CardKeeper - New Updated Version

[jeffgibson]

Disclaimer: CardKeeper is a public domain program first created by Doug Anderson.  The source was published by Doug and he encouraged modification and redistribution of this utility.

I have modified CardKeeper to detect SD cards that failed to mount after a system reset.  This is a problem that I routinely have and now I have a solution to this problem.  When this happens, programs that depend on the SD card being there have problems and I would not know the problem existed.  Utilities like LightWav and many more are effected.

CardKeeper will now detect and optionally do a clean reset to re-enable the SD card w/o the user getting involved.

The program is posted to the following forum.

Let me know if you have comments or suggestions.....

Jeff



http://discussion.treocentral.com/showthread.php?t=57469

[Feico Mol]

Doug Anderson...wasn't he one of the core developers at Handspring?

[DickieD]

Quick observations/questions:

5-way functionality seems to be gone (though it works fine if I use TreoNavSet), and the launcher icon is now black and white instead of color.

Just for clarification, with the "Soft Reset to recover Card" checkbox, is this saying that upon a Soft Reset, Card Keeper will automatically remount the card?  Or is it saying that if it detects that the card is unmounted, it will soft reset in order to unmount it?  That said, what does it do to "Detect and Unmounted Card"?

Thanks for n e answers.  Holla atcha bol

[MacInfo]

I am a little confused. I have the TR600 and one of the biggest problems I have is that my SD card BECOMES unmounted while I am using the Palm at different times or while it is sleep.  The only solutions that I have is to either eject the SD card and then reinsert it, OR reset the Palm which also remounts the card.  Does this program detect an unmounted card while the Palm is sleep or active OR ONLY when you reset your Palm and happen to not have an SD card mount automatically (which I have NEVER experienced before, my SD card becomes unmounted when I am using the Palm during my daily work or while it is sleep, BUT NEVER when I soft reset the Palm.)

[jeffgibson]

I am a little confused. I have the TR600 and one of the biggest problems I have is that my SD card BECOMES unmounted while I am using the Palm at different times or while it is sleep.  The only solutions that I have is to either eject the SD card and then reinsert it, OR reset the Palm which also remounts the card.  Does this program detect an unmounted card while the Palm is sleep or active OR ONLY when you reset your Palm and happen to not have an SD card mount automatically (which I have NEVER experienced before, my SD card becomes unmounted when I am using the Palm during my daily work or while it is sleep, BUT NEVER when I soft reset the Palm.)

Your situation is exactly the reason I modifed CardKeeper.

I have couple question for you.   Does your SD card "drop off" during normal operations or does it disappear only after a crash or reset?

Right now CK will scan for an unmounted card on every power on and after every reset.  I can easily change it to look much more often but I wanted to be as non-intrusive as possible.

Jeff

[jeffgibson]

Doug Anderson...wasn't he one of the core developers at Handspring?

Yes.

[jeffgibson]

Quick observations/questions:

5-way functionality seems to be gone (though it works fine if I use TreoNavSet), and the launcher icon is now black and white instead of color.

Just for clarification, with the "Soft Reset to recover Card" checkbox, is this saying that upon a Soft Reset, Card Keeper will automatically remount the card?  Or is it saying that if it detects that the card is unmounted, it will soft reset in order to unmount it?  That said, what does it do to "Detect and Unmounted Card"?

Thanks for n e answers.  Holla atcha bol

Thanks for the feedback and good call re: Icon color and 5-way support.  They are both now fixed.  Available now via the previous link.

Hope this clears things up.  Sorry for not doing this in the first post.  My bad.....

If you check the Detect an Unmounted Card option, CK will use the same notifications as are used for a card that pops out of the Treo.  Only the alerts will sound if CK detects a card that is in the Treo but is not "enumerated" or essentually is not mounted and available for use.  In this case you would need to physically remove the card from the Treo and re-insert to get the card to be recognized again.

If you enable the option, 'Detect an Unmounted Card' and 'Soft Reset to recover Card', then CK will programatically perform a soft reset to see if the OS will bring the card back online during a "clean" restart.  It will try this ONLY once.  If the card is still unavailable after the reset, it will revert to audible/vibrate alerts.  In this case you will need to remove and re-insert the card to get it to be recognized.

I have only seen my Treo get into this situation after a system crash.  Everytime I have had CK perform the soft reset, the card has come back online automatically.

