Cannot write to the drive

[acharuss]

I've searched every forum I can find so this is my last resort. I've been following Hinsdale's guide and have a backup of my DirecTivo drive. However when I then start copying the new configuration data nothing is ever saved. I have verified the drive is mounted in rw mode, all looks well at first until I unmount the drive (not doing anything out of the ordinary for this). At this point the information seems to either not get saved or is deleted, because when I reboot or simply remount none of the files I thought I put on it are there anymore. Can anyone tell me what key step I am missing please. Thanks

[cheer]

What do you mean by "the files I put there?" Are you trying to add hacks? If so, did you break the chain of trust using killhdinitrd or some similar method?

[acharuss]

I dd'ed a killhdinitrd'ed kernal to hdx3, the current primary kernal location. Unless this did not work for some reason, though all messages indicate success.

[Narf54321]

If you're following Hinsdale's guide, I'm not sure what you mean by "new configuration data".

Anyway, are you able to get serial console output? telnet into the tivo?

[PlainBill]

Perhaps you should give us more details - especially the specific commands you are using. From your description I can only suspect that you are writing to the mount point rather than to the actual partition.

PlainBill

[acharuss]

My mistake for being vague. I was able to create a backup image with Hinsdale's guide. That worked fine. Next I created the hack file rc.sysinit.author to enable usb, a linksys usb200M ethernet adapter, and telnet. I tried using killhdinitrd to disable the protections but was told the current kernel was incompatable, kernel version 3.1.5f. I then purchased the PBTV cd with an already killhdinitrd'd kernal. Used the dd command to place an image of this kernel in hdx3, command said this was successful. Here is where the problem comes up, mounted hdx4 to place the rc.sysinit.author file into place and it appears to copy successfully. However if the partition is unmounted and remounted or the computer is rebooted the changes seem to be gone.

I am aware there is a unlock utility, but from all that I have read it is meant to make the partitions mountable which can already be done.

I hope this clearifies the situation. Thanks to everyone for their input so far.

[cheer]

Are you certain that /dev/hdx3 is your boot and /dev/hdx4 is your root? The bootpage -p /dev/hdx command will tell you which partition is your root, and your boot is one less.

Assuming you properly dd'd the killhdinitrd'd kernel over, this ought to work. Post your exact sequence and the exact commands you typed.

[Narf54321]

It sounds like it might be a couple of things. If your hard drive is caching the data, and you unmount the changed get lost from cache. You can try flushing the drive buffer before resetting the computer and see if the changes now stick.

Alternatively, the partition may be locked as read-only and so the changes are not actually being written from the drive's buffer RAM onto the disk. What does the mount command show?

[acharuss]

Between work and the holidays, I'll have to pick this up again next week. Happy holidays everyone!