Direct extraction from a tivo drive in a pc (not networked)

[gtwrek]

I'm interested in trying to do the same thing. Just had my DSR6000 ripped apart because of a bad power supply. Wanted to extract a few of the things from the
drives.

Read the FAQ but was wondering about how to get those FSIDs. So holnet, any more luck?

[holnet]

Unfortunately, not anything that will help you.... I got the FSIDs by setting up TivoWeb and accessing it over the serial connection. But that might not be your only problem. After getting the FSIDs I found that the new recordings extracted flawlessly (burned them onto DVDs). But my older recordings would have a few errors during the conversion, and there was a considerable amount of missing video (several minutes). I never did figure out (or get a response here about) how to resolve this. So I finally gave in and bought a Turbonet card. It will arrive on Monday . I assumed the problem was with the older files I was using to do the extraction. So hopefully the newer tools available to extract video over the network will fix that problem. Anyway, another thing you might need to know is that to mount the Tivo drives in your PC, you need to modify the linux kernel source and recompile. I found the diff file somewhere, but it was for an old version of the kernel and the code in question is in a different source file now. Of course, grep can help you find it and you can manually apply the patch. Or use MFSTools Boot CD. That works well. Anyway, I wish you luck in what you are trying to do. I guess you could say I gave up . If you need anymore help, don't hesitate to post here or e-mail me. I'll do what I can.

David

[Fugg]

"The last problem I was having was getting the FSIDs. I had read the attachment in that sticky before, but was getting tripped up when it said to run ShowList.tcl on your Tivo.... Seems odd since the post was for those without a TivoNet or serial connection."

If you do have a serial connection:

Before you power down your tivo and take your drive out, transfer (using your existing serial connection/bash prompt) NowShowing.tcl to a directory in /var, set it executable and run:

./NowShowing.tcl > fsids.txt

when it completes (it can take a few min if you have a full tivo), you will have a file called "fsids.txt" in that directory containing a list of what's on the tivo with the fsids!

Good Luck!!!

[blasted bill]

hey all,
i have a tivo drive which will not boot, so i need to wipe it and restore from the orginal tivo drive, but 1st i want recover the stored streams i have. i read...
http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/at...=&postid=77812

to try to get the streams extracted. the problem is, when i put my drive on SM of my linux box, only hdc shows up. there's no 4, 7, or 10. if i boot from the floppy or cd rom the show up just fine. why doesn't it not show up in linux? btw, it's mandrake.

next, i've read several times that mfs_streams is broken past 1.3. has there been a fixed version for 3.0? i can't exactly put my HD back in my tivo and run nowshowing.tcl to get the fsids. thanks

[blasted bill]

ghagha. how can i run the binaries from the cdrom if i have to complie them on my linux box? is there a way to complie them so they'll run on the cdrom boot cd?

[blasted bill]

ah, i re read what zobetron posted. appeartnly his version of linux is compatible with the bootable cd rom. when i complie the binars on mandrake 8.1 then boot from the cd rom and try to run the binaries, it says.....

./mfs_streams: /lib/libc.so.6: version 'GLIBC_2.1.3' not found (required by ./mfs_streams)

and of course there's no way to replace the libc.so.d when the cdrom is running. so how can i complie them so they will work on the cdrom boot up?

[lmurray]

I have the vplay biniaries here:

http://themurrays.homeip.net/downloads/tivo/for_linux/

look for the vplay-bin* file.

Not sure if this will help you or not. They were compiled under a RedHat 7.3 (i think) box.

If these work, let me know.


In the post above you were talking about using 2 different libc.so.6 files. Copy the new one to the ramdisc, but call it libc.so.X. Then edit your biniaries (YES, EDIT). Find all occurances of libc.so.6, and replace them w. libc.so.X. (Yes, I've done this before.) It works fine w/ vi BTW. I did this when I compiled stuff on my PowerPC that was running Linux.

hope something in the post helps you...
-lloyd-

[blasted bill]

Thanks for the tips lmurry! no longer nessecary as i got frustrated with trying to compile the binaries and went back to trouble shooting the orginal problem(tivo wouldn't boot) and went through the rc.sysinint line by line until i found the file it was trying to call that was missing. it works now now, but the network does not work ): posting about that in the apporate forum. thanks.

[TheWickedPriest]

...but I see only references to using mfs_export for the final stage. That works, but it only pulls the stream out in pieces, which can't be simply joined; and they sometimes have added junk in them as well.

Using "vplay" instead of "mfs_export" produces files that are slightly smaller (?!), but the same problems remain.

tserver, mfs_ftp, etc. don't work because they're dependent on tivosh (regular TCL won't do).

However, I found a simple way to get full streams, all parts cleanly joined, and no extras, from a locally-connected Tivo drive: a combination of vserver and mplayer-tivo on the same machine. It works exactly as it would if vserver were running on the Tivo -- and when used with the "-dumpstream" option, mplayer becomes an extraction tool instead of a player.

The first steps are the same as outlined elsewhere -- set up your MFS_DEVLIST and MFS_DEV environment variables. Then start vserver. From another shell, start up your Tivo-patched version of mplayer:

mplayer-tivo tivo://localhost/list

See an FSID you like? Then just:

mplayer-tivo -dumpstream -dumpfile whatever.ty tivo://localhost/12345

I've mentioned this method in a couple of threads elsewhere, but I thought it might help someone here. Alternatively, maybe someone here will point me to the easier solution that I've overlooked. (Actually, this is pretty easy; but maybe there's something faster?)

[jdiner]

TheWickedPriest:

Grab mfs_stream rather than mfs_export. It is the same general thing. But you can then use mulitple FSIDs in 1 call.

You will still get some some junk. That code has always produced some junk. But VSplit on the PC/Unix is fully aware of this and corrects for and removes the junk.

Using mfs_stream no join is needed after the fact.

--jdiner

[TheWickedPriest]

OK, thanks. Well, the vserver/mplayer solution is free of junk (at least on playback in mplayer, and on editing with TyNix), so perhaps it's the better solution after all. But I'll try it with mfs_stream if I ever have to do this again.

[rc3105]

with either vplayer or mfs_export & join (with cat or dos copy) the tys are clean and can be inserted with mfs_ftp even if you didn't get the xml info (edit to whatever you want with tivoweb)

[TheWickedPriest]

I can't agree that mfs_export + cat yields clean tys. Maybe mfs_ftp can insert them cleanly, but they're not clean in mplayer.

How does one extract with vplayer?

[rc3105]

mplayer trips over the ocassional junk in the cracks - the difference between space allocated & actually used at the end of the fsid (which has chunks from old recordings that weren't zero'd)

mfs_export + cat == 1:1 copy of the fsids, not necesarily equal to the video IN the fsids

vplay has a "play to file" option

[TheWickedPriest]

Originally posted by rc3105
mplayer trips over the ocassional junk in the cracks

Exactly. Hence, "not clean".

the difference between space allocated & actually used at the end of the fsid (which has chunks from old recordings that weren't zero'd)

Yep, I noticed that. :-)

mfs_export + cat == 1:1 copy of the fsids, not necesarily equal to the video IN the fsids

Right. So, fine for mfs_ftp insert, but not as nice as the vserver/mplayer method, AFAICT; and plain unacceptable for later playback in mplayer. Plus it uses (slightly) more space. Are there any advantages?

vplay has a "play to file" option

I know... but you said "vplayer" above. There are actually two separate programs, "vplay" and "vplayer" in the Tridge tools package.