Repurposing a Tivo.

[ZivZulander]

Repurposing an old unused tivo would be a lot easier if we had the source for the bootloader. There are a lot of opensource bootloaders that are GPLed.

Has anyone tried to identify if TiVo used any of them? I would think that if they used linux for the OS, there's a good possibility that they may have used a GPLed, bootloader. If they did then they would have likely modified the source, and should have to provide that source.

The appliance should be usable for a number of other applications other than video, and frankly I wouldn't even want to do anything with video. I am proposing on this day, March 7, 2007, that tivo boxes would make an inexpensive NAS, albeit, not the fastest; they would be fairly quiet, and low power. Telnet or a web interface would be a good enough admin interface and SMB & CIFS would be a good choice for file access.

Some of the NAS applications out there are based on BSD though, so an opensource for the bootloader would be desirable.

[Jamie]

Repurposing an old unused tivo would be a lot easier if we had the source for the bootloader. There are a lot of opensource bootloaders that are GPLed.

Has anyone tried to identify if TiVo used any of them? I would think that if they used linux for the OS, there's a good possibility that they may have used a GPLed, bootloader. If they did then they would have likely modified the source, and should have to provide that source.

The appliance should be usable for a number of other applications other than video, and frankly I wouldn't even want to do anything with video. I am proposing on this day, March 7, 2007, that tivo boxes would make an inexpensive NAS, albeit, not the fastest; they would be fairly quiet, and low power. Telnet or a web interface would be a good enough admin interface and SMB & CIFS would be a good choice for file access.

Some of the NAS applications out there are based on BSD though, so an opensource for the bootloader would be desirable.The boot loader is in the PROM and is not based on any open source code, AFAIK. The boot loader on a series2 has extra security checks so that it will only boot kernels signed by tivo. See Tivoization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization). That has to be circumvented if you want to run your own code on the box.

The tivo is pretty underpowered for a NAS box. You could do a lot better.

[ZivZulander]

The fact remains though that if they modified GPLed code, whether in PROM or not, they should have to provide that source. I realize that identification of of such a (necessarily) small program might be next to impossible, but it may still be possible. I also realize that the speed may be less than desirable, but if someone has one of these in a closet or their garage, it would be le$$ than some of the commercial appliances out there. For file storage how fast would it really need to be? I for one, don't need the fastest appliance, but it would be nice to have something I could use to transfer files between Windows or Linux, without having to reformat my HD, or burn to CD. Others might find a small webserver fun. Whatever has a high enough density than what your vessel would displace more than the vessel's weight.

[Jamie]

The fact remains though that if they modified GPLed code, whether in PROM or not, they should have to provide that source. I realize that identification of of such a (necessarily) small program might be next to impossible, but it may still be possible. I also realize that the speed may be less than desirable, but if someone has one of these in a closet or their garage, it would be le$$ than some of the commercial appliances out there. For file storage how fast would it really need to be? I for one, don't need the fastest appliance, but it would be nice to have something I could use to transfer files between Windows or Linux, without having to reformat my HD, or burn to CD. Others might find a small webserver fun. Whatever has a high enough density than what your vessel would displace more than the vessel's weight.As I said, as far as I know, there is no GPL'd code in the PROM. There is likely LGPL'd code (zlib).

If you want to play with this, you can do it all now. Debian mips can be installed on a series2, with some effort: link (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-20662.html). Many people have run samba servers on their tivo. The disk access is slow (like 5MB/sec or so) and the network is even slower. I wouldn't even think about software raid5.

[ZivZulander]

Cool. I didn't realize the disk access was that abysmal. I think it would still be better than burning to CD, has the potential to be shared to multiple OSs, and would be cheaper than just having it the box uselessly take up space.
Thanks for your response, your time, and the link. I'll check it out.

[Jamie]

Cool. I didn't realize the disk access was that abysmal. ...This is on a 540 SAS2:
bash-2.02# hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 15.01 seconds = 8.53 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 14.52 seconds = 4.41 MB/sec
240's would be a little better.

This was with the tivo software still loaded and running. I'm sure it would do a bit better with all that out of the way too, but it is an underpowered box for general purpose use. I suspect that was by design. It does not benefit TiVo to have their boxes repurposed, so they have no reason to make the box any more powerful than necessary to achieve their design goals.

[ZivZulander]

Not having been through all the forums (DDB is huge,) I'm not sure if anyone has in the past may have found/shown this resource:
http://www.broadcom.com/products/communications_processors_downloads.php
it includes the broadcom modified toolchains, Linux images/source links for MIPS, and even sample code and BSD. Thought perhaps it might be of interest to the hack folks.