[janniz]

Hello world,

Some days ago I've replace the HDD of my xbox with a spare 250 G HDD...
Now I notice a strange latency in the process of mounting drive F during xbmc startup.

This is xbmc.log with the original disk:
......
00:00:41 M: 54398976 NOTICE: Mapping drive E to Harddisk0\Partition1
00:00:41 M: 54398976 NOTICE: Unmapped drive D
00:00:41 M: 54398976 NOTICE: Mapping drive D to Cdrom0
00:00:41 M: 54398976 NOTICE: Mapping drive F to Harddisk0\Partition6
.....

and this is with the new HDD:
......
00:00:41 M: 54398976 NOTICE: Mapping drive E to Harddisk0\Partition1
00:00:41 M: 54398976 NOTICE: Unmapped drive D
00:00:41 M: 54398976 NOTICE: Mapping drive D to Cdrom0
00:00:44 M: 54398976 NOTICE: Mapping drive F to Harddisk0\Partition6
.....

As you can see there is a new 3s delay from "Mapping drive D to Cdrom0" to "Mapping drive F to Harddisk0\Partition6".

The version of xbmc is the same (the latest T3CH release).
The bios is M8 with lba48 support configured to give all the space to partition F.
Partition F is formatted using XBPartitioner 1.1.

I've wiped the first bytes of the HDD (de-facto removing the partition on disk) and the problem is still present, so the problem is not located to the "ondisk partition".

Looking at the sources (XBMC/xbmc/Application.cpp) the problem I've is triggered here:

919 // Attempt to read the LBA48 v3 patch partition table, if kernel supports the command and it exists.
920 CIoSupport::ReadPartitionTable();
921 if (CIoSupport::HasPartitionTable())
922 {
923 // Mount up to Partition15 (drive O if they are available.
924 for (int i=EXTEND_PARTITION_BEGIN; i <= EXTEND_PARTITION_END; i++)
925 {
926 char szDevice[32];
927 if (CIoSupport:artitionExists(i))
928 {
929 char cDriveLetter = 'A' + i - 1;
930 sprintf(szDevice, "Harddisk0\\Partition%u", i);
931
932 CIoSupport::RemapDriveLetter(cDriveLetter, szDevice);
933 }
934 }
935 }
936 else
937 {
938 if (CIoSupport:riveExists('F'))
939 CIoSupport::RemapDriveLetter('F', "Harddisk0\\Partition6");
940 if (CIoSupport:riveExists('G'))
941 CIoSupport::RemapDriveLetter('G', "Harddisk0\\Partition7");
942 }
943
944 CIoSupport::RemapDriveLetter('X',"Harddisk0\\Partition3");

this more precisely lead me to "XBMC/xbmc/xbox/IoSupport.cpp"...
I think the slowdown may be here:

653 stat = NtDeviceIoControlFile(handle, 0, 0, 0, &io_stat_block,
654 IOCTL_CMD_LBA48_ACCESS,
655 ioctl_cmd_in_buf, sizeof(ioctl_cmd_in_buf),
656 ioctl_cmd_out_buf, sizeof(ioctl_cmd_out_buf));

but unluckily these pieces of code don't have any debug log... so I cannot proceed beyond

Looking at various xbmx.log found over the net I've found that many peoples have this delay in the same point... so now I'm a bit confused... Is this normal ? Why with the original disk this delay does not show up

Any advice is welcome

Thanks...
Janniz

[janniz]

After further analisys I've detected the point where these 3s are lost.

The delay appen when CIoSupport:artitionExists is called for partition 6. In particular this happen executing

Code:

status = NtOpenFile(&hTemp, GENERIC_READ | GENERIC_WRITE, &oa, &iosb, FILE_SHARE_READ | FILE_SHARE_WRITE, FILE_SYNCHRONOUS_IO_ALERT);

Since this is from Microsoft Kernel APIs, I don't know why this can happen Can be a bug of the EvoX M8 bios ?
Maybe there is some sort of incompatibility from the HDD (configuread as CS) and the Xbox ?

Any idea or suggestion will be really appreciated...
Thanks in advance.

Janniz

[janniz]

Ooops... sorry... maybe the right place for this thread is under the "Creators' Corner".
Can some administrator move it ?

Thank you...

[janniz]

Ok... Now I'm sure that these 3s delay are into the execution path I've stated into my previous posts.

I've changed the method that detect the PartitionTable (bool CIoSupport::ReadPartitionTable()) forcing

Code:

m_fPartitionTableIsValid = false;
return false;

and the delay is "magically" vanished. Now from
NOTICE: Mapping drive D to Cdrom0
and
NOTICE: Mapping drive F to Harddisk0\Partition6
pass 0 seconds

In fact these changes forces XBMC to 'guess' if that partitions F & G exists, looking at the kernel version and at disk size triggering "CIoSupport:riveExists" instead of "CIoSupport:artitionExists".


I cannot still understand why

Code:

status = NtOpenFile(&hTemp, GENERIC_READ | GENERIC_WRITE, &oa, &iosb, FILE_SHARE_READ | FILE_SHARE_WRITE, FILE_SYNCHRONOUS_IO_ALERT);

is 3 seconds long... but at least I don't have to endure this delay any time I turn my Xbox on

Now I've only to really invalidate partition table on the disk... I thought I've already done this wiping the first bytes of the disk... but probably something is gone wrong somewhere...

See ya
Janniz