Maschine+ expansions installation on new SD card failed

Raptor Ramjet · 2022-02-13T12:20:16+00:00

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Hello,

I recently bought Maschine+ so thought I might as well download all the expansion packs. As this took a l-o-n-g time over WiFi I left it going overnight. So I came back to Maschine in the morning to find most packs had installed but a few had failed. I therefore retried installing them from the GUI but they all immediately failed. So a quick head scratch and dig about later and it was obvious that the SD card was full.

No problem as, when I'd orderedMaschine I also ordered a 512Gb SD card (from a seperate supplier) which arrived the day after Maschine. So I copied everyting over from the supplied card to the new SD card, inserted it in Maschin+, then went to start the installs again - which were all marked as being available in the Maschine GUI.

However when I tried to download them they all immediately failed.

So my immediate thoughts were "Hmmm... I bet there are partial results". A quick look at the SD card later and I found a number of ".deb" and ".nipkg" files in the "Downloads" directory which were all 0 bytes in length. The names of the files corresponded to the expansions that had failed to install so I renamed all these using a "_" prefix and a ".bak" extension.

Following this the expansion packs could be downloaded and all was well.

I'd therefore suggest that the download code used by Maschine+ has a bug as it is not verifying the length/hash of files that have been downloaded. If a file of the correct name is there it attempts to use it and obviously fails if it's corrupt/incomplete. So the downloader/installer is not verifying that the installers have been downloaded properly.

I'd therefore suggest that the download process should start by getting the file length/hash from the NI server (depends how thorough you want to be). If the installer file exists locally then it should compare the length/hash downloaded from the server. If there's a mismatch it should redownload the installer file. Alternatively there should be a way for the user to say "force a redownload/reinstall".

Unfortuntely while this solved most of the problems I was also left with a similar problem with the "Raum" plugin as this also failed to download/install when the SD card filled. But, so far, I've not been able to track down the location of it's partial results. FUrther attempts to install this from the GUI also immediately fail as there are obviously some partial results somewhere that need clearing out.

At this point I'd be most grateful if someone could point me at the correct temporary directory/filename so I can remove it and download Raum ?

Cheers.

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Comments

Philip Hopely

horrible wifi ? a generic usb <-> gigabit rj45 ethernet adaptor works on maschine+ usb A port (put maschine+ in airplane mode via settings).

(also presuming you have dhcp set up on your ipv4 network, etc.)

made expansion downloads only require a few retry button taps per expansion (which if ya got ult complete, youve got at least 73- good grief gotta be a better way).

I still have troubles with downloads & sdcard copy - will start threads for these topics, if I don't find elsewhere.

Philip Hopely

tried downloading ~73 expansion packs overnight last night onto a freshly formatted 1tb sdcard

most downloads failed, a few downloaded & installed - but the maschine+ this morning threw message that the sdcard was corrupt

trying windows 10 to repair that sdcard now, very slow

fwiw, fsck.exfat under my older laptop linux install cannot repair exfat filesystems, only report errors

wow- I so much would rather be using their devices, not debugging/beta-testing them

DeepThumb

IMO it's a sort of user error maybe due to a non ideal documentation.

What worked for me without any flaws or errors:

Take the new SD card and format it in M+ only. Don't let ever (!) touch a different OS that SD card. No need for putting it into a PC, MAC etc. because M+ has a storage mode that allows a secure access...
Downloads and installation takes a lot of time. Don't start all downloads over night. Only a handful simultaneously! Then the next handful after the first batch has been installed properly etc.
Be happy and make your own noise! Analyzing huge complex Expansion projects that have been developed by professional musicians over weeks is no fun. It's more satisfying when I use the tuned Expansion kits and make my own pattern.😉

Philip Hopely

bummer - after attempting reformat of 1tb sdcard using maschine+ - format operation reported failure: this new 1 terabyte sdcard now appears as a *45 megabyte* device, under windows & linux

beware: maschine+ will eat your sdcards

guess I buy a bunch of smaller cards & swap em - yuck, what a mess !

ozon

@Raptor Ramjet wrote:

So I copied everyting over from the supplied card to the new SD card, inserted it in

And that was a major mistake, because the SD card only holds the content part of the installations but no none of the other vital information (like the files you’re asking about). Thus the M+ has no idea all that content is already there and gets pretty confused especially if files were corrupted before.

Best approach: Format that 512GB SD card with the M+ and start from scratch.

ozon

@Philip Hopely wrote:

beware: maschine+ will eat your sdcards

That’s quite a bold statement…

I'd rather assume an SD card failure.

Philip Hopely

I can demonstrate - bet it would happen again if i queue up a bunch of downloads - I download 1 by 1 for now

sdcard dot org has sdcard formatting utilities that may help, should a hungry maschine+ eat your sdcard

ymmv

Philip Hopely

fwiw: part of the reason for slow install is result of decompression to & from the same sdcard media

copies tend to operate faster if data flows from one disk/media to another

haven't tried hooking a usb drive up yet - the usb ethernet adaptor working was nice undocumented surprise (ty to whoever kept that option in there!) - "scratch disk capability" might help with install thrash ?.. maybe ni will surprise me

about the separation of content/data from code: isn't there a massive (hah pun) amount of redundant data, common with the desktop native_instruments_content directory?

I understand I need .deb packages to install on the maschine+ linux -- but rather wasteful to redownload all that content/data again

Raptor Ramjet

In reply to ozon:

Copying to the 512Gb SD card, then deleting the temporary files, putting the card back into Maschine+ and attempting the downloads again worked perfectly !

Like I originally said the NI download/install process has obviously not been coded to cope with partial results, or to allow the user to force a new installation. Currently an attempted install when there's a 0 byte file of the right name will cause the installer process to fail. That's not good coding as the integirty of the file is not being checked (using a hash etc.)

So there's a defnite bug that needs fixing.

ozon

@Raptor Ramjet wrote:

Copying to the 512Gb SD card, then deleting the temporary files, putting the card back into Maschine+ and attempting the downloads again worked perfectly !

And what exactly is the advantage of copying everything on an SD card and then having everything installed upon that again?

sabberlatz

I heared so many issues installing packages. There was a rumour as well, that Maschine+ hardware has too often to be replaced.

But main problem is, that the WLAN interface of Maschine+ is not the best one. I had many problems installing the packages again to a new SD card. But then I noticed, that I plugged the FRITZ! WLAN MESH-Repeater away from my Maschine+ and so, the signal contain only one "stone".

I plugged the Repeater back to my studio room and now I have nearly full signal.

After this I was able to install everything multiple times on different cards. So, no error happen again.

So, keep your Maschine+ boxes. Don´t send them back to the dealer because this is not the problem.

Stephan

whereisko

Just spent the whole day agonising over this 512gb SD card for it to be unable to be written on despite all the formatting etc. M+ doesn't like it. Any got any ideas how to solve it as there are no articles whatsoever

D-One

A 1TB SD card is quite a gamble IMO, maybe that's why the 512Gb worked.

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/52811#Comment_52811

Which brand and model did you buy? buying cheap slow ones from unknown brands is bad ideia.

Sandisk Extreme Pro's for example are known to be reliable but you pay for that, especially at higher speeds.

whereisko

Mine is an Integral with 150mb/s write speed. Also tried it with several others such as Sandisk and had the same issue. NI requested I send it back for repair due to a potential faulty SD reader. I’m livid. Hopefully soon I get it back and there’s no issues going forward so I can create in standalone as it’s been over a month 😩

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