MFStools Boot CD - LBA48 Boot Disk for ALL TiVo Models

[tivoupgrade]

updated 11/18/08

Thanks to feedback and contributions from many TCF members, we've updated our popular LBA48 CD (now at version 4.04) to reflect the current state of DIY upgrading for Series1 and Series2 TiVo DVR units. It will also work fine with a Series3 unit as long as you are using and IDE-SATA adapter because this CD does not contain native SATA support.

This CD is designed to replace most of the out-of-date and flaky CD's (Kazmyr's, Dylan's, etc.) that have been floating around for about EIGHT years now. It is also incorporated into our Universal Boot CD (version 11), but we have separated it here to keep the file size small, and the download free.

It is assumed you have a basic working knowledge of MFStools (or are using a decent how-to with detailed instructions) and are also aware that many bootdisks, utilities, and most importantly, the TiVo kernel for Series1 systems, and early Series2 software releases are limited to accessing only 137GB of each individual drive.

Key Features:
Native LBA48 kernel for handling of >137GB hard drives
MFStools 2.0
Toshiba/Pioneer 'unlock' util
CopyKern kernel transplant utility for Series1 units; modified TiVo kernels
dd_rescue tools
BusyBox Environment


Release notes (abbreviated):

This CD uses an LBA48 Linux kernel which is designed for use with all hard disk drives, including drives that are larger than 137GB. This CD may be used to perform standard MFStools backup and restore operations for ALL make/model TiVo systems which are upgradeable. HOWEVER, do not use this CD to restore a backup onto a drive LARGER than 137GB unless it will be used in a TiVo system whose kernel uses a comparable native LBA48 kernel or you are using tools and techniques to augment your upgrade with a user-supplied LBA48 kernel.

Units with a native LBA48 kernel are now:

All Series2 and Series3 Models running version 6.X or later of the TiVo OS


If you are intending to use larger than 137GB drives in a Series1 standalone or Series1 DirecTiVo system, you can simply use the "copykern" utility (provided on the CD) to install an updated kernel featuring LBA48 support. Just type "copykern" and follow the prompted instructions.



Note: 11/18/08 The current version of this CD (4.04) conatins updated LBA48 kernels which work fine with the latest standalone software (3.0) and the latest DirecTiVo software (3.5d) on all Series1 models.

Note: 9/11/07 The current version of this CD (4.04) contains updated LBA48 kernels which work fine with the latest standalone software (3.0) and the latest DirecTiVo software (3.5c) on all Series1 models.

Note: 7/22/07 The current version of this CD (4.04) contains updated LBA48 kernels which work fine with the latest standalone software (3.0) and the latest DirecTiVo software (3.5b) on all Series1 models.

Note: 5/12/06 New Release of the LBA48 CD (ver 4.04) includes a revised copykern and a recompiled kernel (labeled 3.10+) in the s1_kernels directory. We have done preliminary testing with this kernel in conjunction with version 3.5 of the Series1 DirecTV TiVo release and early tests are encouraging. If you have built LBA48 drives which are spuriously rebooting, or contain content that is not accessible through the "Now Playing" list, we encourage you to use copykern to transplant this newly updated kernel. Also note that you will need to use killinitrd to zap the new initrd (or use nic_config in the silicondust network driver release to achieve the same result).



If you are not using drives greater than 137GB, you may use this CD for any model TiVo without worry, with one exception: Do not attempt to use BlessTiVo on drives being added to a Series1 unit; instead, use mfsadd.

Use this CD for performing standard upgrades to units which support disk drives greater than 137GB or use this CD if you are performing an upgrade to any Series1 unit and use copykern to update to an LBA48 kernel (after you have restored your MFS backup image to your new drive.

You can use this CD for ANY Series1 TiVo unit if you are not planning on using a drive greater than 137GB. You can use this CD to bless add-on drives for Series2 units, or use mfsadd to combine two drives for any upgradable Series2 or a Series1.

One last note, MFStool 2.0 (included on this CD as well) has a bug and will not properly initialize a swap partition greater than 127MB. If you are building a SERIES1 replacement drive, and are planning on using "copykern" you can use the -s option (hit F3 for MFStool usage examples) to define a larger than 127MB swap partition, and copykern will initialize it for you when replacing the kernel.

That's it; please consult standard upgrade instructions (hinsdale or weaknees for example); as this CD is designed to be compatible with their guides.

Note:

If you are in over your head and would prefer something easier, please consider our InstantCake DIY software CD which can be used to build a new replacement drive for your TiVo with limited effort, as long as you understand your PC and how to hook drives up to it. If even that is beyond you, please consider our pre-configured upgrade kits or professional services for your upgrade needs.

----

More information and the free download can be found here (http://www.dvrupgrade.com/dvr/stores/1/lba48.cfm) (it is approximately 8MB, and in ISO format).

If you are looking for a CD with killhdinitrd, or kernels modified with killhdinitrd (these tools are used for installing networking and other aftermarket modifications to Series2 units with USB ports), then you need one of our premium boot CD's which are also discussed on the free LBA48 CD download page (http://www.dvrupgrade.com/dvr/stores/1/lba48.cfm).

If you have any questions about the use of mfstools or any specifics regarding use of this CD (or the included utilities), please use this thread as a support resource and we'll do our best to answer your questions -- this CD is intended to be compatible with the major upgrade guides already available, however some of the unique tools provided may require additional explanation.

Please stay tuned, as this CD is a work in progress!

[Thom]

Does your LBA48 CD contain support for ATA interfaces beyond the primary and secondary controllers found on the motherboards? Or, does it contain an LBA48 boot floppy disk image that contains MFSTools 2.0?

Sometimes I upgrade by performing a complete MFSTool backup | restore from my current dual drive setup to a pair of larger drives. If booting from CD, the boot CD must support ATA interfaces beyond the motherboard's pair. So far I've been booting from an MFSTool 2.0 floppy, but it only supports 137 GB.

- Thom

[weaknees]

Originally posted by Thom
Does your LBA48 CD contain support for ATA interfaces beyond the primary and secondary controllers found on the motherboards? Or, does it contain an LBA48 boot floppy disk image that contains MFSTools 2.0?

Sometimes I upgrade by performing a complete MFSTool backup | restore from my current dual drive setup to a pair of larger drives. If booting from CD, the boot CD must support ATA interfaces beyond the motherboard's pair. So far I've been booting from an MFSTool 2.0 floppy, but it only supports 137 GB.

- Thom

I'm not at the office any more, but as far as I know, our CD will recognize PCI card-attached drives, at least on Promise-based cards (Maxtor cards use Promise chipsets).


WeaKnees Large Kernel Boot CD (http://www.weaknees.com/weaknees_lba_boot_cd.iso)

Michael

[Rschultz1457]

Originally posted by Thom
Does your LBA48 CD contain support for ATA interfaces beyond the primary and secondary controllers found on the motherboards? Or, does it contain an LBA48 boot floppy disk image that contains MFSTools 2.0?

Sometimes I upgrade by performing a complete MFSTool backup | restore from my current dual drive setup to a pair of larger drives. If booting from CD, the boot CD must support ATA interfaces beyond the motherboard's pair. So far I've been booting from an MFSTool 2.0 floppy, but it only supports 137 GB.

- Thom

The CD currently supports primary and secondary only - (/dev/hda - /dev/hdd).

[Robert S]

Is dd_rescue on either of those disks?

[BillL]

Forgive me if this is a stupid newbie question, but does this CD contain the LBA48 kernal? I have a Dtivo and want to utilize all of my 160GB hard drive. Will I be able to do this using copykern?

[dswallow]

Originally posted by BillL
Forgive me if this is a stupid newbie question, but does this CD contain the LBA48 kernal? I have a Dtivo and want to utilize all of my 160GB hard drive. Will I be able to do this using copykern?
Newbie or not, you deserve this: Did you even read the original post?

[BillL]

Originally posted by dswallow
Newbie or not, you deserve this: Did you even read the original post?

I did read the original post, but it said "to install an updated kernel featuring LBA48 support" in the original post. That could also mean find a LBA48 kernal somewhere else and install it with the utility from the disk.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by BillL
I did read the original post, but it said "to install an updated kernel featuring LBA48 support" in the original post. That could also mean find a LBA48 kernal somewhere else and install it with the utility from the disk.

To answer your questions:

1) the LBA48 CD uses an LBA48 kernel
2) copykern will installed an updated Series1 kernel when you are making a large disk

More details and clarifications to follow.

[BillL]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
To answer your questions:

1) the LBA48 CD uses an LBA48 kernel
2) copykern will installed an updated Series1 kernel when you are making a large disk

More details and clarifications to follow.

What about for Series 2 Directivos. Will "copykern" install the Series 1 kernel for them as well?

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by BillL
What about for Series 2 Directivos. Will "copykern" install the Series 1 kernel for them as well?

No, copykern is for Series1 units, only! Please reference the first post for the Series2 units which currently have an LBA48 kernel.

[BillL]

then what does this paragraph mean?

"If you are intending to use larger than 137GB drives in a Series1 standalone or DirecTiVo system, you can simply use the "copykern" utility(provided on the CD) to install an updated kernel featuring LBA48 support. Just type "copykern" and follow the prompted instructions."

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by BillL
then what does this paragraph mean?

"If you are intending to use larger than 137GB drives in a Series1 standalone or DirecTiVo system, you can simply use the "copykern" utility(provided on the CD) to install an updated kernel featuring LBA48 support. Just type "copykern" and follow the prompted instructions."


It means that if you are going to build a replacement drive kit using drive(s) that are larger than 137GB (eg a 160GB drive, or two 160GB drives), then you should use the copykern utility and it will install an updated kernel featuring LBA48 support (ie a kernel which can address > 137GB of space on the disk drive).

If you can give me an alternative way to word the aforementioned phrase which is any clearer, I'm all ears...

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by Robert S
Is dd_rescue on either of those disks?

Just made a quick and dirty attempt to include both dd_rescue and dd_rhelp. Please see my post on PortlandPaw's thread here (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2272612#post2272612) for more details and a link to download a test version for folks to try. If all works out OK, we'll fold it into the latest release and update the main iso on our site.

Thanks!

[BillL]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
It means that if you are going to build a replacement drive kit using drive(s) that are larger than 137GB (eg a 160GB drive, or two 160GB drives), then you should use the copykern utility and it will install an updated kernel featuring LBA48 support (ie a kernel which can address > 137GB of space on the disk drive).

If you can give me an alternative way to word the aforementioned phrase which is any clearer, I'm all ears...

I guess the reason that I was confused was that I thought that all directivos were series 2.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by BillL
I guess the reason that I was confused was that I thought that all directivos were series 2.

Got it. For good measure, here are the descriptions of the Series1 DirecTiVo systems:

Philips DSR6000
Sony SAT-T60
Hughes GXCEBOT(D)

[lawnmowerdeth]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
Just made a quick and dirty attempt to include both dd_rescue and dd_rhelp. Please see my post on PortlandPaw's thread here (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2272612#post2272612) for more details and a link to download a test version for folks to try. If all works out OK, we'll fold it into the latest release and update the main iso on our site.

Thanks!

Hi,
I'm trying to rescue an HDVR2 drive, and there are some errors with dd_rescue.
I don't know if it's a version issue, but I was following the command in this thread http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2272612#post2272612
and I can't use the -B switch or the -A switch (unknown command), and -b 2M gives a segmentation fault. Basically I am only able to use: dd_rescue -v /dev/hda /dev/hdb.

Anyway, fingers crossed that this will save the drive. I'll know tomorrow afternoon sometime.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by lawnmowerdeth
Hi,
I'm trying to rescue an HDVR2 drive, and there are some errors with dd_rescue.
I don't know if it's a version issue, but I was following the command in this thread http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2272612#post2272612
and I can't use the -B switch or the -A switch (unknown command), and -b 2M gives a segmentation fault. Basically I am only able to use: dd_rescue -v /dev/hda /dev/hdb.

Anyway, fingers crossed that this will save the drive. I'll know tomorrow afternoon sometime.

Can you please repost this issue in the other thread, as well as your follow-up results? This thread is really not for dd_rescue and the version referenced here does not contain it (yet); hopefully whatever problem this is can be verified by another reader of the dd_rescue thread who may be using it in a different environment and can either replicate the result, or identify what we need to add to our CD so that it doesn't happen.

Thanks,
Lou

[Kaelum]

I created both the 2.0 and the 3.0 CDs from the ISO images, and neither CD contains a copykern executable. What's up?

[dswallow]

Originally posted by Kaelum
I created both the 2.0 and the 3.0 CDs from the ISO images, and neither CD contains a copykern executable. What's up? You are booting from the CD to look, right? If it's there and the ISO distribution is like the other CD's that've been made available to hack TiVo systems, you won't see it from DOS/Windows since it's part of a disk image that's loaded when Linux boots.

[Kaelum]

Originally posted by dswallow
You are booting from the CD to look, right? If it's there and the ISO distribution is like the other CD's that've been made available to hack TiVo systems, you won't see it from DOS/Windows since it's part of a disk image that's loaded when Linux boots.

I know that and of course I booted from the CD. If I type in copykern, I get:

sh: copykern: command not found

Which means its either not in the path, or its not on the CD. In either case, the CD is not working. Also, after booting, there are 2 shell errors before I get the PTVupgrade /# prompt.

[mrtickle]

Please could you list those two shell errors here? Ta.

[Kaelum]

Originally posted by mrtickle
Please could you list those two shell errors here? Ta.

mount: No medium found
cat: /cdrom/.menu/startup: No such file or directory

[Olly]

Originally posted by Kaelum
mount: No medium found
cat: /cdrom/.menu/startup: No such file or directory I get that too.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by Kaelum
I know that and of course I booted from the CD. If I type in copykern, I get:

sh: copykern: command not found

Which means its either not in the path, or its not on the CD. In either case, the CD is not working. Also, after booting, there are 2 shell errors before I get the PTVupgrade /# prompt.


Oops, a problem with the CDROM automounting script... doesn't seem to work on all PC's

Short term fix: mount -o ro -t iso9660 /dev/hdX /cdrom

where hdX is one of the following:

A == primary master
B == primary slave
C == secondary master
D == secondary slave

My guess is that your CDROM isn't on one of the aforementioned device ID's, correct?

Thx,
Lou

[Olly]

Thanks, I now have a 200GB drive to play with.

[Kaelum]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
Oops, a problem with the CDROM automounting script... doesn't seem to work on all PC's

Short term fix: mount -o ro -t iso9660 /dev/hdX /cdrom

where hdX is one of the following:

A == primary master
B == primary slave
C == secondary master
D == secondary slave

My guess is that your CDROM isn't on one of the aforementioned device ID's, correct?

