional' use unleashX to do this or ftp into evox and do it that way.
10.Now linux is configured so you can run firefox, sylpheed email client, axy ftp client etc
11. install apps from the xdsl repository at http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/damnsmall/mydsl/ you want the 'bittorrent-gui.dsl' file which is in the 'net' folder. just right click in firefox and download it to your /home/dsl/ folder
12 you can use the 'emelfm' file manager to doubleclick and run this file which will automatically install it in seconds
13. now when you right click the desktop and go to the 'mydsl' menu you should have a new entry called 'bittorent gui'. Execute this to run the client (but not yet)
14. You need to tell the client where your torrents are so download these using firefox to /home/dsl or create a new folder for them using 'emelfm'
15. Close other apps and run the bittorent client, select 'many curses' mode and enter the directory containing the *.torrent files (/home/dsl/ or whatever) and set max upload (generally 5KB with a 128Kbps upload) then type the destination directory (/home/dsl/ will do) and choose start..and off she goes!
16 when the torrent is downloaded you can ftp it to a PC using axyftp or rename it to a smaller filename and copy it to your F drive (/mnt/hda55/) using emelfm.


In case you are wondering, the reason you cant use /mnt/hda55 (F) as storage space for torrents is that most torrent filenames exceed the length supported by the FATX filesystem. The loopback filesystem is a virtual drive stored in a file on your F drive and is formatted with a linux filesystem so filename lengths are not a problem. This could have in theory a maximum size of 4GB but only 2GB with this version of xdsl.

let me know if you have any problems as I'm doing this from memory and I installed it a different way.

hint for .rar files: running synaptic form the desktop will allow you to install Debian linux apps very easily (as long as the xbox can handle them). A handy one is 'rar' which is command line based only. To decompress a multipart rar file type 'rar x <filename>.rar'

For files larger than 4GB: You can actually install xdsl 'natively' to the F drive but this will wipe the F drive completely so I wouldnt recomend this unless you have a spare xbox lying around. You are only limited by the size of your hardrive then.
I'll try hooking up a DVD burner 2nite but I might just burn a CD on it as I dont feel like waiting for a DVD to burn over the xbox's USB1.0 interface Other storage options include USB-keys, USB hardrives etc which should all work...now if only I could get my hands on a USB 1.0 TV tuner card and turn it into a PVR box!

CiaranC

It doesn't have a 4GB limit.

FATX has a 4GB filesize limit.

JustinT9669

Whenever I mount my F drive and view it, I just see a page of ascii characters. Do you know whats the problem?

btw, Im using xDSL (E: loopback install). My hard drive is 300GB (F takes all the free space, its over 137GB). My bios is X2 4981.

screenshots:

Emelfm


ls /mnt/hda55 in the terminal
[/QUOTE]

silverlining

whatever you do, dont try to write any files to it while its in that state.

Assuming that you're having no problem with C the E partitions I'd guess that the linux fatx driver cannot cope with the size of your F partition (that's gotta be over 260GB?). I've mine partitioned with F to 137GB, G takes the rest (~50GB) and had no problems.

JustinT9669

I can see C and E fine, I just can't see F (292GB). Do you know of any driver or other linux distro that will allow me to view F?

po0k

AFaik FATX craps out over ~250-254Gig partition sizes. It loops back and starts writing at the start of the partition<|disk?>.
Split your F in F and G:.
It may require 48-bit LBA and G: support in the modchip bios.

silverlining

...which is what I was getting at but my thoughts were not that lucid at the time You could also try and use XBpartitioner which fixes the 250GB limit problem but it requires you to reformat the partition and I cant guarantee that it'll work with the linux driver (it does work with the xbox dashboards though).

It doesnt bother me tho as I've got a G partition

JustinT9669

my hdd is already formatted with XBpartitioner (32k clusters). When I get another hard drive, I'll just transfer all the data and format the old hdd with F and G.

po0k

hard-drive recovery?

My F: partition is fubar'd and I need to get some data off it, preferably by plugging it into a pc and copying straight onto another hard-drive.