"TiVo linux"

[AgentJay]

I am thinking of hacking a tivo I bought as a present but I am a virgin to linux and need some direction. Does anyone know the type of linux that tivo uses? The filesystem that it uses ( I know that linux has a few different ones available)? Does anyone have a way to start learning this "tivo linux" that way I can feel confident in hacking the tivo and not destroying it before my mother gets it as a present?

I know that there are tivo hacking sites out there. I heard dealdatabase is the place to go. However, after looking through some of the posts it seems to me that they assume you know/use/understand linux before you try to hack the tivo. So I am looking to get that part (know/understand/use linux) before I even open up the box. I want to learn and understand what I am doing not just blindly attempt to follow a guide of sorts.



Thanks,
+J

[malfunct]

I am thinking of hacking a tivo I bought as a present but I am a virgin to linux and need some direction. Does anyone know the type of linux that tivo uses? The filesystem that it uses ( I know that linux has a few different ones available)? Does anyone have a way to start learning this "tivo linux" that way I can feel confident in hacking the tivo and not destroying it before my mother gets it as a present?

I know that there are tivo hacking sites out there. I heard dealdatabase is the place to go. However, after looking through some of the posts it seems to me that they assume you know/use/understand linux before you try to hack the tivo. So I am looking to get that part (know/understand/use linux) before I even open up the box. I want to learn and understand what I am doing not just blindly attempt to follow a guide of sorts.


They use thier own custom distro. The filesystem is ext2 for the data partitions. Videos and a lot of configuration info is thier own custom filesystem and takes special software to deal with.

As far as being comfortable with linux grab any distro you like and learn the basic command line stuff including listing files, copying files, mounting partitions and disks, using dd to copy partitions, ect. 99.9% of that will apply to the tivo linux.

At the same time start reading threads here. They will start to make sense. Basically what I'm saying is that there is nothing terribly special about "tivo linux" its the software that tivo runs on top of that which this site explains how to deal with.