MTA for TiVo

[lrhorer]

Has anyone ever compiled a Mail Transfer Agent such as Exim4 or SSMTP for the TiVo? I would like to have my TiVos send out messages when certain events occur, such as a pending upgrade.

[Kayle]

An MTA is surely overkill here, you just need an SMTP client so it can talk to your mailbox server--unless you mean you actually want your TiVo to be a mail host. Something like the TCL smtp package ought to work well with a TCL script. I just checked and it doesn't appear to be included with the TiVo TCL installation, but you should be able to pull it out from an official TCL distribution.

A quick check of a unix software packages site found nearly a dozen SMTP clients, many compatible with sendmail command line syntax, some intended to be brain-dead simple to use.

[lrhorer]

Thanks. I think I will look into it. In the mean time, I was thinking this over, and I came up with a different solution. Instead of mailing from the TiVos, I created an Expect script to run on one of my servers. First, I created this simple script to put on the TiVos:

swversion:

#! /bin/bash
echo mls /SwSystem | tivosh

Then I created a simple Expect script on the server to run the software on the TiVos:

tivotest.exp:

#! /usr/bin/expect --
log_file session.txt
spawn telnet $argv
expect #
send swversion\n
expect #
sleep 2
log_file
send exit

In order to run the Expect script on all three TiVos I create a shell script:

tivoscan:

#! /bin/bash

dir=/usr/share/tivoscan
cd $dir
tivo=$dir/tivos.list
file=$dir/session.txt
log=/var/log/tivoscan.log
expfile=$dir/tivotest.exp

echo $(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M:%S) Starting tivoscan session. >> $log
while read line
do
        [ -f $file ] && rm $file
        $expfile $line
        active=$(grep ACTIVE $file |  awk '{print $3;}')
        swlines=$(grep tyDb $file | grep -v $active | wc -l)
        if [ $swlines -gt 0 ];
        then
                echo "TiVo $line is ppending a software installation." | mail -a From:mdadm_monitor -s "RAID-Server TiVo Upgrade Notice" <email addresses>
                echo $(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M:%S) Emailing notification of pending software for $line. >> $log
        fi
done < $tivo
[ -f $file ] && rm $file
echo $(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M:%S) Tivoscan session complete. >> $log

I create a file to contain the hostnames of the TiVos:

tivos.list:

hd_livingroom
hd_theater
tivo_hd

And finally, I create a cron job to run the script every six hours:

0 */6 * * *     root    /usr/bin/tivoscan > /dev/null

[djl]

This sounded like a great idea, so I tried it out. To my astonishment, pretty much everything worked right off the bat. You can grab the script here if you have any use for it.

Something like the TCL smtp package ought to work well with a TCL script.