S2SA Upgrades

[reiters]

OK, I have been searching forums everywhere for 3 days for my answers. There is so much partial answers and outdated info that i can't get a clear picture in my mnd of what to do. Please understand that I tried to do my part by searching the forums first.

Here's the scoop:
I have a 240080 S2SA that i recently used instantcake and the LBA48 w/enhancements to bake a 200G drive. I installed it in the Tivo and all went well. It connected and upgraded itself to 7.1b. The method for baking I used was the PTVBake-special script that then loaded the instantbake kernal.

What I don't know at this point is
1. Did instantbake load a modded kernal?
2. Did the Tivo upgrade replace the kernal? (still sees 222 hours)

The thing I really want to do is get telnet working and start working on other mods. I can add rc.sysinit.author to the /etc/rc.d on partition 7 and it stays after reboot, but if I add it to partition 4, it get blown away after reboot. That tell me that the kernal is not modded? If so, then why does it still see 222 hours(lba48) unless 7.1 natively supports lba48.

What steps do I need to take at this point to get telnet working and hopefully ftp. I think I can get all the rest from that point.

I am sure this question will irritate many, so flame away if you must.

[PlainBill]

Flames? We don't need no stinking flames!! We have this. (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?t=40715)

PlainBill

[reiters]

First off: PlainBill, you are awsome. I have seen you help many people on here. Thank you or that and thank you for taking up your own personal time to help me.


If I start over from scratch, what order and what things should I do. I can probably figure out how to do each step if I know what things need to be done.

I can instantcake to take it back to a 4.01 and start from there. Should I make it stay with 4 or let it upgrade to 7

Should I use monte or killhd...

I would be happy to follow a tutorial, but not sure which ones are up to date and which ones are more than a lba48 so I can telnet in. Sorry for all my confusion

[PlainBill]

Take this with some caution; I have only DirecTiVos, but I imagine the process would be similar. Once the holiday is over some of the SA users will be jumping in.

If you are already at 7.1b, there is no reason to try backing up to 4.0.1b. I believe the useful life of 4.x on SA units is very limited.

A quick sequence for hacking: Read the 7.1 thread I referenced above; search for other 7.1 threads, read them. Read about the chain of trust, (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showpost.php?p=197479&postcount=2) killhdinitrd (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?t=36693) and NutKase's description of the TiVo boot process in the first post of this thread. (http://dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37570) Also read Ironman's thread on hacking the HR10-250, paying more attention on why each step is done, not on the specific details.

The process is fairly simple: Pull the drive, use bootpage to determine the active partition set, and copy (dd) a killhdinitrd 3.1.5 kernel to the active boot (kernel) partition. Mount the active root partition, create a dummy iptables according to alldeadhomiez's steps, install AlphaWolf's Series 2 binaries, (http://dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37602) and create an /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit.author file (DON'T set the networking parameters in it). Plug the drive back in to the TiVo, hook up an ethernet adapter, and set the ip address. At this point you should have a working system with telnet and ftp access. Nutkase's Superpatch 67 (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43325) will enable HMO / MRV, disable encryption, etc.

At this point, it's time to start reading the extraction forum.

PlainBill

[reiters]

I got it running. Telnet is working. Tivotools are loaded (mostly). Almost there.

One problem I am having now is that .author file is read only and won't let me override it to make a change. Do I have to take out the drive every time I want to edit the .author file? I had to move the location of my tivotools files. so I need to change the export PATH line in the author, but it won't let me. For the time being, I can do it manually, but would love to make it permanent.

Thank you for all your help. Your one little paragraph was all I needed to put it al together. So many of the forum posts describe what is happening, or how to do a particular part, but don't give an top level view of how to put all the info together. After reading your last post, I was able to complete it in one hour after spending 30 hours trying to gleen it from the forums.

[Jamie]

One problem I am having now is that .author file is read only and won't let me override it to make a change. Do I have to take out the drive every time I want to edit the .author file? I had to move the location of my tivotools files. so I need to change the export PATH line in the author, but it won't let me. For the time being, I can do it manually, but would love to make it permanent.See this (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?t=39117) thread.

[PlainBill]

I got it running. Telnet is working. Tivotools are loaded (mostly). Almost there.
<SNIP>
Thank you for all your help. Your one little paragraph was all I needed to put it al together. So many of the forum posts describe what is happening, or how to do a particular part, but don't give an top level view of how to put all the info together. After reading your last post, I was able to complete it in one hour after spending 30 hours trying to gleen it from the forums.
I believe that says more about YOUR abilities than it does about the paragraph I wrote. Congratulations.

PlainBill

[reiters]

I would expect leaving "/" as rw would be a bad idea, but how bad? I mean, if I remounted "/" as rw as the last line of .author, what are the chances of any corruption and how long would it take to happen.

The reason I ask is that if there is a 1% chance of corruption over the next year, then the chance of loosing my recordings is worth it to me. It may not be worth it to others, but nothing I record is "that" critical to me. If it does corrupt, I could throw in instantcake and rebuild it...probably doing a better job next time.

I would take the rw out of .author after I'm done with figuring out all the hacks I want to do and get them in place. Probably over the next month.

[Jamie]

I would expect leaving "/" as rw would be a bad idea, but how bad? I mean, if I remounted "/" as rw as the last line of .author, what are the chances of any corruption and how long would it take to happen.

The reason I ask is that if there is a 1% chance of corruption over the next year, then the chance of loosing my recordings is worth it to me. It may not be worth it to others, but nothing I record is "that" critical to me. If it does corrupt, I could throw in instantcake and rebuild it...probably doing a better job next time.

I would take the rw out of .author after I'm done with figuring out all the hacks I want to do and get them in place. Probably over the next month.Many people run with their root mounted rw all the time. The main issue they run into is that any open files that are deleted get left as orphans after an unclean reboot, consuming disk space but not accessible from the file system. An e2fsck on / will fix that. The tivo startup scripts assume that / is always mounted ro, so they never do an e2fsck on it, as far as I know.

I prefer to keep root ro and only switch to rw when I'm going to modify something. Still, I think the risk of "lose all recordings" corruption is well below your 1% threshold.

[PlainBill]

A number of people are running root as r/w, and are pretty adamant that they haven't had a problem. Rather than adding the line to rc.sysinit.author, consider changing /etc/fstab (and possibly rc.sysinit).

PlainBill

[reiters]

You guys are awsome. I think I can figure out all the rest on my own, with the help of the forums. Again, thanks to everyone that helped.

I only wish there were some way I could help.

[ljvk61]

A number of people are running root as r/w, and are pretty adamant that they haven't had a problem. Rather than adding the line to rc.sysinit.author, consider changing /etc/fstab (and possibly rc.sysinit).

PlainBill

IMHO, while running root as r/w is possible with no problems, it is potentially hazardous. Prevention is the best medicine. I use Alphawolf's remount
utility included in the AIO package

[reiters]

one of my goals is to be able to ftp new settings files and reboot from remote control without telnet. I don't want to telnet every time i want to upload files. If I blow it, i will rebuild it. I will also lock it back down after done playing a few weeks or months from now.

Thanks