Thx,
Lou
My CD/DVD ROM is the secondary master, so the following did work:

mount -o ro -t iso9660 /dev/hdc /cdrom

There is another problem as well, you don't allow copykern to use hda. I remove all of the existing drives in my system before using this as I've had UNIX/Linux/Xenix systems destroy my DOS/Windows partions and will never allow both to reside on the same system. Was there a reason you don't allow it to work on hda, other than thats where many people keep their DOS/Windows drive?

I also noticed that once you place the new drive into your TiVo and boot it up, the new drive will become locked. I put in a 200GB Maxtor and this happened, thus requiring the use of qunlock each time I needed to do anything to it.


Thanks

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by Kaelum
My CD/DVD ROM is the secondary master, so the following did work:

mount -o ro -t iso9660 /dev/hdc /cdrom

There is another problem as well, you don't allow copykern to use hda. I remove all of the existing drives in my system before using this as I've had UNIX/Linux/Xenix systems destroy my DOS/Windows partions and will never allow both to reside on the same system. Was there a reason you don't allow it to work on hda, other than thats where many people keep their DOS/Windows drive?


Will take another look at the scripts; not sure why it works on some systems, and not on others.

As for CopyKern being hard-coded to not allow /dev/hda - our other tools require drives to be connected to secondary IDE; hence that assumption. Will try to document that better and perhaps create a different CopyKern version that allows user-selected target drives.


I also noticed that once you place the new drive into your TiVo and boot it up, the new drive will become locked. I put in a 200GB Maxtor and this happened, thus requiring the use of qunlock each time I needed to do anything to it.


Thanks

That has nothing to do with the boot CD you use and everything to do with the type of TiVo you have; my guess is that you have a Sony SVR2000....

[Robert S]

DON'T use qunlock!

One moment's inattention and you'll lose that nice new drive.

DiskUtil (http://upgrade-instructions.com/) is a safe alternative.

[Kaelum]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
Will take another look at the scripts; not sure why it works on some systems, and not on others.
Could it have something to do with the system having multiple CD/DVD drives? I have a DVD ROM and CD-RW drive on the machine I was using.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by Kaelum
Could it have something to do with the system having multiple CD/DVD drives? I have a DVD ROM and CD-RW drive on the machine I was using.

ooh - that very well could be the issue; i have a dual drive system here and was able to reproduce the error; will try to get something worked out tomorrow... stay tuned...

[kkluba]

I have a series 1 with a 160gb drive and have only utilized 137gb of it for a long time. Is there an easy way to see the other 23gb? Do I have to wipe it and start fresh?

[Robert S]

Maybe. If you're lucky, all you have to is boot the LBA-48 CD, mfsadd and CopyKern.

It all depends on how many partitions you've used. There's only room for three pairs of MFS partitions on the A drive, so you can fill up the partition table pretty quickly.

If you have an early Series 1, with an 11-partition A drive and you went straight to 137Gb, then you should have 3 spare entries in your partition table.

However, if you have a late model, with a 13-partition A drive or you've already upgraded more than once, then you'll only have 1 spare entry, and expanding requires 2 partitions.

mfsinfo will give you a definite answer.

[kkluba]

Thanks Robert

[kkluba]

I can't get anything meaningful from mfsinfo. My drives are setup with tivo hd being primary master and the boot cd being secondary master. No other devices. This is a P4, 1.7 with a promise card installed (not using that for this). Should I be attaching these drives to the Promise card? What am I missing? The cd boots fine I just can't get anywhere.

thanks..

[Robert S]

Do you see the drives being detected in the Linux boot log? (dmesg | grep hd if you miss it during boot).

[kkluba]

I do see that hda is the hard disk and hdb is the cdrom. I have them on the same ide cable. When I do mfsinfo /dev/hda I get this:

mfs_large_volume_header:
mfsvol_read_data: Success

What am I missing?

[Robert S]

It's not a problem that I recognise.

If you boot in byteswapping mode, you should see the TiVo partition table in the boot log. I don't know how byteswapping is set up on Lou's disks, but you might have to move the hard drive to hdb or use a different boot disk.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by Robert S
It's not a problem that I recognise.

If you boot in byteswapping mode, you should see the TiVo partition table in the boot log. I don't know how byteswapping is set up on Lou's disks, but you might have to move the hard drive to hdb or use a different boot disk.

I have noticed some strangeness with the LBA48 kernel and how certain apps interact with the filesystems on the drive; last time I checked, using things like nic_install were a problem with the LBA48 kernel. We have a different disk we use for certain apps that runs off a different kernel (we boot it with swap enabled) and that solves that problem. The universal boot cd solves both problems as its packaged with both kernels so you can boot in different modes for different requirements. Only reason its not available for free download is that its significantly bigger; trying to strip down and consolidate things so we can have one unified boot disk that works for all things; easier said than done, as it does get confusing...

[kkluba]

Trying to get an extra 23gb from a 120gb doesn't work I found. I forgot that I swapped the 120 and 160 a while back before there was support for 137gb + disks. My bad.

I was still curious why the msfinfo wouldn't work with the 120gb drive. Robert's suggestion of doing the dmesg | grep hd tipped me off. It said the drive was 10mb. My bios was set to autodetect and was not seeing the 120gb drive correctly. User defined settings solved the problem.

Sorry to have wasted your time...

[vibrantnet]

I have a dtv 2 and was also a little confused as to which kernel applied (becuase its hard to tell if Series 1 modifies standalone or also dtv). Your instructions are great, and helpful, but a recommended rewording is to change:

"If you are intending to use larger than 137GB drives in a Series1 standalone or DirecTiVo system"

to

"If you are intending to use larger than 137GB drives in a Series1 standalone or Series 1 DirecTiVo system"

Thanks

[Thom]

Originally posted by weaknees
I'm not at the office any more, but as far as I know, our CD will recognize PCI card-attached drives, at least on Promise-based cards (Maxtor cards use Promise chipsets).


WeaKnees Large Kernel Boot CD (http://www.weaknees.com/weaknees_lba_boot_cd.iso)

Michael

Michael -

Thanks for the link! I'll use your CD on my next drive upgrade, which will happen within a week or two.

- Thom

[johnmacd]

I have a question about large drives with a S2 that doesnt have the native LBA48 kernel:
Originally posted by tivoupgrade

This CD uses an LBA48 Linux kernel which is designed for use with all hard disk drives, including drives that are larger than 137GB. This CD may be used to perform standard MFStools backup and restore operations for ALL make/model TiVo systems which are upgradeable. HOWEVER, do not use this CD to restore a backup onto a drive LARGER than 137GB unless it will be used in a TiVo system whose kernel uses a comparable native LBA48 kernel.

Units with a native LBA48 kernel are:

TiVo TCD540 (aka NiteLite)
Series2 HUMAX
Pioneer DVD combo
Hughes HR10-250 (HDTV)


So if I'm reading this correctly, one can use this CD to upgrade using a larger than 137GB drive on a S2 non native LBA48 kernel (like 24004A), but you will not be able to use this CD to restore it.
Is that correct? If so what suggestions do you have if you need to restore it?

John

[Robert S]

I'm not sure whether that's poor phrasing on Lou's part or overly close reading on yours.

Anyway, there's no problem restoring backups, the problem is expanding (typically you would restore and expand in one operation).

If you don't have an LBA-48 kernel on your TiVo, just use the standard mfstools2noJ.iso instead of this CD.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by Robert S
I'm not sure whether that's poor phrasing on Lou's part or overly close reading on yours.

Anyway, there's no problem restoring backups, the problem is expanding (typically you would restore and expand in one operation).

If you don't have an LBA-48 kernel on your TiVo, just use the standard mfstools2noJ.iso instead of this CD.

Or, don't use drives larger than 137GB (ie, use 120GB drives). Will try to reword things so that they are clearer. Eventually, will have additional kernel so that CD can be used for any unit, whether LBA48 or not.

[tivoupgrade]

A new release (beta) is now available with the aforementioned dd_rescue utilitity.

Additionally, we've included a new utility (still under testing) which allows you to upgrade your Toshibs SD-400 unit with a simple mfsrestore to a large drive using mfstools, followed by the running of the unlock utility on the PC you are using to perform the upgrade. There is a readme file on the CD with additional info.

Please use the following page as your jump point for downloading the CD:

http://www.ptvupgrade.com/support/bigdisk/index.html (please don't link directly to the ISO files as they constantly change.

Thx!

[elindoo]

Several years ago I upgraded my SVR2000, adding a second disk. Recently the Tivo system has been freezing up, obviously because of a failing drive. I downloaded PTVupgrade 3.0 and bought a 200gb Seagate. Rather than trying to copy from the 2 existing drives (thought there might be a problem with one failing), I simply restored the original Tivo.bak I had on CD from the last upgrade. Of course I lost all my recordings but they weren’t needed. Went thru the upgrade, restored, did the copykern –s (note I forgot to put in a value after the –s) and all seemed fine. Put the drive in Tivo and it boots fine but so far (two days now) it has not been able to update the listings guide, and without that TIVO complains about everything you try to do. It goes thru the process of dialing, connecting and downloading but I don’t get the guide. I’m looking more into that, but my bigger issue is that TIVO is reporting I have 9hrs recording time (at best recording). I sent a note to the fine folks at PTVupgrade and they said it sounds like the drive is locked, and to post here.

I noticed that when I did the install on the PC that it recognized the drive as a 200gb but I’m assuming if I go home tonight and put it back in the PC and boot up it’s going to show something much small. I get this from reading thru all the postings regarding this subject. Seems Tivo screws with it on boot up. I have qunlock and diskutil. Had to run qunlock with my previous upgrade on a Maxtor drive. The postings all talk about Maxtor and Quantum needing to be unlocked so I’m hesitant to use one or the other on my Seagate. Any suggestions? Ed Lindoo

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by elindoo
Several years ago I upgraded my SVR2000, adding a second disk. Recently the Tivo system has been freezing up, obviously because of a failing drive. I downloaded PTVupgrade 3.0 and bought a 200gb Seagate. Rather than trying to copy from the 2 existing drives (thought there might be a problem with one failing), I simply restored the original Tivo.bak I had on CD from the last upgrade. Of course I lost all my recordings but they weren’t needed. Went thru the upgrade, restored, did the copykern –s (note I forgot to put in a value after the –s) and all seemed fine. Put the drive in Tivo and it boots fine but so far (two days now) it has not been able to update the listings guide, and without that TIVO complains about everything you try to do. It goes thru the process of dialing, connecting and downloading but I don’t get the guide. I’m looking more into that, but my bigger issue is that TIVO is reporting I have 9hrs recording time (at best recording). I sent a note to the fine folks at PTVupgrade and they said it sounds like the drive is locked, and to post here.

I noticed that when I did the install on the PC that it recognized the drive as a 200gb but I’m assuming if I go home tonight and put it back in the PC and boot up it’s going to show something much small. I get this from reading thru all the postings regarding this subject. Seems Tivo screws with it on boot up. I have qunlock and diskutil. Had to run qunlock with my previous upgrade on a Maxtor drive. The postings all talk about Maxtor and Quantum needing to be unlocked so I’m hesitant to use one or the other on my Seagate. Any suggestions? Ed Lindoo

Try diskutil, or dlgchk... Lots of threads in the underground forum about drive locking/unlocking.

[mtakahar]

Originally posted by elindoo
Went thru the upgrade, restored, did the copykern –s (note I forgot to put in a value after the –s) and all seemed fine. Put the drive in Tivo and it boots fine but so far (two days now) it has not been able to update the listings guide, and without that TIVO complains about everything you try to do. It goes thru the process of dialing, connecting and downloading but I don’t get the guide. I’m looking more into that, but my bigger issue is that TIVO is reporting I have 9hrs recording time (at best recording).
I'm using a 200G Seagate in my SVR-2000, too. I saw two problems during this upgrade - one is that the "-x" option nor mfsadd didn't work without rebuilding the partition map. If you don't find the drive locked, run mfsinfo and see if you have extra mfs partitions on it. Another problem was that the 384M swap partition I added didn't get activated properly. I tried rerunning tpip -s, Todd's mkswap with -v1 after booting up with bswap enabled, but neither one worked. I finally made it work by running Todd's native mkswap on TiVo.

9 hours at the best quality is the original capacity, so this could be because of the expantion failure, and not having swap space at all might be the cause of guide data building problem.

[elindoo]

Well I went back thru the doc's, more specifically the Hindsdale stuff and found that I forgot to do the mfsadd command. I guess I got so fixated on the brief instructions from the PTV boot cd that I didn't use the Hinsdale docs as suggested by the instructions on the PTV boot.

Anyway, I redid the copykern with the -s 320, ran mfsadd and Tivo is very happy now. 220hrs of basic is available.

Thanks all for your help. Ed

[nichols_eric]

Statement:
Series 2 DirecTivos models, which are not listed in the first post (like Samsug SIR), can not currently have more than 137Gb addressed.

I gathered this from reading the forum. Is this correct?

Sorry if this angers any one.. it still is a little confusing.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by nichols_eric
Statement:
Series 2 DirecTivos models, which are not listed in the first post (like Samsug SIR), can not currently have more than 137Gb addressed.

I gathered this from reading the forum. Is this correct?

Sorry if this angers any one.. it still is a little confusing.


That is correct; currently, the olny Series2 DirecTiVo units with LBA48 support (>137GB per drive) are the ones listed in the first post.

[gilf22]

Just upgraded from a two drive to single drive system (Seagate 200GB 7200 rpm) using the Instant Cake for a SVR 2000, no problems, took no time at all, flawless software upgrade. I had extra IDE cables so I opened side cover on computer unplugged installed IDE cables from motherboard. Used spare cable to attach spare older CD burner drive (slower model) and the new hard drive. I think I would have had a new reocrd for upgrade but I was distracted by the dust in TV box and after vacumning unit forgot to hook up drive cables in the Tivo. I had cover back on and was half way upstairs when I remembered what I had forgot to do. All in all no challenge at all. I would recomend saving an old CD drive and IDE cables to facilitate hard drive upgrades. No need to unplug your installed drives.

[johnmacd]

Originally posted by Robert S
If you don't have an LBA-48 kernel on your TiVo, just use the standard mfstools2noJ.iso instead of this CD.

Why mfstools2noj.iso instead?

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
Or, don't use drives larger than 137GB (ie, use 120GB drives).

A 160GB can be used without a problem, but you will not have access to all 160GB, only 137GB. Is that a correct statement?

