I've now formatted ny external HDD as EXT3 with the MiniTool http://www.partitionwizard.com/index.html. Easy to use and understand and use. Great tool.

I have two drives that I will be attaching to my Mini 2. Seagate FlexStor 1Tb & 2Tb externally powered drives.

On the 1Tb drive I have made two partitions, 1 x 10Gb and the remaining space, the 2TB just one partition. These are recognised by the Mini 2 as:-

10Gb Patition = Drive C = usb1 (Mapped as Drive J for Jukebox)
930Gb Partition = Drive D = usb2 (Mapped as Drive M for Movies)
2Tb Partition = Drive E = usb 3 (Mapped as Drive T for Television)

I installed extfs http://www.ext2fsd.com/ so that I can access the drives as USB drives when plugged into my PC and all works fine. The movie content has all been copied over and all my TV series will be copied by Monday/Tuesday (Only 1.5Tb )

What I need to do now is obtain some guidance on setting up the swapfile on the 10Gb partition and I also intend to use this partitition to store the Jukebox or multiple Jukeboxes and would appreciat assistance on the PlayerPath statement to point to usb2 & usb3 where the content will be held.

I'm not a Linux head at all, even after nearly 40 years in the IT industry so treat me like a newbie and then this thread may be of assistance to others that want to follow this route.

I know that it's gonna be Andy, Duviels or the Big O that respond, so thanks in advance guys.

Regards
Greg

Here you go:

Donwload the zip file (below), unzip it and copy the mountSwap file to the root of a USB stick.
Insert the USB stick into your Playon and detach all other USB drives.
Boot your Playon.
On your PC open a Telnet of PuTTY session with the Playon, e.g. by typing telnet <IP address of the Playon> in the Search window of the menu Start. If you use PuTTY you will know how to do this.
The user name for the Playon is root and no password is required. Ignore the warning cannot change to home directory, because after logging in you are in the home directory.
Copy and paste the following line to the Telnet window and press Enter:
This will copy the mountSwap script to the /usr/local/etc directory in the flash memory of your Playon.
Copy and paste the following line to the Telnet window and press Enter:

This will add the line /usr/local/etc/mountSwap & to the rcS (equivalent of autoexec.bat) script, which will call the mountSwap routine when the Playon boots.
Reboot your Playon by typing the command reboot in Telnet. The connection will be lost.

Now swapping will be enabled if a swap partition is found on one of the attached disk drives. If more than one swap partition is found, only the first one found will be used.
So you must create a Linux swap partition (128 MB suffices) on one or both of your USB disks. Use the Mini Tools you used before.

You can check if swapping is operational by typing free in aTelnet session. See the sample session below, in which the mountSwap script is tested before modification of the rcS script. If you test before you have a swap partition on one of your USB drives, swapping obviously will not be enabled.

The script is stored in the Playon's flash memory and will remain functional until you reinstall the firmware.

I omitted all error trapping from the scripts. So you use the script completely at your own responsibility and risk. In the worst case you may have to reinstall the firmware in the safe mode to undo the changes of the script.

Thanks Duivels
You've saved me a job - I'd just sat down to write the reply

Gerg - any trouble with creating the swap partition let me know and I can provide instructions for usng fdisk from the Telnet session

Andy

I was going to use the already created 10Gb first partition for the swapfile.

Any problems there?

Also, what is a good utility to edit the linux scripts under Windows? In the depths of my tired old brain, I sorta remember notepad padding the CR-LF incorrectly for linux.

Not a swap file, but a swap partition. Just split your 10 GB partition into two, one Linux swap of 128 MB and the remainder as you like. You can use the Mini Tools for it, delete the 10 GB partition and create two new ones in the empty space.

There should be a Notepad+ or Notepad++, which will do the job in Windows, just Google. I have a dual boot PC and use K Develop in Linux to edit the scripts for the Playon.

Thanks Duivels....

Understood but won't be able to do it until later as I have content copying everywhere at the moment. This is going to be a long haul as I have so much content and have to back it off, format the drives and then copy it back on.

I was hopeful that there was a NTFS/EXT3 converter like you can do FAT32/NTFS but no such luck.

Am used to PUTTY also so no problems there and will look for Notepad ++ as I suspect that I will have to edit the startup script as Andy has added some lines in his quest to get YAMJ sorted which I will have to sort out with him as he would like me to test this.

Will let you know how I go.

Regards
Greg

One thing that I have noticed since shifting to EXT3 format for my connected drives is that my network transfer speeds are approximately 4x faster.

I initailly did not believe it but have run tests transferring to a NTFS drive and an EXT3 drive and this confirmed what I was seeing.

This was an unexpected bonus and would further point the finger firmly at the less-than-ordinary NTFS Implementation on the player being the culprit.

With FTP instead of SMB you may further increase the transfer speed.

I didn't think FTP was available on the Mini 2.

No, not by default, but look here. Unfortunately I never found someone willing to test this with the Mini2. You maybe?

The Stupid FTP server on your Mini and Filezilla on your PC.

And incidentally: I am working with Andy to combine Andy's YAMJ modifications and the Utility package into one "self installing" package. We may need your help for the Mini2, because both Andy and myself only have a Mini1.