2.  Installation

2.1.  Prerequisites

Before installing Rockbox you should make sure you meet the prerequisites. Also you may need some tools for installation. In most cases these will be already available on your computer but if not you need to get some additional software.

ZIP utility.

Rockbox is distributed as an archive using the .zip format. Thus you need a tool to handle that compressed format. Usually your computer should have a tool installed that can handle the .zip file format. Windows XP has built-in support for .zip files and presents them to you as folders unless you have installed a third party program that handles compressed files. For other operating systems this may vary. If the .zip file format is not recognised on your computer you can find a program to handle them at http://www.info-zip.org/ or http://sevenzip.sf.net/ which can be downloaded and used free of charge.

USB connection.

To transfer Rockbox to your player you need to connect it to your computer. To proceed you need to know where to access the player. On Windows this means you need to figure out the drive letter associated with the device. On Linux you need to know the mount point of your player.

Text editor.

As you will see in the following chapters, Rockbox is highly configurable. In addition to saving configurations within Rockbox, Rockbox also allows you to create customised configuration files. If you would like to edit custom configuration files on your computer, you will need a text editor like Windows’ “Wordpad”.

2.2.  Installing Rockbox

2.2.1.  Introduction

There are three separate components of Rockbox, two of which need to be installed in order to run Rockbox.

The Sansa boot loader.

The Sansa boot loader is the program that tells your player how to boot and load the remaining firmware from disk. It is also responsible for the disk mode on your player.

This boot loader is stored in special flash memory in your Sansa. It is already installed on your player, so it is never necessary to modify this in order to install Rockbox.

The Rockbox boot loader.

The Rockbox boot loader is loaded from disk by the Sansa boot loader. It is responsible for loading the Rockbox firmware and for providing the dual boot function. It directly replaces the Sansa firmware on the player’s disk.

The Rockbox firmware.

Similar to the Sansa firmware, most of the Rockbox code is contained in a “build” that resides on your player’s drive. This makes it easy to update Rockbox. The build consists of a directory called .rockbox containing all of Rockbox’ files, which is located in the root of your player’s drive.

2.2.2.  Choosing a Rockbox version

There are three different types of firmware binaries from Rockbox website: Release version, current build and daily build. You need to decide which one you want to install and get the version for your player.

Release.

There has not yet been a stable release for the Sansa e200. Until there is a stable release for Sansa e200, use a current build.

Current Build.

The current build is built at each source code change to the Rockbox SVN repository, and represent the current state of Rockbox development. This means that the build could contain bugs, but is most of the time safe to use. You can download the current build from http://build.rockbox.org/.

Archived Build.

In addition to the release version and the current build, there is also an archive of daily builds available for download. These are built once a day from the latest source code in the SVN repository. You can download archived builds from http://www.rockbox.org/daily.shtml.

Note: Rockbox has a fonts package that is available at http://www.rockbox.org/daily.shtml or from the extras link in the menu on the Rockbox website. While the current builds and daily builds change frequently, the fonts package rarely changes. Thus, the fonts package is not included in these builds. (The release version, on the other hand, does not change, so fonts are included when you download a release.) When installing Rockbox for the first time, you should install the fonts package.

Because current builds and daily builds are development versions which change frequently, they may behave differently than described in this manual, or they may introduce new (and maybe annoying) bugs. If you do not want to get undefined behaviour from your player you should really stick to the current stable release, if there is one for your player. If you want to help the project development, you can try development builds and help by reporting bugs. Just be aware that these are development builds that are highly functional, but not perfect!

2.2.3.  Installing the firmware

Warning: The following steps require you to change the setting in Settings → USB Mode to MSC from within the original firmware. Never extract files to your player while it is in recovery mode.

1. Download your chosen version of Rockbox from the links in the previous section.

2. Connect your player to the computer via USB as described in the manual that came with your player.
3. Take the file that you downloaded above, and use the “Extract all” command of your unzip program to extract the files in the .zip file onto your player.

   Note that the entire contents of the .zip file should be extracted directly to the root of your player’s drive. Do not try to create a separate directory or folder on your player for the Rockbox files! The .zip file already contains the internal directory structure that Rockbox needs.

Note: If the contents of the .zip file are extracted correctly, you will have a folder called /.rockbox, which contains all the files needed by Rockbox, in the main folder of your player’s drive. If you receive a “-1” error when you start Rockbox, you have not extracted the contents of the .zip file to the proper location.

