6.2 Upgrade / Fresh Install

[hart316]

It's been a LONG time since I have tinkered with my dTivo! To make a long story short.... I am running 3.1b on one of my tivo's, unsleepered with killhdinitrd'd that I did over a year ago. I saw the "walkthrough to upgrade 6.2 on hacked unit", but was weary of messing with it....YET!.... with all my recordings. Over the past two nights, I decided to try a fresh from scratch start...(I'm not against a little extra work), but I reloaded my orig. image to another HD, stuck it it my tivo, but since I have voip, I cannot force the upgrade ...I read the ppp posts, on how to, but NO LUCK! I then got alphawolf's 6.2 image, loaded it and got it up and running!

......HERE COMES THE NEWBIE QUESTION..........

What the heck do i do next....I has been sometime ago... I have all the posts printed, back when I sleepered it, and have been reading alot in the past few days, but I am having a brain fart!! ......HELP!


I have read the following helpful posts, but the second one boggles me a bit...(brain fart again)

http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/sh...ad.php?t=42325

http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/sh....2+walkthrough


quote:-------------------------------------(from 2nd post)

First, go to this thread: http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/sh...&postcount=181. Connect to the tivo.edidas.com server using ftp, username tivo, password tivo. Go to the kernels directory, then 3.1.5. Download the vmlinux.px file. You may want to rename it to vmlinux-3.1.5-virgin.px so you don't get it confused with others you may have downloaded or will download. Make a copy of it named vmlinux-3.1.5-hacked.px. Next download killhdinitrd from http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/sh...ad.php?t=36692. You will need to run killhdinitrd from a linux box, cygwin may work, it may not. Support thread is http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/sh...ad.php?t=36692. If you have a FAT32 drive in your PC, you can transfer the kernel and the killhdinitrd file to a directory on it. Boot to a Linux CD, run killhdinitrd on the kernel (after you changed to the directory with the files, you'd type:

chmod 755 killhdinitrd
./killhdinitrd vmlinux-3.1.5-hacked.px

Type YES to agree to the terms, pretty self-explanatory. If you don't have a FAT32 partition in your computer, there are other ways to accomplish this. If you have VMWare or Virtual PC, you can install linux in a virtual drive, connect to it via ftp, transfer the files over, run the commands above, then ftp them back to your main pc. If you have an actual linux server you can use (a webhost account that has ssh/telnet and ftp access would probably work fine), you can use that as well.



-------------------------------------------------------------------

I have the kernel file, but how do I apply killhdinitrd? VMware, virtual pc..Linux box..... WHAT????

I know I did this before....I am just out of it...can someone shed some light on this poor soul of mine. My wife has been nagging me...."what are you doing to the tivo? Don't mess it up and lose my shows! What are you messing with it!"


Women .....DO NOT....understand!!!!!!!

And now that I started.....I CANNOT stop...I am on a mission!


Again...I'm at the point where I have alphawolf's image on one HD loaded and running, and my hacked 3.1b.....BTW...I also have the slices from emule (as long as they are good files), but would have to send em to my tivo.

I have no problem starting with alphawolf's ...just to learn again and experience...cuz...knowing me.....I'll end up doing it for others once they know what I did to mine.


THANKS!!!!

[thebyrd]

Recently, my hacked tivo stopped working. /GASP! The hard drive was knocking, then random events would happen. Luckily, this is a 2nd hacked tivo from upstairs, so the tivo world is still stable. I decided to see if I could remember how to hack the tivo and bring the dead one back to life. I barely remember any of the details other than dealdatabase.com was where I had gotten the information. I purchased a 250gb Western Digital hard drive from a local vender for $96.00 http://www.pmesystem.com/ in Northern Virginia. I sat down and opened up my firefox browser and went to http://www.google.com. I typed in some search terms such as upgrade hack hdvr2. I came across a thread about the new 6.2 OS. I googled tivo 6.2 OS. I discovered this was a new OS out for the tivo boxes. There were posts about being able to buy a 6.2 OS image file. That seemed to be the easy way and an option should all else fail. I decided to hook my tivo to my Vonage telephone line and see if I could get the new 6.2 OS. My vonage system has been working since December 2003 and I have no complaints. I found my u.s. robotics 28.800 External modem and serial cable that I had purchased off of ebay over a year ago. I put the original hard drive that came with my tivo and that I had used to hack, back in to the hdvr2 and booted up. Message, "You have not made a call in the last 491 days". I was running 3.1.1e-2-151 software. I went and looked at my settings. The prefix was set to the following: ,#396,*99, I decided to see if I could still connect. I pressed the Make Daily Call now. Success in connecting. The phone line would be tied up for 2 hrs stating "downloading" then I would get "Failed, call interrupted." Luckily, I have a Slingbox from www.Slingmedia.com connected to this tivo (slingbox infra red item needs to be 5 inches in front of the tivo box) and the mobile software for pocket_PC installed on my cell phone, verizon's VX6600. This allowed me to dial in to my tivo box while I was not there and watch and completely control my tivobox on my cell phone. There is sling software for the pc as well which is great if you travel and have some time to kill and access to the internet. Anyway, I kept changing the different phone numbers to connect to. Finally, after the 5th try, and after a 3 hr call, the little 28.800 external modem was able to download all the software for the 6.2 OS from a Fairfax Virginia phone number. The system rebooted and is working great. I had to run through the entire satellite setup, but all the defaults worked just fine. Now that I have an HDVR2 with a fresh copy of the 6.2 OS, i'm going research on what my next step will be to "fix" my tivo box from 35 hrs to the 250hrs. I have a great digital camera and I'm thinking about creating a complete STEP by STEP, with screenshots, guide of how to get a hacked tivo running the 6.2 OS and posting back here. If I get that accomplished, I'll post an update. My 1st step will be to create a backup of the new 6.2 OS drive.