Once the drive has been expanded using the ptvupgrade cd, will you have bash, telnet and tivoftpd?

I'm really only looking to add tivoweb capability (which I can add once I have telnet and bash. But I have a 160GB drive laying around and I want to put the orginal drive (from the tivo)on the shelf as a backup.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by johnmacd
Why mfstools2noj.iso instead?



A 160GB can be used without a problem, but you will not have access to all 160GB, only 137GB. Is that a correct statement?

Once the drive has been expanded using the ptvupgrade cd, will you have bash, telnet and tivoftpd?

I'm really only looking to add tivoweb capability (which I can add once I have telnet and bash. But I have a 160GB drive laying around and I want to put the orginal drive (from the tivo)on the shelf as a backup.


Please see the first post in this thread with the model information. In short, don't use this CD on drives greater than 137GB unless you have an LBA48 kernel in your TiVo.

As for bash/telnet/tivoftp; you need to install that yourself. This is a utility CD to assist with the upgrade process, but its not a substitute for it - you still need to follow your favorite upgrade instructions to complete an upgrade.

[HDLouco]

I attempted to backup the original Tivo drive with the inclusion of recorded programs, totaling about 230,000 MB. I typed the command parmhd -d1 to enable DMA on both hda and hdb drives. Then I issued the command
dd dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb.


The PC ran over night for about 22 hours. In the morning, it had rebooted itself, and the backup drive, hddb, did not boot in my Tivo HD 10-250. I was given the impression that the dd command is a data dump that works much faster than the pair mfsbackup | mfsrestore commands. Can anybody comment on this? Thanks!

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by HDLouco
I attempted to backup the original Tivo drive with the inclusion of recorded programs, totaling about 230,000 MB. I typed the command parmhd -d1 to enable DMA on both hda and hdb drives. Then I issued the command
dd dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb.


The PC ran over night for about 22 hours. In the morning, it had rebooted itself, and the backup drive, hddb, did not boot in my Tivo HD 10-250. I was given the impression that the dd command is a data dump that works much faster than the pair mfsbackup | mfsrestore commands. Can anybody comment on this? Thanks!

I don't know if I'd be using DD for that sort of thing. Go the MFStools route; it does work. If you can get the DD method to work, benchmark results would be interesting, but I don't think its going to be faster.

[HDLouco]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
I don't know if I'd be using DD for that sort of thing. Go the MFStools route; it does work. If you can get the DD method to work, benchmark results would be interesting, but I don't think its going to be faster.

Thanks for repplying. I followed your advice and tried backing up with
mfsbackup Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdb,
but the process terminated after scanning hda and reporting on the total size. It went back to the prompt without any further information. Could it be that the new drive is now corrupted because of the multiple attempts to copy the Tivo drive? Is there a command in your boot CD that allows a complete deletion of what ever is on the drive? Sort of FDISK in DOS? Thanks again!

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by HDLouco
Thanks for repplying. I followed your advice and tried backing up with
mfsbackup Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdb,
but the process terminated after scanning hda and reporting on the total size. It went back to the prompt without any further information. Could it be that the new drive is now corrupted because of the multiple attempts to copy the Tivo drive? Is there a command in your boot CD that allows a complete deletion of what ever is on the drive? Sort of FDISK in DOS? Thanks again!

You might have meant "-Tao" not "Tao"

Can't really say what might have happened. If you accidentally wrote to your original drive, you could have corrupting it. Reading it is another story. I suppose you could use BlessTiVo to zap the drive, not sure why you'd want to do that, however.

You might want to look/post at some of the other mfstools oriented threads to discuss the issues of creating the backup you are attempting; this is not necessarily specific to the use of our CD, just MFStools, in general.

[Mars Rocket]

I'm having a problem, but I'm not sure if it's because of my upgrade or not. Here's the info:

I have a Series 1 TiVo that was originally a 2-drive 30 hour model, and I upgraded it years ago with a single 120GB drive. That drive started failing, so I booted with the LBA48 CD and did a mfsbackup -> mfsrestore onto a new 160GB drive. I then used copykern to put a LBA48 compliant kernel onto it and initialize the new, bigger swap space.

The TiVo boots up fine, and everything seems to work fine (including the new, bigger swap space) EXCEPT I'm getting "Failed while loading series" errors whenever I do a Daily Call.

Is there some way to tell if this error is related to the upgrade, or if there's just a data problem on the TiVo side? I've read the various tips about fixing it but have not yet tried any of them.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by Mars Rocket
I'm having a problem, but I'm not sure if it's because of my upgrade or not. Here's the info:

I have a Series 1 TiVo that was originally a 2-drive 30 hour model, and I upgraded it years ago with a single 120GB drive. That drive started failing, so I booted with the LBA48 CD and did a mfsbackup -> mfsrestore onto a new 160GB drive. I then used copykern to put a LBA48 compliant kernel onto it and initialize the new, bigger swap space.

The TiVo boots up fine, and everything seems to work fine (including the new, bigger swap space) EXCEPT I'm getting "Failed while loading series" errors whenever I do a Daily Call.

Is there some way to tell if this error is related to the upgrade, or if there's just a data problem on the TiVo side? I've read the various tips about fixing it but have not yet tried any of them.

Could be that you didn't really get a good backup (if there was a failing drive underneath that software, its very possible). It could also be a problem with the new drive, as well. It doesn't have anything to do with the LBA48 CD, though. MFStools is still MFStools.

[Mars Rocket]

I seem to have solved the problem by repeating Guided Setup and selecting "Satellite + Antenna" in place of "Satellite". This has no real effect on the system since the channels are essentially the same, but it did enable it to download the fully process the guide data - probably because it replaced the existing data rather than simply trying to update it.

I still need to go through one day's update, but so far it's doing better than before.

I'll switch it back to "Satellite" alone at some point.

[bnm81002]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
Thanks to feedback and contributions from many TCF members, we've updated our popular LBA48 CD (now at version 3.0) to reflect the current state of DIY upgrading.

This CD is designed to replace most of the out-of-date and flaky CD's (Kazmyr's, Dylan's etc.) that have been floating around for about four years now. It will be incorporated into our Universal Boot CD in the near future, but we have separated it here to keep the filesize small, and the download free.

It is assumed you have a basic working knowledge of MFStools (or are using a decent how-to with detailed instructions) and are also aware that many bootdisks, utilities, and most importantly, the TiVo kernel for Series1 systems and many Series2 units are limited to accessing only 137GB of each individual drive.

Release notes (reprinted and edited - also available on the CD):

This CD uses an LBA48 Linux kernel which is designed for use with all hard disk drives, including drives that are larger than 137GB. This CD may be used to perform standard MFStools backup and restore operations for ALL make/model TiVo systems which are upgradeable. HOWEVER, do not use this CD to restore a backup onto a drive LARGER than 137GB unless it will be used in a TiVo system whose kernel uses a comparable native LBA48 kernel.

Units with a native LBA48 kernel are:

TiVo TCD540 (ALL MODELS)
Series2 HUMAX (ALL MODELS)
Pioneer DVD combo (ALL MODELS)
Hughes HR10-250 (HDTV)
Toshiba DVD combo (ALL MODELS)

If you are intending to use larger than 137GB drives in a Series1 standalone or Series1 DirecTiVo system, you can simply use the "copykern" utility(provided on the CD) to install an updated kernel featuring LBA48 support. Just type "copykern" and follow the prompted instructions.

If you are not using drives greater than 137GB, you may use this CD for any model TiVo without worry, with one exception: Do not attempt to use BlessTiVo on drives being added to a Series1 unit; instead, use mfsadd.

Use this CD for performing standard upgrades to units which support disk drives greater than 137GB or use this CD if you are performing an upgrade to any Series1 unit and use copykern to update to an LBA48 kernel.

You can use this CD for ANY TiVo unit if you are not planning on using a drive greater than 137GB. You can use this CD to bless add-on drives for Series2 units, or use mfsadd to combine two drives for any upgradable Series2 or a Series1.

One last note, MFStool 2.0 (included on this CD as well) has a bug and will not properly initialize a swap partition greater than 127MB. If you are building a SERIES1 replacement drive, and are planning on using "copykern" you can use the -s option (hit F3 for MFStool usage examples) to define a larger than 127MB swap partition, and copykern will initialize it for you when replacing the kernel.

That's it; please consult standard upgrade instructions (hinsdale, for example); as this CD is designed to be compatible with them.

----

The CD is available for free download here (http://www.ptvupgrade.com/support/bigdisk/index.html) (it is approximately 13MB, and in ISO format)

Please post your questions here (please do not send Private Messages) so others can benefit from the responses.

Thanks, and enjoy!

Lou


forgive me if it has been asked already, is this support compatible with the Philips DSR704? what would be required to incoporate it with a dual drive upgrade of the Philips? is it also compatible with a netwrok of the Philips? thank you

[Robert S]

the TiVo kernel for Series1 systems and many Series2 units are limited to accessing only 137GB of each individual drive.

and

Units with a native LBA48 kernel are:

TiVo TCD540 (ALL MODELS)
Series2 HUMAX (ALL MODELS)
Pioneer DVD combo (ALL MODELS)
Hughes HR10-250 (HDTV)
Toshiba DVD combo (ALL MODELS)

So, not only is this a question that has been asked, the answer was already in that vast quantity of text you quoted.

You will not find details of how to use large drives or networking with Series 2 DTiVoes on this site.

[Snowman]

Robert, yes I just read what you said. However, I got the aforementioned cd from ptvupgrade.com because my understanding was that it contains lba48 kernels that have already been patched with killhdinitrd.

My question concerns just that. I have software v3.1.1c. I WANT to apply the lba48 patched kernel. Unfortunately, I have ZERO clue how to do that.

copykern does NOT work on anything but series1 units it would appear.

I'm not sure which partition I need to mount to apply the kernel or what command to use to apply the new kernel.

Anyone want to help on that?

As for not finding details of how to use networking with Series 2 DTivos, unless it's against the rules, I'll help anyone I can.

[bnm81002]

Originally posted by Snowman
Robert, yes I just read what you said. However, I got the aforementioned cd from ptvupgrade.com because my understanding was that it contains lba48 kernels that have already been patched with killhdinitrd.

My question concerns just that. I have software v3.1.1c. I WANT to apply the lba48 patched kernel. Unfortunately, I have ZERO clue how to do that.

copykern does NOT work on anything but series1 units it would appear.

I'm not sure which partition I need to mount to apply the kernel or what command to use to apply the new kernel.

Anyone want to help on that?

As for not finding details of how to use networking with Series 2 DTivos, unless it's against the rules, I'll help anyone I can.


so can you help me out then with my S2Dtivo Philips DSR704? thanks

[tivoupgrade]

Guys,

I'd suggest you take another look at the first post in this thread so you can truly understand what its intent is and what the LBA48 CD is designed to do for you.

This thread is not intended to be a catch-all for support questions related to MFStools, killhdinitrd, or any of the additional utilities that are on the LBA48 CD, or may appear in the future. There are plenty of threads, guides, how-to's etc in existence in a variety of places both here, and on other forums which discuss the nuances of the multitude of simple and complex upgrades available for the variety of TiVo systems out there.

Please take some time to do some searching, as its likely you'll find the how-to information you are looking for in the appropriate places, and you can post your upgrade-specific questions there.

As for the CD we've released in this thread - its designed to be compatible and usable with the upgrade guides/how-to's that are already in existence. If there is something specific about this CD, as far as the types of utilities you'd like us to incorporate, or remove, or problems using this CD with a particular guide, please do post that here.

In fact, you can post anything you pretty much want to here, but please don't expect to get answers to questions that might be better posted somewhere else.

With that said, remember - video extraction is verboten here, so don't bring it up.

And with that said, networking your TiVo is a good thing to do, so if you are interested in doing that, you can start your reading here (http://forum.ptvupgrade.com/showthread.php?t=763) and hopefully you'll find your way to the how-to information for which you may be looking.

Cheers,
Lou

[Snowman]

With all due respect Lou, I read the entire thread through before I posted. Since the cd includes the lba48 kernels, and I need the killhdinetrd patch for what I want to do anyway, I saw this as a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. That is still my path and fortunately, received the answers through another source. However, I have no problem with being slapped on the hand and being told to go search, but I find "had you searched, you should have found something like <link>" to throw me a bone. Not 43 different threads, but one showing at least some of the info I was seeking. Often with being TOO new to this, not knowing WHAT to search for makes it more difficult.

Thanks for the CD and for offering the pre-patched kernels. I just had thought there would have been instructions in the f1-f3 routine giving something to show how to copy the kernel on s2 boxes since s1 was included.

The point here isn't to argue with you, but rather to hopefully explain where I'm coming from and why I asked the question.

Yes, the networking discussion does need to be taken elsewhere agreed.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by Snowman
With all due respect Lou, I read the entire thread through before I posted. Since the cd includes the lba48 kernels, and I need the killhdinetrd patch for what I want to do anyway, I saw this as a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. That is still my path and fortunately, received the answers through another source. However, I have no problem with being slapped on the hand and being told to go search, but I find "had you searched, you should have found something like <link>" to throw me a bone. Not 43 different threads, but one showing at least some of the info I was seeking. Often with being TOO new to this, not knowing WHAT to search for makes it more difficult.

Thanks for the CD and for offering the pre-patched kernels. I just had thought there would have been instructions in the f1-f3 routine giving something to show how to copy the kernel on s2 boxes since s1 was included.

The point here isn't to argue with you, but rather to hopefully explain where I'm coming from and why I asked the question.

Yes, the networking discussion does need to be taken elsewhere agreed.

We are going to be adding all sorts of utilities to the CD and its important to try to keep this thread as on-topic as possible.

The point is that ALL tool-specific questions should be asked in another thread (if one doesn't exist, you can always start one).

Meanwhile, feel free to post any links you've discovered that may help others to use the tools more effectively.

As for the information associated with kernel replacement on a Series2 vs using our CopyKern utility on a Series1; the technical issues are significantly different, so its not a simple request.

Thx

[diskus]

Ive looked but one thing Im still unclear on,

If I use this cd and mfstools on a 540-140 to take the 120gig and expand it to 120 and 200 total 320 is there an issue with the swap size limit ? Im using the command in hinsdale to increase the swap file size from the one on the 120 but i understand there is a 274 gig limit using this or am I wrong? do i somehow have to also copy a new kernel to the drive or not?

[slorenzen]

do any of these ISO images contain the software for upgrading network drivers to support the usb ports(USB to LAN or USB to wireless usb adapter.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by slorenzen
do any of these ISO images contain the software for upgrading network drivers to support the usb ports(USB to LAN or USB to wireless usb adapter.

