Upgrade HDVR2 to latest OS and larger drive

[EdgarT]

Hello,

I modified my HDVR2 in 2004 using the sleeper scripts after a hinsdale disk upgrade to a larger drive because it seemed like an easy way to get started. Later, I wanted to move to the killhdinitrd method, but my wife said she would kill me if I touched HER Tivo with all of the shows she has been packratting over the last year or so...

Well Southern California Edison fixed the problem for me when their power failure contributed to my drive failing. Now I just have to get the Tivo back working ASAP! :eek:

I purchased a new drive and downloaded the ptv disk with the kernels to hopefully speed up the process.

I have the original disk that came with my tivo 40GB and I remember the first thing I did was get it upgraded to the latest DirectTV version before I started.

My question is: Should I start with what is on this drive -or- should I install it in the HDVR2 again and let it upgrade to the latest software version before I start? I know this disk does not have the LBA48 kernel on it and I would like to make sure my finished Tivo can access >137GB when I am all finished.

Doug

[cheer]

Go ahead and let the original drive upgrade to the latest (6.2) -- it's easy to hack, and after being superpatched has all the features of 4.x. And it's faster, too. :)

[EdgarT]

Cheer, Thanks for the quick reply.

Is there any unseen benefit to upgrading the original 40GB drive instead of copying / expanding the old image on the new drive and them letting it upgrade to the latest version? I just picked up a 300GB drive for $100. I am currently at work so I do not have access to my dish to start the upgrade process. If there are no gotcha's for me to run into later, I could use my systems here to copy and expand now and save some time later.

I am also a little fuzzy on how and when to upgrade the kernel to a LBA48 version. I know my original system kernel was limited to 137GB.

If I upgrade to 6.2 on the orignal disk, will the LBA48 kernel be part of this upgrade? I have the ptv disk with series 2 kernels available and I assumed that at some point I would have to replace the kernel on my disk. I noticed that the ptv disk has versions 3.1.1c, 3.1.5, and 4.0.1a on the disk. I was afraid that if I went all the way to 6.2, I would not have the correct kernel version to complete the upgrade.

Doug

[cheer]

You could just as easily copy your original drive, expand it to the new drive, and then let it upgrade. But the LBA48 kernel will indeed be a problem; the original kernel on your unhacked drive won't be LBA48-aware. So that's why I suggested letting the original drive upgrade first for simplicity's sake.

6.2 includes an LBA48-aware kernel. When you hack it, you'll replace it with the 3.1.5 kernel off the PTV $5 disc. The 3.1.5 kernel is a linux-version 2.4.20 kernel, and 6.2 is actually based on linux 2.4.20, so you're golden there.

[EdgarT]

Your suggestion makes total sense. I will put the old drive back in, plug it into the dish and force a call home (first one in two years...), and have a few beers while I wait. I guess this will take a LONG time if it all has to come down via the modem.

Thanks for the help!

Doug

[EdgarT]

Geez,

I have the 300GB drive working and now I am trying to copy the 3.1.5 kernel to the /var directory on the new drive.

BTW: I used the -f 9999 command line option during backup and I later saw a thread that said to use -f 19999. It seems ok, as far as I could tell.


I hate to ask this question, but I have spent 4-5 hours serching the forums looking for how to mount the tivo drive so I can get to the /var directory. The boot drive is hda7 according to bootpage, but how do I know which partition has the /var directory? On the linux systems I work on we assign partitions to specific directories, but how do I know how to mount the drive?

The only reference I found on this was a quesition followed by a flame fest (with no answer) in the archive area.

Doug

[cheer]

/var is always partition 9.

[PlainBill]

A quick way to determine this with the drive in a pc is pdisk -l /dev/hdc (assuming the TiVo drive is secondary master and you've booted from a Linux tools cd such as the PTVupgrade LBA-48 cd).

PlainBill

[EdgarT]

Thanks for the tip! The pdisk command is a real help. What the heck is partition 1 which pdisk says is type: "Apple_partition_map" and name "Apple" of length 63.

Also, I have not played with a 6.2 system yet? As far as I could tell when I tested the expanded disk, things were faster, but not much different than 3.1.1. I was expecting the folders and stuff. Are these only available with the HMO superpatch? I was under the impressions that there was a not of new features on the new version.

Doug

[drez]

Folders are a standard feature in 6.2. Go to your NPL, press 2 to turn groups on/off.

The speed and folders are the major features of 6.2. The speed alone is worth the upgrade.

[EdgarT]

Do I need to mess with the bootpage parameters after I copied the 3.1.5 kernel to the hda6 partition (1 less then current boot partition).
I have seen instructions for people who had montied systems, but nothing so far on a straight upgrade from a virgin 6.2 HDVR2.

I pulled this from one of the posts (adjusted for my current boot partition of 7):

bootpage -P "root=/dev/hda7 dsscon=true console=2,115200 upgradesoftware=false" /dev/hda

I have no idea what the dsscon and console parameters mean...

Doug

[EdgarT]

Well, I must have F****d up I installed the drive back in the tivo and booted with the serial cable attached and absolutely no output!

I have done the following to the expanded disk

Copied the 3.1.5 kernel from the ptvupgrade disk to the /var directory gunzipped it and copied it to /dev/hda6 (one less the bootpage -p reports).

I also created a couple of directories in /var with the mfs_utils and tivotools.

Obviously I messed something.

What have I missed?

Doug

[PlainBill]

bootpage -P "root=/dev/hda7 dsscon=true console=2,115200 upgradesoftware=false" /dev/hda

This is the syntax for the mips version of bootpage. For the i386 version, use bootpage -P "root=/dev/hda7 dsscon=true console=2,115200 upgradesoftware=false" -C /dev/hda

The list of possible problems is almost endless - ide cable not connected properly (they love to work loose from the motherboard), jumper changed then not reset, forgetting to hook up power, typo in the bootpage command, forgetting to extract the kernel, serial cable bad or not plugged in all the way, etc.

PlainBill

[ScanMan]

When you say:

copied it to /dev/hda6
You mean used dd...like:

dd if=/path/to/vmlinux.px of=/dev/hdc6

Assuming by /dev/hdc6 tivo drive is secondary master on your pc.

[EdgarT]

PlainBill, ScanMan,

Thanks for the replies. I saw that bootpage command is some of the posts but could not tell if it was only for montie'd systems.

I can see now that the console-2,115200 probably has something to do with the serial output with 115200 being the speed and 2 signifying the serial connector on the back???

It sure would be nice if there were standard man pages for all of these commands...

Yes, I used dd to copy the kernel to /dev/hda6.

Doug