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Chewi · Joined: 26 Nov 2006 Posts: 109 Location: Perth, Scotland

I've written a program for Linux that scans APA partitioned hard drives and uses Linux's device-mapper to create block devices for each partition. This means you can plug the hard drive into your PC and work directly with any Linux partitions you may have on the drive. No more fudging around with sector offsets! You can even mount installed games as ISOs, though I'm not sure whether that's really very useful.

This program could also potentially be used to boot the PS2 into Linux from an APA partition. It runs in userspace but an initrd/initramfs could do the necessary work before the system boots. I have Linux 2.6 in mind here but MontaVista's APA code is adequate for 2.4. I did try and update that code for 2.6 so that everything could be done in kernelspace but the non-contiguous partitions made it too messy.

Anyway, it's actually not 100% finished yet, it doesn't seem to get the offsets for the additional partition segments quite right but it's nearly there and you can still see it in action.

Mega Man · Joined: 18 Jun 2005 Posts: 274

This is very interesting. Please post a link when your are finished.

As I understand you, I can also use it to install (copy) Linux on the hard disc without a PS2 (as long I have created the partition on the PS2).

Chewi · Joined: 26 Nov 2006 Posts: 109 Location: Perth, Scotland

That is partially correct, you could use ps2fdisk on your machine and save yourself the bother of creating the partitions on the PS2. :)

It's ready now. It seems to work well, the only problem I've had is that the DMS HDD Format Tool appears to create partition tables that not even hdl_dump, let alone apascan, can read. uLaunchELF can read them though. Maybe this isn't really a problem but I expected it to work and I want to know what's up with it.

http://gps2.aura-online.co.uk/trac/gentoo-ps2/wiki/apascan

RashivaX · Joined: 15 Mar 2008 Posts: 4

I currently have a 320 GB HD installed in my PS2 and am wanting to use a bit of the space for media, such as music, etc... I created two extra partitions with DMS, but network transfers are incredibly slow. If I want to upload mass amounts of media, it will take a hair ripping amount of time.

I need to be able to mount the partitions on one of my PC's... one, my primary, is running Ubuntu Linux... so this works nicely for apascan :) but, again, the problem: DMS formatted... so, if not the ability to handle these partitions through apascan, and this gets into different territory, is there another app I can use to create partitions which would be fully compatible/readable on both the PC and the PS2? You mention ps2fdisk... not used this, but could I use this without losing current data--- just dealing with unallocated space?

BTW, this is another question probably better in another thread, but I will ask it anyway, since it's related... I have created one of the DMS partitions as 60GB... DMS does not show the size correctly... makes me slightly nervous... especially when thinking about how DMS is doing something somewhat mysterious, since you were having the issue with the partitions showing... so, am fearing other data might be overwritten.

Anyway, help on the main point at least, is much appreciated... thanks...

RashivaX · Joined: 15 Mar 2008 Posts: 4

Having another problem now.. that is with compiling apascan.

Am using Ubuntu 7.10 amd64.

First got this error about libdevmapper:

Chewi · Joined: 26 Nov 2006 Posts: 109 Location: Perth, Scotland

First of all, as it says in the README, apascan won't handle drives larger than 127GB. The official APA format doesn't support this and larger sizes were only achieved through the 48-bit LBA hack and the ToxicOS APAEXT format. I'd like to support them but I don't have any drives larger than 120GB.

You were right to install libdevmapper and libdevmapper-dev. I don't think dm-crypt is necessary and you wouldn't need to modprobe anything until after it's built anyway.

The header conflict you're getting may be a Ubuntu-specific issue and it appears to be due to a clash between x86 and amd64 headers. I don't know how Ubuntu handles multilib but Gentoo does it by replacing the usual /usr/include/sys/types.h with the following and does the same for many other header files.

RashivaX · Joined: 15 Mar 2008 Posts: 4

Should have replied back before...just remembered, but not much that can be done since there is not support currently for drives larger than 127GB.

My Kernel is generic. linux-headers-2.6.22.14-generic. I haven't had this amd64 for very long and did a fresh install of Ubuntu 7.10 amd64 bit version... this is what was installed. Could it be that it is generic that it is causing problems?

Again, knowledge is limited. Only been a dedicated Linux user for about a year and no good books, just learn as I go along from forums and trial and error :)

I would give you access to this machine to compile on if not for distance... eh well...

Chewi · Joined: 26 Nov 2006 Posts: 109 Location: Perth, Scotland

That package appears to be the correct one. I did a little digging and found a similar issue. Try moving the "#include <sys/types.h>" line to the top of the list of includes in apascan.c. Let me know if this works.

RashivaX · Joined: 15 Mar 2008 Posts: 4

Ok, done... appears to have compiled and installed properly. I get the output text for apascan :) But, I cannot test it further ATM... I do have a 60GB drive that I could try within a day or so.

This probably won't make much sense to me anyway, but why was that the problem?

Chewi · Joined: 26 Nov 2006 Posts: 109 Location: Perth, Scotland

The suggestion came from this bug. I've just had a look through the files to see what's going on.

asm/byteorder.h includes linux/byteorder/little_endian.h and that includes linux/types.h. This defines types such as loff_t but only when __KERNEL_STRICT_NAMES is false. At this point, it is false so they are defined. loff_t is then redefined as a conflicting type later on in sys/types.h.

sys/types.h includes features.h and this sets __KERNEL_STRICT_NAMES to true. By including sys/types.h first and having this set to true, loff_t does not get redefined in linux/types.h later on.

Why this happened to you but not me and whether this was really my fault or not is a mystery! Thanks for helping me fix this. I'll put out a new version soon.

cosmito · Joined: 04 Mar 2007 Posts: 314 Location: Portugal

Hi Chewi,

It seems gps2.aura-online.co.uk is not online... Definitely off? Any chance of uploading the apascan to somewhere else?

Chewi · Joined: 26 Nov 2006 Posts: 109 Location: Perth, Scotland

Apologies for not replying, I didn't see this message until now. Since I've largely given up on PS2 development and have moved from SVN to GIT, I wasn't in a hurry to get that site back up. I have now created a repository for apascan on github instead.

http://github.com/chewi/apascan