[cheer]

Guides aren't real popular here; better is to document any trouble spots you hit along with the solutions you find.

But by all that is holy, whatever you end up posting, please use carriage return once in a while.

[thebyrd]

Okay. Post problems with possible solutions on this boad. Anyone have any suggestions of where to post a guide.
The guide that I am putting together will have digital pictures down to the level of the jumper placement on the hard drive along with shots of what to type and the output or results from the command.
My trial and error before took a while since the file system seems to be proprietary and not able to just slave the tivo drive out on any standard flavor of linux. I remember having to use some ISO files that I downloaded in order to boot up and gain access to the tivo drive. I would rather just download and install kernel support in order to read the file system on my Mandrake 10.1 or RH FC5 machine.
This being a hobby, I only want to help those that are unsure of making the final plunge and taking the risk.

[Narf54321]

Look up mfsadd for increasing the recording space on your drive (you'll need to pull the drive and put it in a PC). Also make sure the linux you're using to monkey with the tivo drive boots up LBA48 aware, so it can see the whole drive.

Using linux, look for tivopart, and use the "r" option to read the Apple partition format so that any linux can access it.

[PlainBill]

thebyrd, I REALLY think you should find another project to occupy your time. Maybe working toward world peace, feeding the hungry, or cleaning up litter in the streets would be less aggravating.

There are plenty of guides. Alldeadhomiez has a thread in the Newbie forum which lists them. Most of them have been written by people who were barely able to hack their TiVo. Every one of them are out of date, have errors, or do things the hard way - some even hit the trifecta, and have all three failings. As an excellent example of what can be done wrong, look at this guide.

PlainBill

[fantmn]

Originally Posted by thebyrd

Anyone have any suggestions of where to post a guide.

thebyrd, I would suggest the Tivo Community Forum. The thread here They might like to have some pictures etc added. Check with Gunnyman. There is also a Wiki related to the topic. The newbie document pointed to in my sig. is a great place to start. There is quite a considerable volume of work already out there on this topic including some with pictures. I do kind of wonder where you are going to get pictures of jumper settings for all the different disk drives that might be used. If you follow through with this idea, then commit to doing a great job and keeping it updated regularly. Also STEP-by-STEP is not nearly as helpful as explaining what each step is doing and why it is being done. Also information about how to figure out how to create patches on your own wold be of value as well.

[thebyrd]

I would like to be able to contribuite to a wiki. The problem with this is that when you search for the word WIKI, I have to read down at least 2 pages of posts, and still get no links to any wiki. The link from plainbill to the guides for 6.2 that was recently upgraded is a godsend. Now I don't have to read several posts about SEARCH FOR IT, or posts from people fed up with answering stupid questions. I worked helpdesk for 2.5 years before landing a job in computer forensics. I kept getting the same friggin trouble calls from the same type of users. I finally sat down and created powerpoint slideshows with pictures for the most common troublecalls. When the ticket came in, I e-mailed the user the powerpoint to "look it over" while I gathered my materials to get to their location. 95% of the people were able to fix their own common problem before I got there. They really didn't care one single bit about the hows or the whys. All of them just wanted the thing to work. This is the only reason that I would have suggested creating a step-by-step with pictures tutorial. Sayings like "A picture is worth a thousand words" is very true. From reading posts here, I bet a few pictures would cut down heavily on the stupid questions, but I'm just going off my past experiences.
With regards to the fact of how I would get all those pictures of all the different types of jumper settings, I of course didn't think about that. I was only going to show the typical pictures of a Western Digital hard drive, since that was the one I was going to use. Thinking about this further, if the need was there, we have literally every type of hard drive available in my lab. If a request was to come in, the guide could be updated and tailored to that particular model.
Even after going over several guides linked from this board, there are very few pictures. Part of that problem is the bandwidth, I'm sure.
After much thought though...it would seem more practical to just use a guide already in place, upgrade/hack my tivo and go looking for some 3rd world country that I can send 90cents per day. It won't cure hunger, but it would be a start.
The larger problem with my wanting to do a picture guide, making time to answer stupid questions and keep the guide updated. It might have helped a handful of people, but without answering questions and keeping the document updated, the information is really not fair to the tivo hacking community. IF i go ahead with the project, it will be on backpack.com or something not associated with this board.
Thanks for all of your hard work and words of wisdom and for replying to my post.

[fantmn]

There is a link to the wiki in gunnyman's signature at TCF found in the link I provided. Another really good example is the interactive upgrade instructions found here. Good luck on your endeavor.