I did try to see if I could use the Treo's API calls to bring the card back online w/o the soft reset but couldn't get it to work.  Also the mount API call will automatically format the card if it detects an error!  That is not something I wanted to happen so I backed off trying to get fancy.

Does this help????

[MacInfo]

Your situation is exactly the reason I modifed CardKeeper.

I have couple question for you.   Does your SD card "drop off" during normal operations or does it disappear only after a crash or reset?

Right now CK will scan for an unmounted card on every power on and after every reset.  I can easily change it to look much more often but I wanted to be as non-intrusive as possible.

Jeff

Well I have only noticed it when I go to use a program that was loaded on the SD card OR my Callfilter no longer plays an mp3 on the SD card OR when my backup program has an error stating that my SD card was not available so it did not perform its backup.

Now here is the issue I can see happening.

My TR600 is off and a phone call comes in.  Sicne the phone call comes in and WAKES the palm up, CardKeeper scans to see if the SD card is mounted.  If it sees that that SD card is NOT there then it resets my TR600 (if I have that setting checked) So basically I miss that phone call.

Next if my TR600 is off and at 6am my backup program wakes the TR600 so it can do it's backup AND CardKeeper checks again to see if the SD card is mounted and AGAIN it sees that the SD card is not there, so it performs a reset of the TR600 and the backup program is NOT able to perform it's scheduled backup and the message on the screen that I would have normally seen that the SD card was not available for the backup to proceed is not there because of the reset.

BUT if I turn off that function(Soft reset to recover card) and I am NOT around the Palm to hear the alarms, then things like backup are still not performed since the SD card was never available.  

So basically I am !@#$ since in order to recover an unmounted card is to reset the Palm and most of the time when the check is performed by CardKeeper when the palm is turning on is when a program may want to do a task that requires the SD card and the Palm is soft reset to fix the SD card issue.

Any thoughts on what other options could be implemented?  I know more checks could help but that could also drain additional battery power? or resources from the Palm.

If the resources are not a lot on additional checks and the battery drain is limited, then maybe that would help and IF the palm is on and a check is performed and it sees an unmounted SD card, it can prompt you instead of resetting so you can then eject/insert the SD card manually. BUT if the Palm is off and it performs the check and sees that the SD card is unmounted, it can just go ahead and do a soft reset. And last, if a check is performed once the Palm is turned on and it sees that the SD card is NOT there, then it can prompt and then wait for x amount of time and if no feedback is performed by the user then it can soft reset also ??  :-)

[DickieD]

Hi Jeff.  Thanks for the update and the clarification.  Quick note about the update -- the 5-way navigation is back as you said; however, it doesn't work for the new card mounting features.  It just skips right over them between the checkboxes for "Vibrate" and the dropdown for "First Reminder".

Thanks for the clarification.  About your last part, are you saying that you were trying to create a way like the "Mount Card" Option in the app "NotifyMe" where cardkeeper will detect the unmounted card and automatically mount it?  I agree that I have only gotten a mount problem following a crash, which is why I have used the freeware "Soft Reset", which has an option to launch an app of your choice after any Reset (manual or crash) -- so I select the "Card Info" app, so that the card is automatically looked for and remounted.  (This only doesn't work after a crash though if the Radio is automatically activated).  Thanks for the help; holla atcha bol

[jeffgibson]

Well I have only noticed it when I go to use a program that was loaded on the SD card OR my Callfilter no longer plays an mp3 on the SD card OR when my backup program has an error stating that my SD card was not available so it did not perform its backup.

Now here is the issue I can see happening.

My TR600 is off and a phone call comes in.  Sicne the phone call comes in and WAKES the palm up, CardKeeper scans to see if the SD card is mounted.  If it sees that that SD card is NOT there then it resets my TR600 (if I have that setting checked) So basically I miss that phone call.

Next if my TR600 is off and at 6am my backup program wakes the TR600 so it can do it's backup AND CardKeeper checks again to see if the SD card is mounted and AGAIN it sees that the SD card is not there, so it performs a reset of the TR600 and the backup program is NOT able to perform it's scheduled backup and the message on the screen that I would have normally seen that the SD card was not available for the backup to proceed is not there because of the reset.

BUT if I turn off that function(Soft reset to recover card) and I am NOT around the Palm to hear the alarms, then things like backup are still not performed since the SD card was never available.  

