MagicJack is a sloppy drive space pig!

MagicMo · Post by **MagicMo** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 10:59 am

Lucky me, I got upgraded, or rather an attempt was made at an upgrade.

This resulted in my thin client running out of cache space and drive space. So I figured I'd let it do its upgrade by plugging the MJ into a desktop with a lot more resources. Things went smoothly and I thought all was well. Moving the MJ back to the thin client, I found it still attempting to do the same upgrade.

Looking at things a bit more I find that my understanding of this device was not as I thought. I expected the current software to reside within the flash memory of the MJ device. Apparently this is not so. It seems that the MJ only uses its flash to store some user settings, and that all the needed files are downloaded from MJ each time it is plugged into a new machine. This could be a problem for some people on slow connections.

So since it seems that in order to now run or "upgrade" my MJ on the thin client, I needed more space than I had free. So I reflashed my thin client and cleared out some unneeded items resulting in about 80MB of free space on drive C:. The reinstallation of MJ went smoothly and I now have almost 40MB of free space left.

However, looking at all the files, etc that MJ dumped into the mjusbsp directory, there appear to be a number of duplicates. What can I safely delete to free up additional space for future unplanned upgrades? Are all of these subdirectories needed? The following is a copy of my mjusbsp directory:

Volume in drive C is XPe
Volume Serial Number is 443C-627A

Directory of C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\APPLIC~1\MJUSBSP

08/29/2008 07:14 PM <DIR> .
08/29/2008 07:14 PM <DIR> ..
08/29/2008 07:13 PM <DIR> ar00000
08/29/2008 07:14 PM <DIR> in00000
08/29/2008 07:14 PM <DIR> st00000
08/29/2008 06:00 PM <DIR> ug00000
08/29/2008 06:02 PM <DIR> Upgrade
06/10/2008 07:12 AM 471 _911offline.html
06/10/2008 07:12 AM 480 _shuttingdown.html
07/22/2008 12:45 PM 1,495,040 big.skn
07/22/2008 12:45 PM 50,520 cdloader2.exe
06/10/2008 07:10 AM 51,595 Loader.gif
07/22/2008 12:48 PM 77,144 magicJack.dll
07/22/2008 12:45 PM 11,715,928 magicJack.exe
07/22/2008 12:49 PM 396,768 magicJackLoader.exe
07/22/2008 12:45 PM 464,232 magicJackSplash.exe
06/10/2008 07:12 AM 454 mainBannerOffline.html
07/22/2008 12:49 PM 480,608 octvqe1_apiw.dll
07/22/2008 12:48 PM 398,696 SJHandsetTigerJet.dll
07/22/2008 12:45 PM 1,204,224 small.skn
07/22/2008 12:48 PM 324,952 TjIpSys.dll
07/22/2008 12:49 PM 214,360 TjVista.dll
06/10/2008 07:10 AM 32,753 WarningMJCouldNotStart.gif
06/10/2008 07:10 AM 32,731 WarningNoDeviceFound.gif
06/10/2008 07:12 AM 546 wroffline.html
18 File(s) 16,941,502 bytes

Directory of C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\APPLIC~1\MJUSBSP\ar00000

08/29/2008 07:13 PM <DIR> .
08/29/2008 07:13 PM <DIR> ..
07/22/2008 12:47 PM 827,056 install.exe
02/29/2008 08:44 AM 58,816 magicJack.dll
02/29/2008 08:42 AM 386,496 magicJackSplash.exe
02/29/2008 08:44 AM 83,288 mjsetup.exe
03/08/2007 05:33 AM 51,878 splash.gif
11/30/2007 11:19 AM 32,753 WarningMJCouldNotStart.gif
6 File(s) 1,440,287 bytes

Directory of C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\APPLIC~1\MJUSBSP\in00000

08/29/2008 07:14 PM <DIR> .
08/29/2008 07:14 PM <DIR> ..
07/22/2008 12:47 PM 77,144 magicJack.dll
07/22/2008 12:45 PM 464,232 magicJackSplash.exe
07/22/2008 12:47 PM 83,288 mjsetup.exe
07/22/2008 12:49 PM 7,370,912 setup.exe
06/10/2008 07:10 AM 51,595 splash.gif
06/10/2008 07:10 AM 32,753 WarningMJCouldNotStart.gif
6 File(s) 8,079,924 bytes

Directory of C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\APPLIC~1\MJUSBSP\st00000

08/29/2008 07:14 PM <DIR> .
08/29/2008 07:14 PM <DIR> ..
07/22/2008 12:48 PM 77,144 magicJack.dll
07/22/2008 12:45 PM 464,232 magicJackSplash.exe
07/22/2008 12:48 PM 83,288 mjsetup.exe
06/10/2008 07:10 AM 51,595 splash.gif
06/10/2008 07:10 AM 32,753 WarningMJCouldNotStart.gif
5 File(s) 709,012 bytes

