Warning for NTFS disks

[peteru]

It has become apparent that allowing the use of NTFS as the primary drive is causing a lot of grief to people. This problem is compounded by the fact that a lot of drives being hooked up to the V2 appear to be left at factory default partitioning and formatting which is NTFS. The drive appears to work for a while. Eventually, the filesystem will require a check / repair and at that point the Beyonwiz firmware can not deal with NTFS and the user will experience a series of cascading issues. These will range from unreliable operation to boot loops and even complete data loss on the NTFS drive.

The only robust filesystem that is proven to work as reliably as possible is ext4. As much as I'd like to give the users a choice of filesystem, at the end of the day the Beyonwiz devices need to behave like appliances and have reliable operation. Filesystems other than ext4 have numerous shortcomings. The next best alternative is NFS from a reliable server connected using wired Ethernet, but even that can present some challenges.

I propose that the firmware needs to implement a warning system and caution the user that using NTFS for the primary drive is known to have problems. This check should be performed on every enigma2 start and the warning should give the user the option to ignore until next enigma 2 restart or format the HDD using ext4. I thought about also providing a never warn again option in the GUI, but I think that is too dangerous. Such an option may make sense as a manual setting, that can be added to the configuration by expert users that know what they are doing and are technically savvy.

Opinions / feedback?

[MrQuade]

Agreed to all. Including the addition of the manual ignore setting.

Your right that it is pretty clear that it can't be relied upon given the lack of ability to fix errors.

[prl]

I propose that the firmware needs to implement a warning system and caution the user that using NTFS for the primary drive is known to have problems. This check should be performed on every enigma2 start and the warning should give the user the option to ignore until next enigma 2 restart or format the HDD using ext4. I thought about also providing a never warn again option in the GUI, but I think that is too dangerous. Such an option may make sense as a manual setting, that can be added to the configuration by expert users that know what they are doing and are technically savvy.

That is pretty much all there, but it was designed with internal HDDs in mind. There may be some issues making it work correctly given the uncertainty about USB device mount order and naming.

[MrQuade]

My assumption would be that it brings to the warning for anything that is mounted as /hdd.

That will cover the basics for the average novice user with a single drive.

The warning might also benefit from displaying some info about the disk such as size and volume label of available so the user can identify the drive if they have perhaps accidentally booted up with a drive that they didn't intend to become /hdd..

Maybe something even smarter that checks against the configured location of the recording and timeshift directories.

[Grumpy_Geoff]

My assumption would be that it brings to the warning for anything that is mounted as /hdd.

That will cover the basics for the average novice user with a single drive.

That would miss the users with a microSD card for time shifting and backups and an external drive for recordings; a setup often recommended.

Maybe something even smarter that checks against the configured location of the recording and timeshift directories.

Though that may not work on initial set up.

[MrQuade]

That would miss the users with a microSD card for time shifting and backups and an external drive for recordings; a setup often recommended.

Not if it also checked the movie recording and timeshift locations.

Besides, I also said that it covers off the most basic setups for specifically this scenario (being a non basic setup). I'd normally say that anyone running microSD and hdd would be more advanced users, but our recent encounters on Whirlpool pretty much proved that otherwise.

Maybe something even smarter that checks against the configured location of the recording and timeshift directories.

Though that may not work on initial set up.

Doesn't matter at initital startup. As soon as those locations are configured, then the warning can be displayed. And if not then, then on the next reboot. The user doesn't necessarily need to be told immediately, but nice if they can be.

[Grumpy_Geoff]

Doesn't matter at initital startup. As soon as those locations are configured, then the warning can be displayed. And if not then, then on the next reboot. The user doesn't necessarily need to be told immediately, but nice if they can be.

And be pissed off because they'd lose their new recordings
Much better if it could be caught at set up time.

[MrQuade]

And be pissed off because they'd lose their new recordings

God forbid!

In any case, on first boot it will more than likely be mounted as /hdd and will be caught anyway.

[Grumpy_Geoff]

In any case, on first boot it will more than likely be mounted as /hdd and will be caught anyway.

Assuming no microSD card and no other USB drive attached

[MrQuade]

Assuming no microSD card and no other USB drive attached

Then it gets caught later as soon as the user configures the directory for recording. I am really not following your line of thought here?

[Grumpy_Geoff]

Assuming no microSD card and no other USB drive attached

Then it gets caught later as soon as the user configures the directory for recording. I am really not following your line of thought here?

Well, it won't be mounted as /media/hdd. If it's detected when changing settings to assign /media/usb (or /media/sdc{n] e.t.c) as the recording drive then I imagine that'd suffice.

This has mostly been an issue since Beyonwiz apparently stopped reformatting the drives before shipping.
If they included a shipping note to warn the purchaser to reformat the drive before use then likely we'd not be hearing much of this issue, if at all.

[MrQuade]

Well, it won't be mounted as /media/hdd. If it's detected when changing settings to assign /media/usb (or /media/sdc{n] e.t.c) as the recording drive then I imagine that'd suffice.

Did I not say that way back?

As soon as those locations are configured, then the warning can be displayed. And if not then, then on the next reboot. The user doesn't necessarily need to be told immediately, but nice if they can be.

[Grumpy_Geoff]

Well, it won't be mounted as /media/hdd. If it's detected when changing settings to assign /media/usb (or /media/sdc{n] e.t.c) as the recording drive then I imagine that'd suffice.

Did I not say that way back?

But you said this...

My assumption would be that it brings to the warning for anything that is mounted as /hdd.

Which as I point out, wouldn't be great, but what you said here is better...

Maybe something even smarter that checks against the configured location of the recording and timeshift directories.

As soon as those locations are configured, then the warning can be displayed. And if not then, then on the next reboot. The user doesn't necessarily need to be told immediately, but nice if they can be.

I don't think it should be on the next reboot, as that may be unattended. You could then end up with recordings present.
It'd be much better to detect before that, for example at shut down, or when setting a timer, or similar.

[prl]

The current checks on the internal HDD are done at initial startup time. If the HDD isn't formatted as ext4, the user is offered the opportunity to format before proceeding.

The whole thing is rather more complicated when all the storage is external, and the recording HDD may not even be present, or if present, not mounted as /mnt/hdd, at initial startup (e.g. after a USB update).