No, currently the files required to do so are not included on this CD; they will be at some point, but right now there are a lot of different tools in use, and not a lot of good how-to information out there. Right now, there doesn't seem to be any sense in including a bunch of additional tools which people don't know how to use.

[bnm81002]

may I ask once again can I use the LBA48 CD from PTV Upgrade for my Philips DSR704 along with MFS Tools and anything else needed for installing the LBA48 Kernel for support in my Philips unit? if not then is there anything I can do to enable the Philips to use LBA48 support?

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by bnm81002
may I ask once again can I use the LBA48 CD from PTV Upgrade for my Philips DSR704 along with MFS Tools and anything else needed for installing the LBA48 Kernel for support in my Philips unit? if not then is there anything I can do to enable the Philips to use LBA48 support?

The PTVupgrade LBA48 CD does not offer any LBA48 support or tools for the Philips DSR704. The specific model numbers supported are listed in the very first post of this thread.

[LightCC]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
I don't know if I'd be using DD for that sort of thing. Go the MFStools route; it does work. If you can get the DD method to work, benchmark results would be interesting, but I don't think its going to be faster.

I went the dd method copying over an original, full 40GB TIVO drive to a new 160GB drive. It took roughly 7 hours. Somewhere between 6.5 and 7.5 anyway...

Someone ought to add some progress reporting to dd... :)

Anyone have benchmarks from the MFS route?

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by LightCC
I went the dd method copying over an original, full 40GB TIVO drive to a new 160GB drive. It took roughly 7 hours. Somewhere between 6.5 and 7.5 anyway...

Someone ought to add some progress reporting to dd... :)

Anyone have benchmarks from the MFS route?

MFS is significantly faster, but its performance is going to vary because it will be more CPU dependent, and related to the levels of compression you use when using it at well.

Not a lot of benefit to doing major benchmarking here unless you really have nothing more to do -- its definitely faster, though.

[wudilye]

I have 2 Tivos and recently did some upgrade work on both, so I used dd on one (~ 14 hrs for a 120Gb drive) and mfs on the other (~ 4 hrs for a 120Gb drive). No further benchmarking required, it's a no brainer...

[wudilye]

So, those of us with non-native LBA48 Series2s (like my Hughes SD-DVR40) have 2 options? Wait for 5.x and pray it has LBA48, or beg for a Series2 version of copykern? I know it's not a simple request, so I'm on my knees begging :D

[Robert S]

a Series2 version of copykern

CopyKern is not the problem. What you need is a kernel with LBA-48 support and a way of persuading the TiVo to boot an unsigned kernel.

Both of those things exist.

[tivoupgrade]

Right now, we have no free utility for enabling the LBA48 kernel on this model, however we are including an LBA48 kernel (along with the mods associated with allowing it to boot) with our newest replacement drive kits (PTVnet). Eventually, we'll have some end-user utilities available (not sure yet whether they will be free) for doing what you want.

[hnaparst]

I have a HDR112, series 1. I've already successfully upgraded to an LBA48 v3.0 kernel using tpip and set upgradesoftware=false. I have two disks total=280 GB, just over the 274 GB limit for 127 MB swap.

Two questions I really don't see answered in the thread:

1) It seems that I need to enlarge my swap slightly. What is the one command or command sequence that will do that and preserve all my programs (or alternatively, not preserve them)? Has mfstools been patched or fixed yet to allow a restore to over 127 MB? I have a bunch of TiVo utility disks, so feel free to use commands from those disks too.

2) Can I upgrade to a more recent kernel from Todd Miller's disk to access new TiVo features? Will my hardware support a more recent kernel? I'd love to have all my copies of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" go into one folder, but v3.0 doesn't do that.

Harold

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by hnaparst
I have a HDR112, series 1. I've already successfully upgraded to an LBA48 v3.0 kernel using tpip and set upgradesoftware=false. I have two disks total=280 GB, just over the 274 GB limit for 127 MB swap.

Two questions I really don't see answered in the thread:

1) It seems that I need to enlarge my swap slightly. What is the one command or command sequence that will do that and preserve all my programs (or alternatively, not preserve them)? Has mfstools been patched or fixed yet to allow a restore to over 127 MB? I have a bunch of TiVo utility disks, so feel free to use commands from those disks too.

2) Can I upgrade to a more recent kernel from Todd Miller's disk to access new TiVo features? Will my hardware support a more recent kernel? I'd love to have all my copies of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" go into one folder, but v3.0 doesn't do that.

Harold

Not sure why you actually need to enlarge your swap, but if you want to, its certainly doable.

Use mfstools with the -s xxx option and choose your swap size to be whatever you want it to be. Then use copykern to update the kernel and it will automatically initialize the swap file in the new partition. OR just use tpip to do it.

There should be more info in the readme files on the CD (use the F1 key, F2 key, etc) for that info...

[hnaparst]

I need to enlarge the swap because the maximum disk size that a 127 Mbyte swap partition can support is 274 GB, and I have 280. This has been well documented in this forum. It may have changed, though.

Regarding your second piece of advice, that I use mfstools -s xxx where xxx>127:
mfstools has a bug (to my knowledge) that will cause a zero size swap partition to be created if you use xxx>127.

Do you have any further information?

Harold

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by hnaparst
I need to enlarge the swap because the maximum disk size that a 127 Mbyte swap partition can support is 274 GB, and I have 280. This has been well documented in this forum. It may have changed, though.

Regarding your second piece of advice, that I use mfstools -s xxx where xxx>127:
mfstools has a bug (to my knowledge) that will cause a zero size swap partition to be created if you use xxx>127.

Do you have any further information?

Harold

Ok, so actually, you don't NEED the extra swap space; it has been well documented that mfsassert won't run if you don't have the extra swap space, its also well documented and well known that you should never have to run mfsassert, and that when it does run, its almost always due to a bad hard drive. Its a matter of opinion; we've never been proponents of pushing the large swap space.

With that said, you might WANT the extra swap space, and there is nothing wrong with that, but I think its important that people understand that although there are few strong opionions in favor of larger swap space (I know Robert S is a big proponent of it), the reality is that it is truly not needed.

Lastly, my previous post gives you the info need to create that larger space; just follow those directions, and/or the ones on the CD and it will work fine. CopyKern and tpip will take care of the swap initialization for you.

[hnaparst]

Three follow up questions:

1) Given that I don't NEED the swap space to be more than 127 MB, why would I want it to be large? Will I get better performance?

2) Why are you recommending using mfsrestore -s to create swap spaces larger than 127MB? Isn't there a fatal bug in mfsrestore that prevents that?

3) Can I use more recent kernels than the 3.0 kernel in order to get more features?

Harold

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by hnaparst
Three follow up questions:

1) Given that I don't NEED the swap space to be more than 127 MB, why would I want it to be large? Will I get better performance?

2) Why are you recommending using mfsrestore -s to create swap spaces larger than 127MB? Isn't there a fatal bug in mfsrestore that prevents that?

3) Can I use more recent kernels than the 3.0 kernel in order to get more features?

Harold

1) my point exactly... there really is no benefit that you will ever see, in my opinion

2) i am not recommending it, i'm telling you how to use it, in conjunction with copykern or tpip, so that you can have a swap space larger than 127MB

3) no

[MRussell]

Hi, I have one quick question:-

I recently upgraded my UK Tivo to use a single 200GB disk using V2.0 of your excellent LBA48 disk. V2.0 was used because I somehow got hold of an old copy.

My question is, is there any point in me blowing V3.0 to CD and running copykern again - is there any difference in the kernel itself between V2 and V3, or were the differences only in the tools provided etc?

Mark.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by MRussell
Hi, I have one quick question:-

I recently upgraded my UK Tivo to use a single 200GB disk using V2.0 of your excellent LBA48 disk. V2.0 was used because I somehow got hold of an old copy.

My question is, is there any point in me blowing V3.0 to CD and running copykern again - is there any difference in the kernel itself between V2 and V3, or were the differences only in the tools provided etc?

Mark.

I am not aware of the kernel specifics associated with version of the software running on UK systems versus the US versions. You might want to check the underground forum as there is an LBA48 discussion there that Robert S participated in - he is in the UK and knows the details of the UK kernel and whether its different than the ones we supply. I know you can use copykern to update your kernel and that the appropriate one is already on the CD; I just don't know which one is appropriate.

[MRussell]

Thanks for the (very) quick reply :)

I'll take a look over there.

[Robert S]

The UK TiVo is still running 2.5.5, so the 2.5 kernel seems appropriate. No complaints about it from UK users.

As for hnaparst's worries over swap, saying that 274Gb is the limit for 127Mb of swap is a convenient simplification. mfsfix requires exactly 128Mb of memory to check 274Gb of disk space. But the 127Mb of swap is not the only memory available to mfsfix - there's also about 10Mb of RAM available, so the true limit will be somewhere around the 300Gb mark for Series 1 stand alones, and a bit higher still for DTiVoes and Series 2's with their extra 16Mb of RAM.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by Robert S
The UK TiVo is still running 2.5.5, so the 2.5 kernel seems appropriate. No complaints about it from UK users.

As for hnaparst's worries over swap, saying that 274Gb is the limit for 127Mb of swap is a convenient simplification. mfsfix requires exactly 128Mb of memory to check 274Gb of disk space. But the 127Mb of swap is not the only memory available to mfsfix - there's also about 10Mb of RAM available, so the true limit will be somewhere around the 300Gb mark for Series 1 stand alones, and a bit higher still for DTiVoes and Series 2's with their extra 16Mb of RAM.

right... so the message i want to make sure all those who are confused or concerned regarding the whole large swap file issue is this:

We understand the limitations of mfstools and the fact that a 127MB swap file is not large enough to handle invocations of mfsfix on systems with "very large drives" -- however we feel that it is not a problem worth worrying about, unless you have a particular interest in investigating and pursuing it. We believe that the "casual upgrader" should not be concerned about this issue at all - in fact, the energy/time/effort is definitely better spent, thoroughly running diagnostics on any drive you consider putting into your TiVo. In EVERY case where we've had a "green screened" drive returned to us, its been due to a bad hard drive; that means that whether mfsfix runs or not, you've still got an underlying problem.

Yes, I'm aware of the fact that a system that may be temporariliy recovered due to a GSOD, mfsfix revival, may give you the opportunity to rescue your content or settings, or whatever, however I still consider this to be a corner case, and I'd hate to see anyone losing sleep over not having a large swap because they either couldn't figure out how to do it, or where intimidated into not ugprading at all because they didn't think they could without having to have a large swap.

With that said, it can't hurt to have it, but again, don't sweat it because its just not that big of an issue.

[eibgrad]

Thank you for the v3.0 CD, worked great. Updated my Humax DRT800 "A" drive from a Seagate 80GB to Seagate 200GB. Incredibly easy, just followed Hinsdale documentation and used your CD. Took me about 3 hours, most of the time spent being VERY cautious and deliberate so as to avoid mistakes. Another upgrade I could probably do in 1 hour given what I know now.

Now if I could only find a way to make this 200GB as quiet as the original 80GB! Have since discovered Humax was using a special "U" version drive, which I think runs 5400RPM and uses acoustic management. I replaced it w/ a standard, retail Seagate 200GB HD, and wow, is it noisy compared to the original drive. Enough so I'm seriously considering going back to the 80GB HD unless I can find a means to quiet it down! That will be the "fly in the ointment" for a lot of people.

Anyway, that's another story, just wanted to provide some feedback to anyone who might interested in a similar upgrade and let them know this CD works great.

eibgrad

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by eibgrad
Thank you for the v3.0 CD, worked great. Updated my Humax DRT800 "A" drive from a Seagate 80GB to Seagate 200GB. Incredibly easy, just followed Hinsdale documentation and used your CD. Took me about 3 hours, most of the time spent being VERY cautious and deliberate so as to avoid mistakes. Another upgrade I could probably do in 1 hour given what I know now.

Now if I could only find a way to make this 200GB as quiet as the original 80GB! Have since discovered Humax was using a special "U" version drive, which I think runs 5400RPM and uses acoustic management. I replaced it w/ a standard, retail Seagate 200GB HD, and wow, is it noisy compared to the original drive. Enough so I'm seriously considering going back to the 80GB HD unless I can find a means to quiet it down! That will be the "fly in the ointment" for a lot of people.

Anyway, that's another story, just wanted to provide some feedback to anyone who might interested in a similar upgrade and let them know this CD works great.

eibgrad

Excellent, glad things went well. You may want to check the Seagate site to see if they have an acoustic management utility or research use of the "hdparm" command as I know it has some settings for Seagate drives (be careful, though - hdparm can do some nasty things).

Also, your drive may be noisier than usual right now because it may still be busy indexing guide data, and could settle down once its done with that...

[dmk1974]

This has got to be somewhere and I apologize if it's been covered, but using the 3.0 CD, which set of instructions are most appropriate and current? Hinsdale, Weeknees interactive guide, or other?

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by dmk1974
This has got to be somewhere and I apologize if it's been covered, but using the 3.0 CD, which set of instructions are most appropriate and current? Hinsdale, Weeknees interactive guide, or other?

Shouldn't matter which one you choose, just make sure you read and understand the caveats associated with our CD (IE don't use the LBA48 CD to prepare a replacement drive on anything larger than 137GB unless you are doing a kernel transplant or the target TiVo unit has a native LBA48 kernel. If the guides you are referring to don't mention that, you should contact the authors to make sure they cover that issue, as well as any issues associated with using drives larger than 137GB, whether or not you use an LBA48 CD.

[Blurayfan]

Thanks for the 3.0 CD it was a great help upgrading my new DirecTiVo R10 to use a 160GB drive to its full capacity. This gives you another unit to add to your list of native LBA48 supported kernels.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by DVDKingdom
Thanks for the 3.0 CD it was a great help upgrading my new DirecTiVo R10 to use a 160GB drive to its full capacity. This gives you another unit to add to your list of native LBA48 supported kernels.

Oh good. That is good to hear. We haven't gotteh the R10 unit yet to test. Is there an 'official' model number for that or is it just "R10?"

Thx

[Blurayfan]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
Oh good. That is good to hear. We haven't gotteh the R10 unit yet to test. Is there an 'official' model number for that or is it just "R10?"

Thx

R10 is the Official Model name. A Review of the R10 (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=210960) is available on this forum.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by DVDKingdom
Thanks for the 3.0 CD it was a great help upgrading my new DirecTiVo R10 to use a 160GB drive to its full capacity. This gives you another unit to add to your list of native LBA48 supported kernels.