2.2.4.  Installing the boot loader

In order to make your e200 load and execute the Rockbox firmware you have just installed, you will need to install the Rockbox bootloader. Unless bugs are found in the bootloader code, or significant new feature are added, you will only have to perform this step once.

These steps use the sansapatcher tool. Source code is available in the Rockbox SVN repository (http://svn.rockbox.org/viewvc.cgi/trunk/rbutil/sansapatcher/).

Bootloader installation from Windows

1. Make sure you are logged into your computer as Administrator, or a user with Administrator privileges and connect your player.

2. Download sansapatcher.exe from http://download.rockbox.org/bootloader/sandisk-sansa/e200/win32/sansapatcher.exe and run it.
3. If all has gone well, you should see some information displayed about your e200 and a message asking you if you wish to install the Rockbox bootloader. Press i followed by ENTER, and sansapatcher will now install the bootloader. After a short time you should see the message “[INFO] Bootloader installed successfully.” Press ENTER again to exit sansapatcher.
4. Disconnect your player in the usual way. The bootloader is now installed.

Bootloader installation from Mac OS X

1. Attach your player to your Mac and wait for its icon to appear in Finder.

2. Open up Disk Utility (in Applications → Utilities) and click on the name of your player (e.g. Sansa e280) in the list on the left pane. Then click on the “unmount” icon at the top.

   Warning: Do not click on the “eject” icon.

3. Download and open sansa.dmg from http://download.rockbox.org/bootloader/sandisk-sansa/e200/macosx/sansapatcher.dmg and then double-click on the sansapatcher icon inside.
4. If all has gone well, you should see some information displayed about your player and a message asking you if you wish to install the Rockbox bootloader. Press i followed by ENTER, and sansapatcher will now install the bootloader. After a short time you should see the message “[INFO] Bootloader installed successfully.” Press ENTER again to exit sansapatcher and then quit the Terminal application.

5. Warning: If you received a “Resource busy” error from sansapatcher, then this means you didn’t complete step 2. Go back to Disk Utility, unmount your player and then run sansapatcher again.

6. Your player will now automatically reconnect itself to your Mac. Wait for it to connect, and then eject and unplug it in the normal way.

Bootloader installation from Linux

1. Download sansapatcher from http://download.rockbox.org/bootloader/sandisk-sansa/e200/linux32x86/sansapatcher (32-bit x86 binary) or http://download.rockbox.org/bootloader/sandisk-sansa/e200/linux64amd64/sansapatcher (64-bit amd64 binary). You can save this anywhere you wish, but the next steps will assume you’ve saved it in your home directory.

2. Attach your player to your computer.
3. Open up a terminal window and type the following commands:
     cd $HOME
     chmod +x sansapatcher
     ./sansapatcher

   Warning: You may need to be the root user in order for sansapatcher to have sufficient permission to perform raw disk access to your player.

4. If all has gone well, you should see some information displayed about your e200 and a message asking you if you wish to install the Rockbox bootloader. Press i followed by ENTER, and sansapatcher will now install the bootloader. After a short time you should see the message “[INFO] Bootloader installed successfully.” Press ENTER again to exit sansapatcher.
5. Disconnect your player in the usual way. The bootloader is now installed.

2.3.  Enabling Speech Support (optional)

If you wish to use speech support you will also need a voice file, english ones are available from http://www.rockbox.org/daily.shtml. Download the “voice” for your player, rename it to english.voice, copy it into the langs folder which is inside the /.rockbox folder on your player and reboot. Voice menus are turned on by default. See section 7.9 for details on voice settings.

2.4.  Running Rockbox

Remove your player from the computer’s USB port.Your e200 will automatically reboot and Rockbox should loadWhen you see the Rockbox splash screen, Rockbox is loaded and ready for use.

2.5.  Updating Rockbox

Updating Rockbox is easy. Download a Rockbox build. (The latest release of the Rockbox software will always be available from http://www.rockbox.org/download/). Unzip the build to the root directory of your player like you did in the installation step before. If your unzip program asks you whether to overwrite files, choose the “Yes to all” option. The new build will be installed over your current build.

2.6.  Uninstalling Rockbox

Note: The Rockbox bootloader can start the original firmware on your player. (See section 3.1.3 for more information.)

If you would like to go back to using the original Sansa software, connect the player to your computer, and follow the instructions to install the bootloader, but when prompted by sansapatcher, enter ’u’ for uninstall, instead of ’i’ for install. As in the installation, it may be necessary to first put your device into UMS mode.

If you wish to clean up your disk, you may also wish to delete the .rockbox folder and its contents. Turn the Sansa off. Turn the player back on and the original Sansa software will load.