Stupid question: how to decompress vmlinux.px?

[jmpratt]

I gunzipped the vmlinux.px.gz file from PTVupgrade, but now the vmlinux.px file is only 1.9Mb. Shouldn't it be close to 120Mb? I thought I remember somewhere that is was compressed twice, but I've tried adding another gz extension and running gunzip again but it says it's not a gzip file. I also tried tar with no luck.

Any ideas?

[cheer]

Er no, it shouldn't be anywhere near 120Mb, and it's only zipped once. You already unzipped it just fine.

[jmpratt]

I'm trying to mount (via loopback) the vmlinux.px file so I can make changes to it before I dd it to the Tivo hard drive. When I try, I get an error about it being an unknown file system type. I've tried mounting it as an ext2 becuase that's what it is on the Tivo hard drive.

Obviously, I'm missing something or don't understand what exatcly the vmlinux.px file is. I thought it was file contianing all the infomation in the root drive. How wrong am I?

[Jamie]

Obviously, I'm missing something or don't understand what exatcly the vmlinux.px file is. I thought it was file contianing all the infomation in the root drive. How wrong am I?vmlinux.px is a tivo kernel and initrd packaged together in a "px" format that the PROM understands. It doesn't contain a file system, nor any files from the root file system. It's a "signed" package and any changes you make to it will likely cause it to be rejected by the PROM, unless you are devious, as killhdinitrd is.

[jmpratt]

So when I dd (or tpip) vmlinux.px to the root partition (4 in my case), all other info on that partition is wiped out. When the machine boots, the PROM reads the vmlinux.px file and recreates the file system on that partition. Is that correct?

[Jamie]

So when I dd (or tpip) vmlinux.px to the root partition (4 in my case), all other info on that partition is wiped out. When the machine boots, the PROM reads the vmlinux.px file and recreates the file system on that partition. Is that correct?Nope.

The vmlinux.px file should never be dd'd to your root partition. You'll lose your root partition if you do that. You should instead dd it to the kernel partition. One before the root. So if your root partition is /dev/hda4, your kernel partition is /dev/hda3.

I know there's a tivo hacking 101 document floating around here somewhere. Doesn't it cover partition layouts? Seems like it should, if it doesn't.

[jmpratt]

Well, that's what I did wrong. I dd vmlinux.px to the wrong partition. Thanks for the help!

[eastwind]

FYI, the kernel paritions are known on the TiVo's (see pdisk -l) as Boot partitions. They are the same thing.

ew