Please see top post (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=198444&perpage=1&pagenumber=1) for updated info; new relase (4.0) incorporates R10 mention, but also some other goodies, including a complete rebuild of the BusyBox environment.

[kf6dky]

I see PTV sells the drives with PTVnet installed and includes LBA48 support, is LBA48 support available for the Hughes DVR80 now? And is so, which utilities or .iso's will allow me to upgrade this?

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by kf6dky
I see PTVupgrade sells the drives with PTVnet installed and includes LBA48 support, is LBA48 support available for the Hughes DVR80 now? And is so, which utilities or .iso's will allow me to upgrade this?

We don't offer a separate utility and kernel for support of LBA48 kernels on these units - we can't give everything away, you know? ;-)

[tivoupgrade]

Anyone having restore issues with the LBA48 CD resulting in a disk that won't boot in your TiVo, try one of the following:

Alternative 1: At boot time, use the "noswap" option

Alternative 2: When using mfsrestore, use the "-b" flag to turn off byte-swapping.

That should solve your problem. This was not an issue with the previous version of the boot cd (3.01) because we changed the default boot scenario from "noswap" to "swap" for devices hdb, hdc and hdd.

Should we switch it back?

If there is anyone available to help us build a new lba48 kernel that will work with the following option:

ide=nodma

Please contact me directly as I believe that will solve the problem and allow partitions to be mounted as "swap" at the same time.

[ashu]

Ahh - is there a consistent pattern to the systems/upgrade scenarios this would affect?

In particular - (for a Humax DRT800 upgrade this weekend) I'm planning to use your LBA48 CD on a Seagate 300GB, connected as /dev/hdb, with my Humax DRT800's 80GB as /dev/hda. Should I anticipate any problems? Should I connect them any differently?

I plan to do a backup-all (including shows) ... I'm VERY patient ;)

Thanks!

[tivoupgrade]

No idea. Only your feedback will help us determine whether there is any consistent pattern; we don't have enough info to generalize about any problems, however my previous post was targeted towards those with that specific problem.

[tivoupgrade]

Never should have changed the boot defaults; back to normal again with version 4.01...

http://www.ptvupgrade.com/products/software/lba48/index.html

[DonnelleyPCDude]

After reading through most of the posts, I myself am a little confused; is the copykern for only the new drive over 160. A year ago I upgraded from the factory 20 gig to a 100 gig, but now that drive occasionally stutters, so I upgraded to 160 ( since it could be failing), but still only see the same 114 hrs. I tried the copykern and it appeared to go flawlessly, yet the same 114 hr limit applies. Do I need to apply the copykern to the 100 gig drive PRIOR to copying to the 160. I know I made a mistake somewhere, ideas anyone?

Is there a better thread for me to be in?

PS The occasional stuttering is now gone, so I think the drive was going bad.

Donnelley

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by DonnelleyPCDude
After reading through most of the posts, I myself am a little confused; is the copykern for only the new drive over 160. A year ago I upgraded from the factory 20 gig to a 100 gig, but now that drive occasionally stutters, so I upgraded to 160 ( since it could be failing), but still only see the same 114 hrs. I tried the copykern and it appeared to go flawlessly, yet the same 114 hr limit applies. Do I need to apply the copykern to the 100 gig drive PRIOR to copying to the 160. I know I made a mistake somewhere, ideas anyone?

Is there a better thread for me to be in?

PS The occasional stuttering is now gone, so I think the drive was going bad.

Donnelley

CopyKern replaces the kernel with an lba48-enabled one, and also initializes your swap space (this is useful for folks who have created one greater than 127MB for which MFStools does not have the ability to properly initialize). CopyKern is simply a script which essentially invokes tpip to do the work. Replacing the kernel will do nothing more than give you a kernel capable of handling the larger address space on your larger drive, but if you didn't do your upgrade properly (ie expand to fill the space of your 160GB drive), its not going to do you much good. You probably need to take a few steps back, and review your upgrade steps to ensure you expanded/utilized the drive properly and then go and use CopyKern to replace the kernel.

[kennet6565]

I have put larger drives (80gb & 160gb) in my Hughes DVR40's and used Intsant Cake. Everyhting works perfectly. I would appreciate it if someone would give the string to expand the drives, using the PTVupgrades Universal Upgrade CD Ver. 10. Thanks

[DonnelleyPCDude]

After some thought, I am thinking that since the main focus of this upgrade was to solve the stuttering issue, and also to get a much quieter drive (WD100gig with AMSET wasn't that quiet), it may be prudent to NOT open the drive the whole way. The idea was to use copykern to upgrade to the lba48-enabled one, but if another software release comes out, won't it replace my current kernel with a non lba48-enabled one, since I have a Series One. I don't want to kill the drive I have, even though I still have the original 20 gig (with the oldest sw version I am sure) and the failing-but-still-usable 100 gig. These other drives have not been upgraded with the new lba48-enabled kernel, so I want to keep them unaltered in case I need to use them for recovery.

Has anyone ever had a lba48-enabled kernel be replaced with a software upgrade from TIVO. Am I being too paranoid? Will it simply not happen the way I think it might?

Thanks in advance,

Donnelley

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by DonnelleyPCDude
After some thought, I am thinking that since the main focus of this upgrade was to solve the stuttering issue, and also to get a much quieter drive (WD100gig with AMSET wasn't that quiet), it may be prudent to NOT open the drive the whole way. The idea was to use copykern to upgrade to the lba48-enabled one, but if another software release comes out, won't it replace my current kernel with a non lba48-enabled one, since I have a Series One. I don't want to kill the drive I have, even though I still have the original 20 gig (with the oldest sw version I am sure) and the failing-but-still-usable 100 gig. These other drives have not been upgraded with the new lba48-enabled kernel, so I want to keep them unaltered in case I need to use them for recovery.

Has anyone ever had a lba48-enabled kernel be replaced with a software upgrade from TIVO. Am I being too paranoid? Will it simply not happen the way I think it might?

Thanks in advance,

Donnelley

The LBA48 thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=83342) in the underground is probably a better place for this question.

Short answer: If you have a Series1 SA unit, you are being paranoid - that product was EOL'ed like two years ago - ie no software updates coming. If you have a Series1 DirecTV unit, your unit is likely to semi-survive a software upgrade; just rerun copykern again after it downloads a new software update. Chances are you are being a bit more cautious than you need to be, but its good to have your eyes open enough to know what you are doing.

[cr33p]

Hi im a newbie but have been trying very hard to do this without asking for help and read up on as much info that I thought would be sufficient, last nite I decided to take the plunge and upgrade my tcd540040 machine. I have 2 160 gig hitachi drives. I used the boot cd from ptvugrades web site. And yes it was for lba48. i copied the image to my windows drive then loaded it to my new A drive booted the tivo and it worked no problems. then i plugged in all the drives the way the directions said and did the long option to copy all my originall data to the new a drive and at the same time restore it and expand both the a drive and the b drive. now it finished with no errors. i boot it up and it says welcome powering up and then the screen switches to the tv that is incoming and then back and forth with it all distorted. Any ideas please help

thanks

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by cr33p
Hi im a newbie but have been trying very hard to do this without asking for help and read up on as much info that I thought would be sufficient, last nite I decided to take the plunge and upgrade my tcd540040 machine. I have 2 160 gig hitachi drives. I used the boot cd from ptvugrades web site. And yes it was for lba48. i copied the image to my windows drive then loaded it to my new A drive booted the tivo and it worked no problems. then i plugged in all the drives the way the directions said and did the long option to copy all my originall data to the new a drive and at the same time restore it and expand both the a drive and the b drive. now it finished with no errors. i boot it up and it says welcome powering up and then the screen switches to the tv that is incoming and then back and forth with it all distorted. Any ideas please help

thanks

You've probably reconnected your TiVo incorrectly or possibly have a bad cable. Please note that this thread is not for "general upgrade support" if you have a problem that is directly related to our CD, please post it here, of course, if your questions aren't specifically answered in the upgrade guides referenced in the first post of this thread. Thx.

[cr33p]

I have a 40/80 cable . is this not the correct one to use? I know the cable works because its working in the windows pc to do the upgrade.

[bsnelson]

Perhaps I'm missing something incredibly obvious, but on a Series 1 combo box (DirecTiVo, whatever you wish to call it), you have to flash the PROM to use a non-standard kernel. I don't see any evidence on this thread that the ISO provides a means to do this.

How is this situation handled with this ISO?

Brad

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by bsnelson
Perhaps I'm missing something incredibly obvious, but on a Series 1 combo box (DirecTiVo, whatever you wish to call it), you have to flash the PROM to use a non-standard kernel. I don't see any evidence on this thread that the ISO provides a means to do this.

How is this situation handled with this ISO?

Brad

It doesn't (yet) - it was actually in the process of dealing with this that I ran into the swap/noswap/dma issues. The best way to flash is either by using this cd here (http://www.silicondust.com/nic_cd_tivoflash_20041218.iso) for now. You can use the instructions provided here (http://forum.ptvupgrade.com/showthread.php?t=975), as well.

[scottjf8]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
It doesn't (yet) - it was actually in the process of dealing with this that I ran into the swap/noswap/dma issues. The best way to flash is either by using this cd here (http://www.silicondust.com/nic_cd_tivoflash_20041218.iso) for now. You can use the instructions provided here (http://forum.ptvupgrade.com/showthread.php?t=975), as well.

I tried using that, and after the standard reboot (which is where I believe it flashes the PROM) I get "cannot boot kernel"... have you had others with this issue? I have a S1 DTivo with a 200GB drive (and have done the 'copykern' part, then rebooted with the flash bootdisk and did the ./tivoflash/install)

[tivoupgrade]

I would try reinstalling the kernel again, and reflashing, just in case the flash didn't take place. Oh, and make sure you are installing the right kernel.

[scottjf8]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
I would try reinstalling the kernel again, and reflashing, just in case the flash didn't take place. Oh, and make sure you are installing the right kernel.

That's what I did.... I did copykern off the Large Disc bootdisc, then rebooted and did the flash... then I put the drive back in the tivo and turned it on.. it started booting, then rebooted, then said cannot boot kernel.

At the reboot point, should I take the drive back out of the tivo and do the copykern again?

[scottjf8]

ok I tried it again and noticed an error this time.. when I run copykern, and put all the parameters in, I get

tpip: unknown boot block signature 0xd01668d7

Does it sound like something happened to the drive? I swear I didn't boot to Windows with it attached, but it sounds like that's what happened... I do have a full backup from before I put the new drive in, so I can restore it if needed...

Does that sound like the problem?

[maximian]

Will, the PTVupgrade CD w/ LBA48 support upgrade my SD-DVR80 DirecTivo to 250 Gig version? I wish to replace the existing drive, save all programs, + season passes, etc, and swap in a 250 Gig drive. Will I see all 250 Gig of capacity? Just wanted to be clear.

I am running version 3.1.1e

[Robert S]

If only Lou could post a list of which models this disk is suitable for, then you'd be sure.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by Robert S
If only Lou could post a list of which models this disk is suitable for, then you'd be sure.

;-)

the list (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?postid=2266039#post2266039)

[maximian]

So basically, the CD is useless for my SD-DVR80, and 250 GB upgrade drive.
Thanks for being honest.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by maximian
So basically, the CD is useless for my SD-DVR80, and 250 GB upgrade drive.
Thanks for being honest.

I wouldn't say its useless.

But if you were to use your 250GB drive for the upgrade, you'd be wasting almost half of it.

[unixadm]

tivoupgrade,

So from what I can understand, there is not a LBA48 kernel that will work in the DVR40/DVR80 Series 2 DirecTiVos....is that correct?

Are they out there and just not on the CD, or do they not exist?

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by unixadm
tivoupgrade,

So from what I can understand, there is not a LBA48 kernel that will work in the DVR40/DVR80 Series 2 DirecTiVos....is that correct?

Are they out there and just not on the CD, or do they not exist?

They are out there and just not on the CD. Kernel replacement on the Series2 is not the same as on the Series1; to get a new kernel to work on the Series2 involves the use of a few other tools. We may offer something on the "free CD' and something a little more automated as an inexpensive download at some point in the future.

[jtayl22]

First time TiVo hacker writes...
- Read Hinsdale-How-To
- Bought 250MB drive for my TiVo Series 2 (TCD540040)
- Downloaded mfstools2.iso
- Used Dell Dimension 4100 (no BIOS support for LBA 48)
- # mfsbackup -aqo - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -xpi - /dev/hda
- Now, I have a 137MB unit.

I think that the problem is with the BIOS on my Dell PC. It is not explicitly stated in this thread if "PTVupgrade LBA 48 CD with MFStools and Enhancements" will help. Am I right to think that I need a PC with LBA 48 BIOS support to be successful?

Any suggestion on how to proceed will be appreciated.

Thanks,
jtayl22

[thepicman]

My CD/DVD ROM is the secondary master, so the following did work:

mount -o ro -t iso9660 /dev/hdc /cdrom



I had the exact same problem today, so I guess the automount still does not work in all cases. Thanks for the post Kaelum!

[bobgcampbell]

I've done a drive size upgrade in the past with my series 1, but having trouble with my series 2.

Series 2 TDC24004A (single 40G)
4.01b-02-2-240
No sub yet, I'm trying to copy the 40G to a 72G before applying more hacks.
No big drive, so I shouldn't need to worry about the tivo not having lba48 support.

I'm using ptvlba48-4.01.iso, but just using mfstools so far.

hda=windows
hdb=new tivo drive, 72G IBM deskstar
hdc=old tivo, 40G
hdd=cd-rom

I got no errors with the following command (tivo.upgrade-instructions.com):

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdb

After this I checked the partitions on the new drive and partitions 4 and 9 had stuff, so I put it in the tivo and it won't boot. It just loops resetting the video every 30s or so.

I put it back in the PC and dmesg shows all drive present but shows the old drive having partitions 1-13 while the new drive has 1-16.

dmesg also shows:
EXT2-fs warning: maximal mount count reached, running e2fsck is recommended
(but I can mount partitions from the new drive)

mfsinfo on the new drive shows partition 14 is zero size. Is this normal?

I checked the help messages for mfsbackup and mfsrestore and can't see any errors in the command I'm using.

Help, what else can I look for?

Bob

[tivoupgrade]

I had the exact same problem today, so I guess the automount still does not work in all cases. Thanks for the post Kaelum!

If you have more than one CD/DVD device in your computer, automount can be a problem; that is the only scenario I know of where it won't work as predicted. Is that the case with your PC?

[thepicman]

If you have more than one CD/DVD device in your computer, automount can be a problem; that is the only scenario I know of where it won't work as predicted. Is that the case with your PC?