So basically I am !@#$ since in order to recover an unmounted card is to reset the Palm and most of the time when the check is performed by CardKeeper when the palm is turning on is when a program may want to do a task that requires the SD card and the Palm is soft reset to fix the SD card issue.

Any thoughts on what other options could be implemented?  I know more checks could help but that could also drain additional battery power? or resources from the Palm.

If the resources are not a lot on additional checks and the battery drain is limited, then maybe that would help and IF the palm is on and a check is performed and it sees an unmounted SD card, it can prompt you instead of resetting so you can then eject/insert the SD card manually. BUT if the Palm is off and it performs the check and sees that the SD card is unmounted, it can just go ahead and do a soft reset. And last, if a check is performed once the Palm is turned on and it sees that the SD card is NOT there, then it can prompt and then wait for x amount of time and if no feedback is performed by the user then it can soft reset also ??  :-)

Valid points.  I can tell you that 99+% of all of my unmounted card problems happen (and are detected) after a crash, the situations you refer to will never happen.  Perhaps I should put in an option for power on checks.  That way crashes will be solved by the reset option and you will have the ability to choose to have CK scan at other times (power on and every application execution).

Thoughts?

[MacInfo]

Valid points.  I can tell you that 99+% of all of my unmounted card problems happen (and are detected) after a crash, the situations you refer to will never happen.  Perhaps I should put in an option for power on checks.  That way crashes will be solved by the reset option and you will have the ability to choose to have CK scan at other times (power on and every application execution).

Thoughts?

This would be a good start!  

I would love to see that and test and see where it takes me.

So if I understand you correctly, is that you have ONLY experienced the unmounted card at crashes ??  WOW!! I have ONLY experienced the unmounted cards at different times but NEVER after a crash/reset.  Once the Palm resets, my card is available.  BUT if I have my palm just sitting there and I go to run a program or it wakes up to run a tool that requires the card, it may not run since the SD card has disappeared! (unmounted).

[jeffgibson]

Here is what I have accomplished based on the feedback from many people.  

I have the automatic (no soft reset) remounting code working!  I have added a new option called "Attempt Card Re-mount".  When you select this option, CK will attempt to programatically remount the SD card.  It is working perfectly on my system.  I also left in the option to soft reset.  If both options are selected, it will FIRST attempt to remount the SD card and if that process fails, it will soft reset the device.  

When soft reset is selected, I have disabled the power on check.

I have however enabled checking for the SD card everytime any application is launched.  This check is only enabled when you select the "Detect Unmounted Card".

So now you have 4 choices:

1) only detect when the card is removed from the device
2) detect card removals and Unmounted SD cards
3) attempt to automatically mount the SD card programatically
4) perform a soft reset to remount the SD card


I have also included an app called "Crash" that will help you test to see if CK is working.  Crash does what it says - Crash your Treo!  7 times out of 10 it leaves my Treo with an unmounted SD card.  Use "crash" at your own risk.  

Please let me know if this version works on your Treo's.

Jeff

P.S.  You can DL at http://discussion.treocentral.com/showthread.php?t=57469

[MacInfo]

Well so far the features are very impressive.  Now the real test is going to be the 2-3 times a day that my SD card just unmount on it's own and see how well CardKeeper works. I will keep you posted on the latest 1.3 build.

THANK YOU for such a tool that is going to HOPEFULLY make using my SD card useful again.  

Side note:  I installed Crash Pro by http://www.79bmedia.com and activated it's logging function. This way I can keep an eye on how often the palm gets reset and what caused the reset.

[jeffgibson]

Version 1.3.1 was just posed to http://discussion.treocentral.com/showthread.php?t=57469  

Contains and update that will allow CK alert tones to bypass user settings for System Volume (For users that don't want normal system sounds but do want CK sounds).  Also gives you the ability to independently set the volume level for CK events.

Jeff

[jeffgibson]

Well so far the features are very impressive.  Now the real test is going to be the 2-3 times a day that my SD card just unmount on it's own and see how well CardKeeper works. I will keep you posted on the latest 1.3 build.

THANK YOU for such a tool that is going to HOPEFULLY make using my SD card useful again.  

Side note:  I installed Crash Pro by http://www.79bmedia.com and activated it's logging function. This way I can keep an eye on how often the palm gets reset and what caused the reset.

So how is it working for you?  Any updates???  ?