Can't see extra storage space on USB

[rustleg]

This was an unresolved issue last November. I have chosen to start a new thread here as it is now relevant to the 9 beta.

I have written KNOS to a 16GB USB stick which boots fine (am using it now) but I can't find any icon relating to the extra storage space. Nothing on the top line, no icon on the desktop other than the trash bucket.

I'd at least like to use it for the saved settings which need to be restored on bootup.

[Edit] I just remembered there may be a clue. When the drive was being prepared there is a long sequence of numbers (block lists or something) which is displayed on the terminal. At the end of this list (not the second one which prepares the extra storage space) there was an error reported. I can't recall what this was now. If that is likely to be significant I'll prepare another USB and note the error.

[Kevin McAleavey]

Feb 3, 2012 7:57:03 GMT -5 rustleg said:

This was an unresolved issue last November. I have chosen to start a new thread here as it is now relevant to the 9 beta.

I have written KNOS to a 16GB USB stick which boots fine (am using it now) but I can't find any icon relating to the extra storage space. Nothing on the top line, no icon on the desktop other than the trash bucket.

I'd at least like to use it for the saved settings which need to be restored on bootup.

[Edit] I just remembered there may be a clue. When the drive was being prepared there is a long sequence of numbers (block lists or something) which is displayed on the terminal. At the end of this list (not the second one which prepares the extra storage space) there was an error reported. I can't recall what this was now. If that is likely to be significant I'll prepare another USB and note the error.

Sorry for the delay - I've got a couple of people who are having problems booting from them at all which has me a bit tied up trying to do the old "wtf?"

In KNOS 9, we've done away with the trinkets on the desktop to make it a little more presentable. That and some oddities in Gnome where the icons didn't always respond when clicked had us move all that up to the top of the screen.

You should see at least one white square on the top if not more - those are the disks that KNOS sees. On the left, you'll see Applications - Places - System up there.

Click "Places" and you should see your "personal space" listed as a drive ... it will be labelled by its size. For an 8GB stick, that size will be somewhere around 2.3GB and thus for a 16G, it should be somewhere around 10.3GB or such depending on the actual size of the USB device internally. That'll be your "personal space" and it will be completely empty until you start using it for "folders" and files that you are free to do with as you please.

See if it's up there, should be. Just built a 16 here and it showed up ... mine's 10.3

[rustleg]

I'm getting problems with trying to put the system on a USB. First 2 USB's (16GB each) I tried have problems. At some stage in the preparation of the disc space I get a message (mentioned in the first post in this thread) such as:
wtfs: 20480 bytes at sector 8364440: no such file or directory

This can happen (with different numbers) when it's trying to format the space for the OS or the swap space - maybe also the extra storage area - I haven't seen it there because the screen has quickly scrolled on before I am aware (not wishing to keep staring at the formatting process), One of them ran but wouldn't show an icon for the extra storage space (hence the start of this thread)

I suspected the USB's were faulty so I went through a surface scan (took hours) but this said there were no bad clusters.

I then managed to get it on an 8GB stick. This ran first time. During this run I tried to plug in another USB stick to use for data but it was never recognised. I then restarted the PC (gracefully shut down) and tried to reboot into the USB stick again but it fails. See attached photo (if I can work out how to put a photo in here).

Attachments:

[Kevin McAleavey]

Feb 6, 2012 14:42:23 GMT -5 rustleg said:

I'm getting problems with trying to put the system on a USB. First 2 USB's (16GB each) I tried have problems. At some stage in the preparation of the disc space I get a message (mentioned in the first post in this thread) such as:
wtfs: 20480 bytes at sector 8364440: no such file or directory

This can happen (with different numbers) when it's trying to format the space for the OS or the swap space - maybe also the extra storage area - I haven't seen it there because the screen has quickly scrolled on before I am aware (not wishing to keep staring at the formatting process), One of them ran but wouldn't show an icon for the extra storage space (hence the start of this thread)

I suspected the USB's were faulty so I went through a surface scan (took hours) but this said there were no bad clusters.

I then managed to get it on an 8GB stick. This ran first time. During this run I tried to plug in another USB stick to use for data but it was never recognised. I then restarted the PC (gracefully shut down) and tried to reboot into the USB stick again but it fails. See attached photo (if I can work out how to put a photo in here).

It's looking like there's some sort of problem with BSD9's "newfs" bit and USB devices larger than 8GB under some circumstances. To be honest, I don't know the cause at the moment but am looking into it now.

Somehow newfs (which is similar to MSDOS' "format" command) is having some sort of a large integer problem and is hitting a wall. The KNOS beta that's out there now is based on their BSD9-RC3, the next KNOS will be based on their "release" version. I need to check and see if they've fixed it between RC3 and release and if not, how to fix it.

Will get back on this as soon as I find out what's going on.