Directory of C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\APPLIC~1\MJUSBSP\ug00000

08/29/2008 06:00 PM <DIR> .
08/29/2008 06:00 PM <DIR> ..
07/22/2008 12:47 PM 827,056 install.exe
07/22/2008 12:49 PM 77,144 magicJack.dll
07/22/2008 12:45 PM 464,232 magicJackSplash.exe
07/22/2008 12:49 PM 7,370,912 setup.exe
06/10/2008 07:10 AM 27,304 splash.gif
06/10/2008 07:10 AM 32,753 WarningMJCouldNotStart.gif
6 File(s) 8,799,401 bytes

Directory of C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\APPLIC~1\MJUSBSP\Upgrade

08/29/2008 06:02 PM <DIR> .
08/29/2008 06:02 PM <DIR> ..
07/22/2008 12:47 PM 827,056 install1.exe
08/29/2008 06:00 PM 63 install1.ini
07/22/2008 12:49 PM 7,370,912 setup1.exe
08/29/2008 06:02 PM 64 setup1.ini
4 File(s) 8,198,095 bytes

Total Files Listed:
45 File(s) 44,168,221 bytes
17 Dir(s) 41,774,080 bytes free

As you can see, there are what appear to be a number of duplicate files in several directories. I'd like to clean up after this sloppy pig, since it seems unable to cleanup after itself! 44MB is a significant amount of space for MJ considering that XPe with all its additional rapport/citrix stuff is less than 170MB. Suggestions?

Alternatively, is there a way to force MJ to install to my Z: drive? This is a ram drive with plenty of free space.

Thanks!
MagicMo

PTravel · Post by **PTravel** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 1:27 pm

First of all, when the MJ upgrades, it's upgrading the software on the computer, not in the MJ.

Plug a USB drive into your thin client. See what drive letter is assigned to it. Go into Control Panel - System - Advanced - Environmental Variables. Edit the paths for the TEMP and TMP variables to point to the USB drive. Close everything up. Commit and reboot.

Let your MJ upgrade. Most likely, your thin client ran out of temp space to unpack the upgrade. Setting temp to the USB drive will give it enough room to upgrade.

When the upgrade is complete, re-edit the TMP and TEMP variables to point back Z:, which is the RAM drive. Commit and reboot. Remove the USB drive.

Everything should be working now.

The MJ can't be installed to the Z: drive. Because it's a RAM drive, the software would lost every time you reboot, regardless of whether you commit or not.

MagicMo · Post by **MagicMo** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 4:06 pm

PTravel wrote:First of all, when the MJ upgrades, it's upgrading the software on the computer, not in the MJ.

Plug a USB drive into your thin client. See what drive letter is assigned to it. Go into Control Panel - System - Advanced - Environmental Variables. Edit the paths for the TEMP and TMP variables to point to the USB drive. Close everything up. Commit and reboot.

Let your MJ upgrade. Most likely, your thin client ran out of temp space to unpack the upgrade. Setting temp to the USB drive will give it enough room to upgrade.

When the upgrade is complete, re-edit the TMP and TEMP variables to point back Z:, which is the RAM drive. Commit and reboot. Remove the USB drive.

Everything should be working now.

The MJ can't be installed to the Z: drive. Because it's a RAM drive, the software would lost every time you reboot, regardless of whether you commit or not.

Hi PTravel,

Thanks for the response.

Yeah, I figured out that it was doing the upgrade to the computer rather than the device. I still think that they need to store the upgrade in the device, rather than downloading it to every machine it may be plugged into.

My temp & tmp variables are already pointing to the Z: drive. At the time of the upgrade, the Z: drive had over 100MB free, so this was not the problem. It was that the C: drive did not have sufficient space, only 10MB free at the time.

After reflashing my thin client I had 80MB free. This also got rid of some of the applications that were installed on it, in its previous life as a corporate machine. This additional space allowed me to install the latest version of MJ.

Since I run this machine 24/7 on a UPS, installing to the ram drive is not an issue. If it was ever powered down or rebooted, it would just reinstall itself. Do you know how MJ determines which drive to install to, or is it only capable of installing to drive C: ?

Do you know which of the above directories or files can be deleted to save space on my C: drive? I'm guessing all the subdirectories can be deleted, but was hoping for some input before I just dumped them! For MJ to just leave all this stuff behind is a sign of sloppy programming.

Thanks,
MagicMo

PTravel · Post by **PTravel** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 10:57 pm

MagicMo wrote: Do you know how MJ determines which drive to install to, or is it only capable of installing to drive C: ?

I suspect it reads the programfiles variable, which usually points to c:\program files. I can't guarantee that, though. It's possible it's hard-coded.

Do you know which of the above directories or files can be deleted to save space on my C: drive? I'm guessing all the subdirectories can be deleted, but was hoping for some input before I just dumped them! For MJ to just leave all this stuff behind is a sign of sloppy programming.

I don't, but there's lots that can be removed from the thin client.