Upgrade OS without losing hacks

[petey256]

I have two RCA DVR40's I hacked years ago. They have OS 6.2 on them. I have recently lost some of my local channels and Direct Tv says I need to let my tivos take an update to 6.4 over the phone line. If I connect my phone line and let it do an update will I lose my hacks and or my recordings. Will I lose the ability to access my tivo to download my shows to my PC. Can i do anything to prevent my hacks from being wiped out and still upgrade. Any suggestions would be a great help.

[stevel]

If you have hacked it, you have TiVoWebPlus, right? Can you look for the swSystem tree on the MFS page and see if the 6.4 slices for your box are there? They probably are. The update itself doesn't come over the phone, just the trigger to install it. If the slices are there, you can manually install them and preserve your hacks. I have a link for how to do this for 6.3e - the same approach works for 6.4 but you'll need to find the appropriate patches to apply.

[petey256]

If you have hacked it, you have TiVoWebPlus, right? Can you look for the swSystem tree on the MFS page and see if the 6.4 slices for your box are there? They probably are. The update itself doesn't come over the phone, just the trigger to install it. If the slices are there, you can manually install them and preserve your hacks. I have a link for how to do this for 6.3e - the same approach works for 6.4 but you'll need to find the appropriate patches to apply.

I remember playing around with tivoweb but could never get through to it from outside my network which is what i wanted to do at one time. I will check to see if it is still there and if not I will put it back in. I can still ftp and telnet to the tivos. I hacked these tivos a long time ago with a lot of help from people at dealdatabase. It took me about two weeks of playing around and research and mistakes to do it. When you say I will need to find the appropriate patchs to apply which ones are you talking about?

[PlainBill]

I remember playing around with tivoweb but could never get through to it from outside my network which is what i wanted to do at one time. I will check to see if it is still there and if not I will put it back in. I can still ftp and telnet to the tivos. I hacked these tivos a long time ago with a lot of help from people at dealdatabase. It took me about two weeks of playing around and research and mistakes to do it. When you say I will need to find the appropriate patchs to apply which ones are you talking about?

You don't need TiVoWeb as long as you have telenet working. From a command prompt type echo mls /SwSystem | tivosh That will show any slice sets in the mfs database, as well as the currently active set.

PlainBill

[petey256]

You don't need TiVoWeb as long as you have telenet working. From a command prompt type echo mls /SwSystem | tivosh That will show any slice sets in the mfs database, as well as the currently active set.

PlainBill

I typed in the command you gave me but it only showed the SwSystem directory as well as others but not what was in the directory. I do have tivoweb. I started it and connected with my browser. I went to MFS then the SwSystem folder. It only shows 6.2 not the 6.4. Is it possible to find a 6.4 image for my DVR40 or will I have to let it update and rehack it all over again. Will taking the update messup my recordings? I mean erase or encrypt them.

[PlainBill]

I typed in the command you gave me but it only showed the SwSystem directory as well as others but not what was in the directory. I do have tivoweb. I started it and connected with my browser. I went to MFS then the SwSystem folder. It only shows 6.2 not the 6.4. Is it possible to find a 6.4 image for my DVR40 or will I have to let it update and rehack it all over again. Will taking the update messup my recordings? I mean erase or encrypt them.

I'm probably the wrong person to be giving advice on this - I put our last TiVo in the closet over a year ago. I'm not aware of any slice package for 6.4 being available, so here's what I would do:

1. Make sure the boot parameters are set up to block upgrades (upgradesw=false ?).
2. Force a call home. At that point it should download the slices and transfer them to the mfs database. (One trick you can do as this is happening is copy the files to another directory in var. There is a window of several minutes when the parts are sitting in the download directory before they are transferred to the mfs database and then removed from var.
3. Assemble the list of hacks for 6.4.
4. stevel posted a link above on doing the upgrade to 6.3e. The steps are the same, the only things changed are the hacks (and of course make sure you are working with the correct partitions).

If you do this correctly existing recordings, preferences, etc will be preserved. You won't even have to pull the drive. I have done several upgrades using telenet. On the times I screwed up I either had to connect using a serial cable or pull the drive to add hacks. I never lost recordings.

One piece of advice: If you possibly can, pull the drive, clone it to a larger drive (without adding the additional capacity), then experiment with the original drive. When you have the steps down, repeat them on the copy and expand to use the full capacity.

PlainBill

[stevel]

I don't think the call will download the slices. 6.4a is "back in the stream" from the satellite. The phone call just authorizes the box to do the upgrade, and you can do that manually. You need to know the name of the slice entry in the MFS database in order to do the upgrade.

[PlainBill]

I don't think the call will download the slices. 6.4a is "back in the stream" from the satellite. The phone call just authorizes the box to do the upgrade, and you can do that manually. You need to know the name of the slice entry in the MFS database in order to do the upgrade.

I am not sure what the current status is. I definitely have had a DirecTiVo call in and observed it downloading the slices and transferring them into the MFS database. I used that to capture a complete set of slices for an earlier software version (maybe 6.2, but probably an earlier 3.x version).

Since the software is back in the stream, doing a controlled update and rehacking in place is obviously the way to go.

PlainBill

[stevel]

I know that slices used to come in over the phone line, but I don't think they do now. I do know that 6.4a was added back to the sat stream recently - is it still there? Dunno.

I suppose the real problem is for people who used scripts to do the hacking without becoming familiar with the steps involved, or worse, those who obtained "pre-hacked" boxes and just want to wave a magic wand and get the update without disturbing the hacks. No matter what approach you take, some hands-on hacking will be required.

[tvtyme]

I'm probably the wrong person to be giving advice on this - I put our last TiVo in the closet over a year ago. I'm not aware of any slice package for 6.4 being available, so here's what I would do:

1. Make sure the boot parameters are set up to *enable* upgrades ( i.e. the 'upgradesoftware=false' option isn't listed). You want to upgrade the O/S when you do your reboot (per Step 9 in the link Stevel listed).
2. Login to your Tivo via telnet or serial cable.
a. #cd /var/packages (the packages subdirectory under /var should already exist. If it doesn't then just create it).
b. wget -O /var/packages/getslice dub-dub-dub dot dvrupgrade.com/software/update_tool/getslice-6.4a-01-2-151.
That'll get the slices from DVRUpgrade. (Change 'dub-dub-dub dot' to 'www.'. I wanted you to see the full URL).
c. chmod +x ./getslice; sh ./getslice. Those two commands will load the 6.4a slices into MFS
3. Assemble the list of hacks for 6.4a.
4. stevel posted a link above on doing the upgrade to 6.3e. The steps are the same, the only things changed are the hacks (and of course make sure you are working with the correct partitions).

If you do this correctly existing recordings, preferences, etc will be preserved. You won't even have to pull the drive. I have done several upgrades using telenet. On the times I screwed up I either had to connect using a serial cable or pull the drive to add hacks. I never lost recordings.

One piece of advice: If you possibly can, pull the drive, clone it to a larger drive (without adding the additional capacity), then experiment with the original drive. When you have the steps down, repeat them on the copy and expand to use the full capacity.

PlainBill

I edited PlainBill's quote above with the steps you can use. I recently upgraded one of my DVR40s from 6.2a to 6.4a.
L8r