Here is another long and tedious but possibly amusing story. The questions are at the end if you want to skip.
Arrrrgh. Friend rang up with a problem. He has some sort of video recorder that records to an external 1TB drive. Because of problems he had recording films, I helped him quite a time back to format the drive in EXT4 using a Ubuntu 8.04 live CD. Since then via Aldi he has changed his PC and monitor. The video recorder works excellently in his lounge and he is able to enjoy all his very long films there.
However, his wife has a tendency to invite ladies round for poetry reading sessions, so he retreats to the music room (dining room) where there is another TV. So, to occupy himself, he has purchased another video player with usb input that had excellent reviews ("will play everything we threw at it") on the web, plugged it up and brought his drive in, fired up and got absolutely nothing. It works fine on other sources.
He emailed both manufacturers. The one that records replied that the files were in TS format on whatever file system on the drive. The one that plays said he had never heard of EXT4, but had looked it up on the internet and it was a Linux file system. It is not on the list of supported formats.
At this stage, I couldn't remember why we had gone to EXT4, so I suggested trying to copy across to another usb hard drive formatted with NTFS that he has. He put in the Ubuntu 8 CD. This loaded and displayed all the Linux menu commands and icons off the screen of his monitor. Foolishly, I suggested a later Ubuntu download. By this time an afternoon had passed, so we retired for the night.
Overnight I tried the latest Ubuntu where I couldn't initially find any menus. Thrashed about for ages, then discovered they only appeared when you hover over certain screen areas. Tried copying a text file between drives. All OK, but thought he would never manage the user interface. I also remembered the reason for the EXT4 - because the Windows file systems wouldn't take the huge files involved - so what we were trying to do might never work anyway.
Day 2 resumed the phone calls. I now suggested downloading Slax Linux, as I had a copy here and it had a clearer interface. He downloaded the iso, then couldn't find his burning software. I LogMeIn'ed and he had the shortcut, but no Nero to be found. Downloaded the current free Nero from the internet. This has a massively dumbed down interface and no iso burning feature visible. He got out one of his 7 books on Windows 7, looked up how to burn iso files, but the machine didn't have the software described. Then he found some command which asked if he wanted to install the burning software supplied with the machine - something from NCH installed and finally we burnt a Slax CD.
He ran this and the menus were off the screen. He then remembered that he had received a remote control with the monitor, so after a search, he found it, found a menu option that said auto and at last he had a Linux screen that made sense. He plugged in the usb drives, hit copy on the source, then went to the destination screen. No Paste. Just a "PasteURL" option. This scared him and it was late, so we again gave up, with him deciding to give up the idea and go for walks instead of watching films.
I've subsequently tried the Paste URL option and it appears to paste the file. What strange labelling.
Then my son called to see me. He said that he uses Apple software (even though he is totally PC) that copies and splits the files to work on iTunes on Windows file systems. He didn't recommend this, though, as it ties him to Apple file formats.
So, what would anyone suggest? I'm thinking that he needs to find some Linux software that will take the huge EXT4 based TS files and split them with appropriate headers, then spew them out onto his NTFS usb drive. If such software exists, perhaps I could install it onto a Linux Live usb stick and post it to him.