No I was using some bits I threw together in a case. I had:

HD0: Nothing attached (Pri Master)
HD1: Old Tivo B (Pri Slave)
HD2: New TiVo A (Sec Master)
HD3: CD Rom (Sec Slave)

Nothing was set cable select either, all jumpers were set true.

-TPM

[tivoupgrade]

No I was using some bits I threw together in a case. I had:

HD0: Nothing attached (Pri Master)
HD1: Old Tivo B (Pri Slave)
HD2: New TiVo A (Sec Master)
HD3: CD Rom (Sec Slave)

Nothing was set cable select either, all jumpers were set true.

-TPM

Hmm. Interesting. Definitely different than I've ever seen (usually, the CDROM would be either primary slave or secondary master) but I don't know off-hand why the mountcd script didn't work. With the variety of BIOS' and potential configuration issues out there, its really impossible to make these things bulletproof...

[thepicman]

Hmm. Interesting. Definitely different than I've ever seen (usually, the CDROM would be either primary slave or secondary master) but I don't know off-hand why the mountcd script didn't work. With the variety of BIOS' and potential configuration issues out there, its really impossible to make these things bulletproof...

They were hooked up that way because Hinsdale's guide calls for that config in my situation. Thanks for the ISO though, It was a great help!


<snip>If you are REPLACING YOUR EXISTING “A” DRIVE with the new larger upgrade drive:

(Assumes existing TiVo A drive as Primary Master, existing TiVo B drive as Primary Slave, and new larger upgrade drive as Secondary Master)

Use the following command to copy the existing A drive to your new upgrade drive at the # prompt:

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc bs=1024k </snip>

[bobgcampbell]

No I was using some bits I threw together in a case. I had:

HD0: Nothing attached (Pri Master)
HD1: Old Tivo B (Pri Slave)
HD2: New TiVo A (Sec Master)
HD3: CD Rom (Sec Slave)

Nothing was set cable select either, all jumpers were set true.

-TPM

I didn't think you could have a slave without a master. Try changing the Old Tivo B over to Pri Master.

Bob

[thepicman]

I didn't think you could have a slave without a master. Try changing the Old Tivo B over to Pri Master.

Bob

Bob, thanks. Sure you can. I did have a Pri Master (old tivo A) until I pulled it. Anyway, it worked, just did not automount from the CD.

[crownroyal]

I was able to get my Tivo upgraded with the LBA48 disk sucessfully and it worked great for about two weeks, then recently I started getting errors on older programs until finally my Tivo got stuck at "Welcome, powering up" (something like that).

I've gone through all the posts and everything but I haven't seen a solution for Tivo's that actually worked, but failed later. What do I need to do? If I missed the solution a link would be great.

Thanks

[tivoupgrade]

I was able to get my Tivo upgraded with the LBA48 disk sucessfully and it worked great for about two weeks, then recently I started getting errors on older programs until finally my Tivo got stuck at "Welcome, powering up" (something like that).

I've gone through all the posts and everything but I haven't seen a solution for Tivo's that actually worked, but failed later. What do I need to do? If I missed the solution a link would be great.

Thanks

Did you ensure that the TiVo you upgraded either had a native LBA48 kernel or that you installed an LBA48 kernel onto the TiVo?

[BobCamp1]

I had this same exact thing happen to me yesterday. For now, I have given up on the LBA48 kernel and am using 137GB of a 160GB drive.

Plug the hard drive back into your PC, boot with the LBA48 ISO, then hit <shift>-<page up> to scroll up the boot messages. I'll bet your hard drive is only 137 GB in size!

You need a PC that supports LBA48 when you do the upgrade. Sometimes you have to set the BIOS's IDE detection to "auto" or "none" to get it to work. Or you need to upgrade your BIOS, or use a new (less than one year old) PC. This should be added to the instructions at the beginning of this thread, as this is a frequent stumbling point.

It is also possible that the copykern command did not work. It always reports it was successful, even when it didn't do anything. I will ask again if there is a way to independently verify copykern was successful, as no one has answered me yet.

Finally, I haven't had time to verify this, but I swore the hard drive said 160 GB before I put it in the Tivo. I remember using IBM's drive fitness test as well as Spinrite, and they both reported 160 GB as the drive size. After I pulled the drive from the Tivo, they now both report only 137 GB! Did the hard drive sense the slow, outdated, UDMA-33 connection of Tivo and automatically cap itself at 137 GB? I haven't heard of anything like this before, but I can't think of a different explanantion.

I am using a Samsung Spinpoint SP hard drive. I didn't have time to rerun the Samsung utilities, but I remember you can set the HD to report any size you want. I remember it was set to 160GB before the upgrade. I wonder if it's set to 137 GB now?

For now, my 20GB to 137 GB upgrade seems enormous, so I'm not worried about the missing 23 GB. I'll let you know in two weeks if my second attempt at upgrading was successful.

[tivoupgrade]

I had this same exact thing happen to me yesterday. For now, I have given up on the LBA48 kernel and am using 137GB of a 160GB drive.

Plug the hard drive back into your PC, boot with the LBA48 ISO, then hit <shift>-<page up> to scroll up the boot messages. I'll bet your hard drive is only 137 GB in size!

You need a PC that supports LBA48 when you do the upgrade. Sometimes you have to set the BIOS's IDE detection to "auto" or "none" to get it to work. Or you need to upgrade your BIOS, or use a new (less than one year old) PC. This should be added to the instructions at the beginning of this thread, as this is a frequent stumbling point.

It is also possible that the copykern command did not work. It always reports it was successful, even when it didn't do anything. I will ask again if there is a way to independently verify copykern was successful, as no one has answered me yet.

Finally, I haven't had time to verify this, but I swore the hard drive said 160 GB before I put it in the Tivo. I remember using IBM's drive fitness test as well as Spinrite, and they both reported 160 GB as the drive size. After I pulled the drive from the Tivo, they now both report only 137 GB! Did the hard drive sense the slow, outdated, UDMA-33 connection of Tivo and automatically cap itself at 137 GB? I haven't heard of anything like this before, but I can't think of a different explanantion.

I am using a Samsung Spinpoint SP hard drive. I didn't have time to rerun the Samsung utilities, but I remember you can set the HD to report any size you want. I remember it was set to 160GB before the upgrade. I wonder if it's set to 137 GB now?

For now, my 20GB to 137 GB upgrade seems enormous, so I'm not worried about the missing 23 GB. I'll let you know in two weeks if my second attempt at upgrading was successful.

We are using the LBA48 CD on systems over 4 years old. You definitely don't need a new PC to boot a kernel that supports LBA48. Practically any PC will work - even an old Pentium MMX should work.

As for verifying whether copykern works, ie ensuring that the correct kernel was installed, you can look in /var/log/kernel after the system has booted (if you can't telnet into the unit, then pull the drive mount the /var partition -- /dev/hdX9) and search for the string "court" in the file -- you should find a kernel log entry that confirms the build of the kernel with the "courtesan" name in it - that is what Todd Miller used when he built the kernel (sorry I can't give you the full entry right now as I do not have access to a system running that kernel at this moment).

Lastly, in the last several posts -- there has been NO mention of what type of TiVo you are talking about here. If you are using a Series2 unit, then this entire sub-discussion is moot; CopyKern is for Series1 units only....

[BobCamp1]

Thanks for telling me how to verify copykern worked. I have a sneaking suspicion this was the problem, but it is weird that my drive suddenly starting reporting only 137 GB. I might never pull the drive again, as the Tivo seems to be happy now. More importantly, my wife seems to be happy now. :D

I understand the LBA48 issue, and I understand that the BIOS and PC shouldn't matter, but I also understand that some older PCs simply choke when the hard drive is larger than 137 GB (or 33.8 GB or 8 GB). I have a old Pentium 133 PC that wouldn't POST with the new hard drive attached. Other PCs do different things.( http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/sizeHandling-c.html )

New PCs have to be able to handle large hard drives properly, especially if they are shipping with them! Using a new PC eliminates one possible problem someone may be having. If your old PC works then go for it.

I am using a Series 1 HDR212. Series 2 standalone owners without LBA48 should just wait for TivoToGo to get downloaded before they upgrade. Other Series 2 owners have to go "other places" for instructions or software.

[sully10128]

I currently have a 160GB A drive and a 60GB B drive in a TiVo Series 2 TCD140060. I upgraded about a year ago, restoring my backup onto the 160GB drive and adding the original 60GB drive as drive B.

I've read that the TivoToGo version of the OS (7.1?) will support LBA addressing. I have 7.1 installed now - is there a simple way to realize the full 160GB of my drive A, now that an LBA48 kernel is in place?

[djtravis]

I am using the current PTVupgrade iso image burned onto a CD.
What I have run into trying to replace my 120g drive with a 300g drive in my SA TiVo TCD240080 with 7.1 software.

hda – Primary master = DOS
hdb – Primary slave = New bigger (300g) drive
hdc – Secondary master = Current TiVo (120g) drive
hdd – Secondary slave = CD

mkdir /mnt/dos
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos

Make backup:
mfsbackup –f4138 –6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc
This created an 207mb file on the DOS disk.

Restore to 300g drive w/o programs:
mfsrestore –s 127 –bzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdb
Put 300g drive in TiVo & it booted fine & reported 86 hours.

Restore to 300g drive w/o programs & expand to full capacity:
mfsrestore –s 127 –xzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdb
Put 300g drive in TiVo & it booted fine & reported 340 hours.

Copy programs from 120g to 300g:
mfsbackup –Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore –s 127 –xzpi - /dev/hdb
Scanning source. Please wait.
Source drive size is 79 hours
- upgraded to 127 hours
Uncompressed backup size: 113979 megabytes
Restore failed: Backup target not large enough for entire backup by itself.

Try dd copy:
dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hdb bs=1024k
after 30 minutes get the following error & copy stops:
dd: reading ‘/dev/hdc’: Input/output error
40829+2 records in
40829+2 records out

As stated in the instructions, I then tried the following:
dd conv=noerror,sync if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hdb bs=1024k
Same errors as above, but kept copying. Finished after 1 hr 45 min.

Put in TiVo & get "Welcome. Powering up…" for 1 min 15 sec.
Then "Almost There" for 25 sec.
Then green screen with some error & statement to leave things alone for 3 hours.
Then back to "Welcome. Powering up…"

I have 2 hours more to wait. I have no indication that anything is happening inside that box, but I'll play along for the next 2 hours! After that, I'll go back to the restore/expand without saving programs, put the drive in the TiVo & see how long it'll work.

Does anyone have any ideas why the copy programs didn't work?

[wwli7p]

Does any linux users out there have a PTVupgrade TiVo Upgrade CD with LBA48 support for Series1 cd that I could get the programs off and sent to me in a gzipped file, minus mfstools.

Will

[FredericLS]

I have a DSR6000 that contains two upgraded drives from 2 years ago. I now would like to use two new 250 drives. I expect to replace the kernel, of course. When I did my upgrade before, I booted off the floppy so I could do two disks in and two disks out with backup | restore to keep my recordings. I would like to do this method again, but the only floppy I seem to find does not have LBA48 support which I believe is necessary to fully use the drives. The second message posted to this thread asked about this but was never replied to as I could find. I will then boot off the your LBA48 CD to complete the process of replacing the kernel and other enhancements (actually have universal 10 CD). Is there an LBA48 kernel floppy like the Tiger floppy with mfstools or a way of making one from your CD?

Second question may not be correctly addressed in this thread, but I will ask it anyway. If I buy Cake and setup the two new drives, is there a way to backup old recordings and restore them onto the new cake drives?

Thanks

[tivoupgrade]

I have a DSR6000 that contains two upgraded drives from 2 years ago. I now would like to use two new 250 drives. I expect to replace the kernel, of course. When I did my upgrade before, I booted off the floppy so I could do two disks in and two disks out with backup | restore to keep my recordings. I would like to do this method again, but the only floppy I seem to find does not have LBA48 support which I believe is necessary to fully use the drives. The second message posted to this thread asked about this but was never replied to as I could find. I will then boot off the your LBA48 CD to complete the process of replacing the kernel and other enhancements (actually have universal 10 CD). Is there an LBA48 kernel floppy like the Tiger floppy with mfstools or a way of making one from your CD?

Second question may not be correctly addressed in this thread, but I will ask it anyway. If I buy Cake and setup the two new drives, is there a way to backup old recordings and restore them onto the new cake drives?

Thanks

You are going to have a lot of work ahead of you if you want to keep your old recordings. First of all, there is no lba48 floppy that I'm aware of, but more importantly, you may have run out of partitions and may very well have a problem expanding the drive set (keep digging on these forums as there another thread that discusses this -- check the LBA48 thread in the underground).

One way to work around not having and LBA48 floppy (I've been thinking about whipping one out, but I don't think there would be a lot of use for it, relative to some of the other things we are working on), would be just to use DD to copy each of your two drives to each of the two new target drives. You could do this by booting off the CD and only connecting two drives at a time. Then go ahead and do your mfsadd on the new drives AFTER you are done.

As for your last question... InstantCake creates brand new replacement drives; we are working on an extended version that will give you an option to backup your existing drive to a new 'set" but again, you are still subject to the limitations above.

My recommendation would be to do a backup of your dual-drives, but just your settings and preferences. Yes, you will lose your recordings, but over time, you should be able to recreate your library.

[ashu]

My recommendation would be to do a backup of your dual-drives, but just your settings and preferences. Yes, you will lose your recordings, but over time, you should be able to recreate your library.

I'll second that recommendation, and strongly recommend (feasible only for HMO/MRV-capable TiVos, of course!) owning a second TiVo, and offloading shows to it, upgrading to a blank disk (or disks), and moving shows back if needed.

Eschew shows you don't care too much about saving, and only back-up the most critical ones! It takes MANY, MANY hours to make a backup and save recordings (14-16 hours for my half-full 80GB DRT800 last month!), although you can argue its still faster than a FULL networked backup/restore! I guess I should at least have deleted some of the Suggestions before I upgraded ;)

I'm trying to do something similar, but using two TiVos, and would love for ptvupgrade to give a quick glance at my thread and confirm what I'm about to attmept is the right way to go about things: :)
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=231155

[FredericLS]

Thanks for your help and suggestions. It seems to me that if I can not save my recordings, I might as well use InstantCake to start fresh and make full use of the two new drives. I have 65 season passes but no big deal to recreate. Preferences are nice to save to indicate that I have viewed the shows, but since I pick only instead of TiVo, they are not necessary. I am correct that InstantCake will do everything including CacheCard setup and prom CRC check fix? I believe that I get the additional network update capability too? Seems a no brainer unless I am mistaken and missed something else. Thanks again.

