my tivo unhacked itself...

[ReidWings]

Last year, I fully hacked my series 2 tivo and was using it to stream, extract, etc. However, I hadn't used it in that regard in awhile and when I went to try and extract something today, I couldn't telnet to it anymore! Then I noticed that my 30 second skip patch no longer stays applied when I restart it! What the heck happened? Did I miss something to stop the tivo from updating? I originally patched it when I had software version 7.1 but now I look and it says 7.2. Do I need to redo everything? (ie pull the tivo and redo it all?) Or what part(s) do I need to redo to get it hacked again? Thanks for the help.

[Falcon4]

Well, in regards to the partition 4 and partition 7 thing, it looks like TiVo decided it would be nice to play switcharoo on you. You're probably now looking at partition 7 instead of the one you did all your hacks on - 4! That seems totally plausible, since TiVo never really expects anyone to hack away at it, and as such, it won't copy your hacks from one partition to the other before upgrading and switching.

Since upgrades are done automatically during a daily call, it probably did it while you weren't looking, hence the "unhacked itself".

The good thing is, that probably only affected your /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit, not your /var/hack (which is partition 9). But you may have to reapply whatever pre-hacks a Series 2 needs, in order to get everything working again. The good thing is, you can probably run a "mkdir /var/hda4" "mnt /dev/hda4 /mnt/hda4" to get access to your old files for reference.

I hope what I'm saying applies to a Series 2 as well, at least, enough to understand. I'm at OS 3.0 and my SVR-2000 thinks it's the latest and greatest. I'm, like, three years behind! :rolleyes:

[cheer]

The problem is you likely did not have upgradesoftware=false set on your system.

When the system upgraded to 7.2, it replaced your (presumably) killhdinitrd'd kernel with a non-modified one. Even if you make changes to it, it will "undo" the changes. So, yes, essentially you'll need to re-hack it from the ground up by applying a new killhdinitrd'd kernel and re-installing your hacks.

[PlainBill]

And once again I will climb atop the soapbox and proclaim: Do NOT put your hacks in /var!!! The TiVo will wipe /var at a whim!

PlainBill

[cheer]

And once again I will climb atop the soapbox and proclaim: Do NOT put your hacks in /var!!! The TiVo will wipe /var at a whim!
Ah yes, excellent point; I usually forget to mention this. The first Tivo I hacked I had everything in /var/hacks...until, of course, it wiped itself and I had to rehack. :(

I know some folks use a spare partition or something for hacks. I'm not that sophisticated; I just create a /hacks directory off of root and put everything there. Note that root mounts RO, so you may have to create symlinks to log files or whatever in /var. It works well for me, but then I'm also a believer in PlainBill's "minimalist" approach: hack just enough. I put on mfs_ftp, twp, the AIW toolset, and not much else.

[ReidWings]

Well,
I guess it's ok that it wiped everything. I kind of wanted a chance to do everything from the ground up again anways...it's fun. :P

This time around I'll be more careful of course.

Thanks for the help!