[tivoupgrade]

Thanks for your help and suggestions. It seems to me that if I can not save my recordings, I might as well use InstantCake to start fresh and make full use of the two new drives. I have 65 season passes but no big deal to recreate. Preferences are nice to save to indicate that I have viewed the shows, but since I pick only instead of TiVo, they are not necessary. I am correct that InstantCake will do everything including CacheCard setup and prom CRC check fix? I believe that I get the additional network update capability too? Seems a no brainer unless I am mistaken and missed something else. Thanks again.

Yes, that is correct; CacheCard drivers, as well as flashing is taken care of with InstantCake. Note that IC creates the equivalent of a "NetReady" drive; more about that, and how to get telnet and other utils working here (http://www.ptvupgrade.com/support/netready/) (way off-topic now...)

Thx again.

[FredericLS]

Just downloaded. Thanks.

[kleckner]

I was able to get my Tivo upgraded with the LBA48 disk sucessfully and it worked great for about two weeks, then recently I started getting errors on older programs until finally my Tivo got stuck at "Welcome, powering up" (something like that).

I've gone through all the posts and everything but I haven't seen a solution for Tivo's that actually worked, but failed later. What do I need to do? If I missed the solution a link would be great.

Thanks

I had the same problem...didn't realize I needed to run copykern. I have one old program that fails and I have since run copykern. Is this going to fix it going forward, or do you need to copy to a new drive and run copykern before the system boots in the Tivo?

FYI, Phillips HD112. Maxtor Quickview 160 replacing a noisy 3 year old Maxtor 160 (that was only using 137GB)

[Maruzo]

ok, i've read this entire thread and i'm getting really more puzzled about the exact commands i need for my upgrades. I have a samsung directv dvr (SIR-S4080R) with a wd 80gb original drive with a newly upgraded 6.2 software via directv's sattelite.

I am looking to install a newer hitachi 250gb as a single drive upgrade.

Can somebody kindly point me to the correct steps to commence this upgrade?

thanks very much!

Mars

[Maruzo]

Two questions:

1. If i successfully upgraded my samsung's original 80gb with the 6.2 software unto a larger 250gb drive, can i then use the same 80 gb to do another upgrade to another 250gb drive, and then install that 2nd 250gb drive into a philips dvr-708?

I've read somewhere that the motherboards and chipsets on these series 2 directv tivos are all the same regardless of who made these units. Whether samsung or philips all made the same units with the exact same spec.

So can i do the swap successfully? Has anyone tried it?

2. i want to retrieve a maxtor 200gb drive that was installed on my philips dvr-708 and reuse it as a regular winxp boot drive. I'm afraid that only i plug in the maxtor into a regular pc, it'll be locked up and be seen as an 8mb drive.

Is there any steps that i can take to return this maxtor back to it's original state so i can reformat it in ntfs correctly?

Thanks Very Much!

Mars

[Maruzo]

Bump!

[tsrbff]

Please forgive me if my questions are not applicable to this thread, but I have a couple simple (I think) questions that pertain to the LBA48 stuff and to PTVupgrade.

I would like clarification on the following, (understanding that I am not talking about trying to keep previous recordings or use/re-use existing hard drive):

If I buy the InstantCake CD that PTVupgrade sells, and use it with a brand-new drive (or driveS), will it automatically enable the use of greater drive capacities than 137GB if I used say a 160GB drive/drives? On either of the TiVos listed below?

Is there a limit to how large of a drive it would/could enable (200GB or greater maybe)?

Are these InstantCake CDs also machine-specific, like one CD for my Philips S1 HDR-212 and a different one for my sister's S2 TiVo TCD 540040?

Does having this CD substitute for keeping a backup image of the software? I can just go buy a hard drive and re-use the InstantCake?

Any and all comments from those who know will be greatly appreciated, and please be as specific as you can in regards to the different units I mentioned above. And my profound apologies if this had no business in this thread. Thanks in advance to all who will reply, and God Bless!

Tracy Faulkner

[BobCamp1]

If I buy the InstantCake CD that PTVupgrade sells, and use it with a brand-new drive (or driveS), will it automatically enable the use of greater drive capacities than 137GB if I used say a 160GB drive/drives? On either of the TiVos listed below?
Yep.

Is there a limit to how large of a drive it would/could enable (200GB or greater maybe)?
There are other threads talking about that. I've heard of 400GB. Note that the more space you add the slower your Tivo's menus will operate. After updating my HDR212 to 137GB (I didn't use the Instantcake CD for this upgrade), it takes up to 7 seconds for the "now playing" menu to appear when I hit the Tivo button on the remote. Recording and playback are unaffected.

The Series 2 stand-alone units now support HDs > 137GB with the 7.0 (or later) software. You can find personalized directions for creating a backup image and restoring it (or transferring everything off the old HD) on http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/ . But if you are uncomfortable with Linux or have problems with MFSTools, an InstantCake CD is a good backup plan if things go bad.

Are these InstantCake CDs also machine-specific, like one CD for my Philips S1 HDR-212 and a different one for my sister's S2 TiVo TCD 540040?
Yes, they are machine specific. You may be able to get away with using an HDR112 CD with an HDR 212, since the only real difference between them is the HD size. But in general the CDs are very specific. You defintely cannot use a Series 1 CD on a Series 2 Tivo or vice versa, or use a stand-alone CD with a DirecTivo.

Does having this CD substitute for keeping a backup image of the software? I can just go buy a hard drive and re-use the InstantCake?
Yes, you don't need a backup image.

[ronsch]

Lou,

I took my shot at using your expansion tools yesterday. I started with a pristine 40gb Quantum Fireball from a DSR6000 and used the PTVUpgrade cd to create a backup and then to do a full copy to my new 250gb WD drive. These seemed to work fine. The long copy took about six hours.

This morning I tried to finish up with copykern. Everything seemed to go well until it tried to replace the kernel. It made the backup of the existing kernel on /mnt but then failed to copy in the new kernel as it said the file couldn't be found. This seems to match other posts where the cdrom is not properly mounted, although copykern actually ran on my system whereas other posts indicate it wouldn't even run. I only have a single dvd configured as secondary slave. I will try the solution published in this thread when I get home.

I also agree with some other posters that the documentation provided on the iso makes no mention of the prom flash requirement. Granted there are multiple how-tos elsewhere but this is your how-to on using copykern. It should at least reference specific documentation that describes the other requirements for copykern to work and keep on working. I intend to use the full Jenkins hack procedure on the new drive but am wondering if that should be done before using your process or if it will still work after?

Ok. Mounted cdrom; copykern ran successfully; restored a copy of my image to a spare drive and also installed Jenkins flash uility; used that drive to flash the prom; installed new big drive and voila; 235 hour DirecTiVo. I'll save the rest of the hacks for this weekend.

[Alessan]

I had this same exact thing happen to me yesterday. For now, I have given up on the LBA48 kernel and am using 137GB of a 160GB drive.

Plug the hard drive back into your PC, boot with the LBA48 ISO, then hit <shift>-<page up> to scroll up the boot messages. I'll bet your hard drive is only 137 GB in size!

You need a PC that supports LBA48 when you do the upgrade. Sometimes you have to set the BIOS's IDE detection to "auto" or "none" to get it to work. Or you need to upgrade your BIOS, or use a new (less than one year old) PC. This should be added to the instructions at the beginning of this thread, as this is a frequent stumbling point.

It is also possible that the copykern command did not work. It always reports it was successful, even when it didn't do anything. I will ask again if there is a way to independently verify copykern was successful, as no one has answered me yet.

Finally, I haven't had time to verify this, but I swore the hard drive said 160 GB before I put it in the Tivo. I remember using IBM's drive fitness test as well as Spinrite, and they both reported 160 GB as the drive size. After I pulled the drive from the Tivo, they now both report only 137 GB! Did the hard drive sense the slow, outdated, UDMA-33 connection of Tivo and automatically cap itself at 137 GB? I haven't heard of anything like this before, but I can't think of a different explanantion.

I am using a Samsung Spinpoint SP hard drive. I didn't have time to rerun the Samsung utilities, but I remember you can set the HD to report any size you want. I remember it was set to 160GB before the upgrade. I wonder if it's set to 137 GB now?

For now, my 20GB to 137 GB upgrade seems enormous, so I'm not worried about the missing 23 GB. I'll let you know in two weeks if my second attempt at upgrading was successful.

how about the new 7.1 upgrade, did that upgrade the kernal so we can go over the 137gb?

[BobCamp1]

The 7.1 software contains the kernel to go over 137GB. Since I have a series 1 Tivo, I'll never get that kernel.

My upgrade has worked using the original kernel and just 137GB of the hard drive.

[Alessan]

The 7.1 software contains the kernel to go over 137GB. Since I have a series 1 Tivo, I'll never get that kernel.

My upgrade has worked using the original kernel and just 137GB of the hard drive.

kool, I have a 160 I want to put in. I'll see how it goes on Friday

[lafos]

I have two Toshiba SD-H400 systems. Several months ago, I upgraded one of them with a 160 GB drive using V3.01 of the PTVupgrade CD. It worked like a champ. TiVo SW v5.2 then.

Now I'm trying to upgrade the other to 300GB (my wife's), using v4.01 CD. I want to save the shows, so I'm using the command

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdd | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdc

The backup starts, and then stops after copying some of the disk. The percentage keeps inching up; after the 6th try I'm up to 6.8%.

The computer is the same as the earlier upgrade, a P233MMX with

hda = win98 FAT32
hdb = cdrom
hdc = new TiVo drive
hdd = original TiVo drive

The Linux kernel properly recognizes all the drives and their sizes. I've tried with the bios drive detect for the secondary IDE turned to auto or off with no effect.

Any ideas on how I can get this to complete the backup?

[tivoupgrade]

It may be the kernel on our CD. For some reason, in some PC's it can hang when attempting to make a backup using mfstools. We have a newer kernel that seems to address the problem, but I've not had time to incorporate it into a new CD for release. Might want to use the older CD or the more generic mfstools CD instead, as an alternative for now.

[lafos]

Thanks for the quick reply.

Actually, I had tried the 3.01 CD first. It would crash with and error "premature end to backup data". That's why I tried the newer CD. I am now testing with IDE prefetch turned off.

The system starts the copy, and everything seems fine, but at some point it stops. The only really new variable is the size of the destination. The first time I used a 160GB drive, and am now trying a 300MB drive. The bigger drive also has an 8MB buffer, in case that could have something to do with it.

[DanGilbertTX]

I am having a problem using the PTVUpgrade v4.01 CD for doing a 2 -> 1 (14Gb+80Gb to 250Gb) upgrade. I boot the CD and start using the command:

vmlinuz hda=bswap hdb=bswap hdc=bswap

This gets my A & B drives mapped correctly. I then go to run the mfstools using the following command:

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda /dev/hdb|mfsrestore -s 255 -xzpi - /dev/hdc

I get the following output:

mfs_load_volume_header: mfs_read_data: Success
mfsbackup: Backup failed to startup. Make sure you specified the right devices, and that the drives are not locked.

Ok, now here is the crazy part. I can load up a standard MFSTools 2.0 CD and load the exact same way and run that same command and it starts and works correctly. Problem with using the MFSTools 2.0 CD is that it doesn't have LBA48 support so I get stuck with a 137Gb disk. So, I am looking for suggestions of how I can get the LBA48 disk to work or even expand the afterwards. I don't have another drive to use for a backup so that isn't really an option. I also am not willing to lose my recorded shows.

So, what do I need to do to get it to work? Thanks in advance.

[DanGilbertTX]

Just checked again to make sure there weren't any differences in what I was doing using the MFSTools 2.0 disk and the PTVUpgrade v4.01 disk. I am using exactly the same hardware setup and the exact same command-line to start the CD. So, why is it bombing out with the PTVUpgrade disk and not even scanning the source drive?

[DanGilbertTX]

Figured out the issue. The PTVUpgrade v4.x CD doesn't auto unlock drives like both MFSTools v2.0 CD and Steve Jenkins CD. This would be nice to be added to the startup script on the PTVUpgrade CD. My fault for not seeing it in the first place, but it would be nice if the CD just did the unlocking automatically when mounting the drives during startup.

[CraigHB]

Here are some specs first;

Samsung SIR-4040R DirecTV with one WD 160GB drive.
An identical WD 160GB drive on-hand as a spare
PTV LBA48 MFSTools disk
DirecTiVo version 6.2

When using the following to do a disk copy from the primary disk to the spare disk with expansion;

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdb

I'm getting the error;

"Restore failed: Backup target not large enough for entire backup by itself"

Now, if I do a restore with expansion from a minimal backup file, the spare disk works fine in the TiVo and I get the expected increase from 120 to 140 hours.

If i do a disk copy without expansion (less the "-x" option), I get a 120 hour disk that works fine in the TiVo.

So, I'm kind of stuck on how I can expand my volume while keeping all my recorded shows. Is there something I can do to resolve the error? Is there some way I can work around it?

Thanks,

- Craig

[JoeShabado]

Just upgraded my Series 2 140060 unit for the second time (previously was two 120G drives) to two 250G drives (638hrs+ record time). Used this image to do the upgrade. Just wanted to say thanks for all the hard work and support information.

[tivoupgrade]

Just upgraded my Series 2 140060 unit for the second time (previously was two 120G drives) to two 250G drives (638hrs+ record time). Used this image to do the upgrade. Just wanted to say thanks for all the hard work and support information.

You were using 7.1 of the TiVo software to do this, correct?

[JoeShabado]

Yes, I was upgraded to 7.1 before I started this upgrade.

[squiddog]

Here are some specs first;

Samsung SIR-4040R DirecTV with one WD 160GB drive.
An identical WD 160GB drive on-hand as a spare
PTV LBA48 MFSTools disk
DirecTiVo version 6.2

When using the following to do a disk copy from the primary disk to the spare disk with expansion;

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdb

I'm getting the error;

"Restore failed: Backup target not large enough for entire backup by itself"

Now, if I do a restore with expansion from a minimal backup file, the spare disk works fine in the TiVo and I get the expected increase from 120 to 140 hours.

If i do a disk copy without expansion (less the "-x" option), I get a 120 hour disk that works fine in the TiVo.

So, I'm kind of stuck on how I can expand my volume while keeping all my recorded shows. Is there something I can do to resolve the error? Is there some way I can work around it?

Thanks,

- Craig

I am stuck in exactly the same position.

I am upgrading from an 80GB drive to a 160. I have the PTV LBA48 boot disk. My system is a DirecTV Tivo with 6.2 recently downloaded.

I get "Restore failed: Backup target not large enough for entire backup by itself."

If I remove the -x and leave it as -zpi, it completes but doesn't expand.

This drive was upgraded/expanded once from 40 to 78, and mfsbackup notes that and says "This MFS volue may be expanded 3 more times".

[CraigHB]

I am stuck in exactly the same position.

I am upgrading from an 80GB drive to a 160. I have the PTV LBA48 boot disk. My system is a DirecTV Tivo with 6.2 recently downloaded.

I get "Restore failed: Backup target not large enough for entire backup by itself."

If I remove the -x and leave it as -zpi, it completes but doesn't expand.

This drive was upgraded/expanded once from 40 to 78, and mfsbackup notes that and says "This MFS volue may be expanded 3 more times".Yea, it's a tough one. I cross-posted and got a response in another thread that bascially states there's no way to do it. MFS Tools uses up all the available partitions when it expands a single disk system. So, it can't be expanded again. You have to start with the standard backup that doesn't save recorded shows. Your standard backup is decoupled from any expansion and represents the original disk size of your system.

Basically, there is no way to save recorded shows and expand a single disk system that has already been expanded. It's a bummer, but hey, at least we *can* upgrade our TiVos' recording capacity so it's better than no tools at all.

If you find some way to do it, let me know. I haven't upgraded yet and would still like to keep my recorded shows.

- Craig

[webbglider]

As a new "upgrader" I appreciate the info but the link you referenced shows three possible downloads but how would a new guy know whether to download the LBA48 with byteswap or without byteswap - what is the significance. Probably obvious but I don't see it. Thanks.

[tivoupgrade]

As a new "upgrader" I appreciate the info but the link you referenced shows three possible downloads but how would a new guy know whether to download the LBA48 with byteswap or without byteswap - what is the significance. Probably obvious but I don't see it. Thanks.

You can use the latest, but it doesn't matter; just know that there is a difference between the latest version and the previous one; and depending upon which guide you are using, the version of the CD your are using and the type of TiVo you are upgrading, you may need to take that into account.

[CraigHB]

Actually, a TiVo upgrade disk is, for the most part, just a Linux boot CD that accomodates MFS Tools, a set of programs designed to handle TiVo's specialized disk partitions. The author of MFS Tools could have wrote the programs to run on any operating system (like plain old DOS), but chose to use Linux for several important reasons.

An upgrade CD will boot the Linux "kernel" when it starts up, but first presents a "boot prompt" that allows various things to be specified including boot options and kernel parameters. Byte swapping is one of those kernel prameters and can be enabled by specifying hdx=bswap at the boot prompt (where the x in hdx is a, b, c or d depending on the IDE channel/port the disk is connected to). Unless you have an older TiVo, you probably don't need to worry about it. Some older TiVo's won't work if disk upgrades are done without byteswap on. Also, PTV's LBA48 upgrade CD does accept a "boot option" that turns on byte swapping, but is disabled by default.

The designers of the Linux operating system incorporated the ability to handle disks over 137GB into the 2.4 Linux kernel. This is something that affects all Linux systems, not just TiVo upgrade CD's (and TiVo's themselves run on Linux too). Older upgrade disks made with the the 2.2 kernel have the limitation. Newer ones like PTV's LBA48 disk use the 2.4 kernel that supports LBA48, allowing disks much larger. However, MFS Tools does not handle really big disks by default (over 274GB) and needs the "-r 4" option added to the restore command.

The disk size your TiVo can accomodate is also dependent on the software version it's running. Older TiVo's have the 137GB limitation as well so expanding a disk larger than that with an LBA48 upgrade CD may give you problems when you try to run it in a non-LBA48 TiVo. In that case, it would be best to use a non-LBA48 upgrade CD. If the disk is smaller than 137GB, you can safely use either upgrade CD. Some TiVo's have only recently gained the ability to support disks larger than 137GB so you need to know if your TiVo is LBA48 capable before upgrading it with a >137GB disk and an LBA48 upgrade CD.

Ok, hope that answers your questions,

- Craig

[sc0tty8]

So this PTVupgrade will worth with larger drives? So if I wanted to use a pair of 300 gig drives, there would be no problem using these drives? No problems like not getting the full capacity? I was reading another thread, it sounded like it was a lot of work to get them to work.

[CraigHB]

It depends on your TiVo. Most of the newer TiVo's have either come with or, through normal channels, have received the latest software which accomodates disks >137GB (LBA48 capable). I don't know the specific software versions for various TiVo's, but you can check and see if you have the latest software through your TiVo's system information menu. I'm sure that information is posted in this forum somewhere. Just do a search.

If your TiVo is LBA48 capable, upgrading with two 300GB drives isn't any more work than upgrading with two <137GB drives. The only difference is for drives >274GB, you need to add the "-r 4" option (less quotes) to the mfsrestore and/or mfsadd commands.

If your TiVo is not LBA48 capable, then you have to do some tricky stuff to make it so. I would say that's where you get into "too much work". In that case, it would probably be best to upgrade with two <137GB drives.

For an LBA48 capable system, 600GB of disk space is going to result in a huge amount of capacity. Unless you plan to maintain a video library, a capacity that large would probably not be very practical. Also, when capacity gets really big, it can slow down the TiVo quite a bit. For the cost of two 300GB drives, you could buy a single 400GB drive and have some money left over. A single disk is easier to deal with and cheaper. Personally, I run a single 250GB disk.

- Craig

[gdavisloop1]

So the message, "Backup alone is too large for target drive," means you *can't* upgrade a single large HD (already upgraded once), to an even larger HD, and keep your programs?

What if you upgrade to a new HD without keeping your programs?
Can you still put the old HD back in the TiVo when you want to access programs on the old HD? And then back to the new HD when you want to use that one?

Also, what about the 274GB limit of MFSRESTORE vs. a 300GB HD?
Will MFSRESTORE automatically set it up at 274GB, and thus preserve the ability to "fix" it with just 127MB of swap space? Or is there some way to manually limit the 300GB drive to 274 GB?

thanks!
--Gary

[CraigHB]

So the message, "Backup alone is too large for target drive," means you *can't* upgrade a single large HD (already upgraded once), to an even larger HD, and keep your programs?Yes. MFS tools adds partitions to do an expansion. When a single drive system is expanded once, all the partitions are used up. It can't be expanded again. Dual drive systems can expand several times since there are twice as many partitions available. The only way to re-expand a single drive system is to use a standard backup that does not save recorded shows. This is because a standard backup decouples those additional partitions.

What if you upgrade to a new HD without keeping your programs?
Can you still put the old HD back in the TiVo when you want to access programs on the old HD? And then back to the new HD when you want to use that one?You could do that. Personally, I would just watch what you have on the old drive and then switch over to the new one. The other thing you could do is network two TiVo's. Put the bigger drive in the new one and use MRV to watch what has been recorded on the old one. Another thing you could do is "mfsadd" the new drive and run both drives, but then you would be stuck with a dual drive system and that may be something you want to avoid.

Also, what about the 274GB limit of MFSRESTORE vs. a 300GB HD?
Will MFSRESTORE automatically set it up at 274GB, and thus preserve the ability to "fix" it with just 127MB of swap space? Or is there some way to manually limit the 300GB drive to 274 GB?Mfsrestore doesn't have a 274 GB limit. There are a couple posts in the underground that talk about performance problems with drives over 274 GB and that using the -r 4 option resolves those issues.

Best of luck,

- Craig

[series2finally]

OK, I give. Reading all this crap is a huge time sink. I'll buy InstantCake. But the InstantCake blurbs don't say if it's 6.2. If I'm going to all this trouble, of course I want 6.2.

The other big unanswered InstantCake question is how do I get the settings AND content copied over from my Series 1 DirecTiVo to my new Series 2? Are there clear instructions somewhere?

My S1 has a 40GB, my S2 has an 80GB with 4.01b on it, and I have a new 200GB drive ready to go. I'm comfortable with linux.

[dmbong]

If I upgrade an HDVR2 (it says it's Series2 in messages/setup) that's running software version 6.2 with a single 160GB drive, how many hours should I end up with?

I used the PTVupgrade CD along with instructions based on the Interactive Guide and I ended up with "variable, up to 140 hours".

Is that good? Is it using all 160GB or only 137GB?

Cheers!

-Brian

[Gunnyman]

yes Brian
140 hrs is what you get with 160 gigs.

[dmbong]

yes Brian
140 hrs is what you get with 160 gigs.Cool, thanks for answering. So, is it using the whole disk or is it only using 127GB (or whatever it is)?

Thanks,

-Brian

[gdavisloop1]

If you plan to use tpip to initialze a swap space larger than 128MB for a Series 2 TiVo, it probably won't work correctly unless you include this option:

--swapped

See my thread:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=251430
or read this one:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=251011

for more details.

And to keep your programs when you upgrade from an upgrade, the easiest way (perhaps the only way).... just keep your old drive handy for when you want your old programs!

--Gary

[supercell]

Hi I tried to add a second B 400GB drive to my DirectTivo R10 last night using the the Upgrade CD with LBA48 support. It did't work. All the mfstools seemed to respond correctly telling me I had over 500 hours but when I installed the drives back in the tivo it would get past powering up. I finally had to restore the backup to the A drive just to get it working. I am quite sure I had the jumpers correctly Master (A)/Slave(B)

So my question is will a 400GB drive work as a B drive in an R10? How do I know if my kernel in my R10 will support a large drive pver 137GB? Can someone type out the mfsadd command I need to use to bless the new B drive? I don't know about this swap space thing. Thanks for any help.

Mike

[Blurayfan]

Hi I tried to add a second B 400GB drive to my DirectTivo R10 last night using the the Upgrade CD with LBA48 support. It did't work. All the mfstools seemed to respond correctly telling me I had over 500 hours but when I installed the drives back in the tivo it would get past powering up. I finally had to restore the backup to the A drive just to get it working. I am quite sure I had the jumpers correctly Master (A)/Slave(B)

So my question is will a 400GB drive work as a B drive in an R10? How do I know if my kernel in my R10 will support a large drive pver 137GB? Can someone type out the mfsadd command I need to use to bless the new B drive? I don't know about this swap space thing. Thanks for any help.

Mike
The R10 kernel does support drives larger than 137 out of the box. I have a 300GB single drive running flawlessly for over a week.

[Blurayfan]

Hi I tried to add a second B 400GB drive to my DirectTivo R10 last night using the the Upgrade CD with LBA48 support. It did't work. All the mfstools seemed to respond correctly telling me I had over 500 hours but when I installed the drives back in the tivo it would get past powering up. I finally had to restore the backup to the A drive just to get it working. I am quite sure I had the jumpers correctly Master (A)/Slave(B)

So my question is will a 400GB drive work as a B drive in an R10? How do I know if my kernel in my R10 will support a large drive pver 137GB? Can someone type out the mfsadd command I need to use to bless the new B drive? I don't know about this swap space thing. Thanks for any help.

Mike

You could try using this program it seems to be able to override the size error your getting. TiVoMad v3.2 (http://www.trevor.heartfield.zen.co.uk/upgradeav3.2.zip)

1. Run this command from the floppy you downloaded to setup your 400GB B Drive (BlessTiVo /dev/hdX).
2. Put the drive back in your TiVo, now your DVR should accept this disk and update your available hours.

[supercell]

Hi I tried to add a second B 400GB drive to my DirectTivo R10 last night using the the Upgrade CD with LBA48 support. It did't work. All the mfstools seemed to respond correctly telling me I had over 500 hours but when I installed the drives back in the tivo it would get past powering up. I finally had to restore the backup to the A drive just to get it working. I am quite sure I had the jumpers correctly Master (A)/Slave(B)

So my question is will a 400GB drive work as a B drive in an R10? How do I know if my kernel in my R10 will support a large drive pver 137GB? Can someone type out the mfsadd command I need to use to bless the new B drive? I don't know about this swap space thing. Thanks for any help.

Mike


I found the problem. I downloaded the weaknees ISO and the mfsadd needed the -r 4 for large drive 300GB+

The command is:

mfsadd -r 4 -x /dev/hdX /dev/hdZ

http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com

Is awesome.

I now have 421 hours :D

Mike

[tivoupgrade]

I found the problem. I downloaded the weaknees ISO and the mfsadd needed the -r 4 for large drive 300GB+

The command is:

mfsadd -r 4 -x /dev/hdX /dev/hdZ

http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com

Is awesome.

I now have 421 hours :D

Mike

mike -

the mfsadd command you've documented works fine on the PTVupgrade CD, as well and you should no problem using the CD in conjunction with either of our compitors' how-to guides.

alternatively, using the BlessTiVo command on the "add-on" drive is always a safer alternative than mfsadd in situations like these, better to leave your primary drive untouched, and simply prepare your secondary drive the old-school way.

[JamieP]

alternatively, using the BlessTiVo command on the "add-on" drive is always a safer alternative than mfsadd in situations like these, better to leave your primary drive untouched, and simply prepare your secondary drive the old-school way.People have had problems with BlessTivo too on large drives, so I'm not sure I'd agree with the characterization that it is always safer. It does not leave your primary drive untouched: as soon as you boot your tivo with the new "blessed" drive, they are married, and if something went wrong, it's hard to undo. That may mean you may have to start over with a clean image and lose recordings.

See these threads http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=2862470, http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=239132 for some examples of people who had trouble with BlessTivo but succeeded with mfsadd -r 4.

[BBURNES]

I'm interested in upgrading my hi def DirecTivo, the HR110-250, using PTVnet. But rather than replacing my current HD (its only 4months old) I'd rather have an add-on kit. This will make allow not only networking, but also have a dual drive with lots of hard drive space.

Is there any way to do this? I don't see this option.

[tivoupgrade]

People have had problems with BlessTivo too on large drives, so I'm not sure I'd agree with the characterization that it is always safer. It does not leave your primary drive untouched: as soon as you boot your tivo with the new "blessed" drive, they are married, and if something went wrong, it's hard to undo. That may mean you may have to start over with a clean image and lose recordings.

See these threads http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=2862470, http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=239132 for some examples of people who had trouble with BlessTivo but succeeded with mfsadd -r 4.

Agreed. I should have qualified that a bit more... I've not had any problems using BlessTiVo when adding drives. And if one is adding a drive, one should always have a backup; typically I recommend replacing which essentially forces one to keep the original in case of problems down the road.

thx

[max0]

In the old days, I could just use the old MFStools, and it would recognize the 160G drives as 137s, and no problem. (I'm trying to upgrade a TIVO II that doesn't have the LBA 48 support) Can I still do that with the new CD?

[azitnay]

If you really only want to use the first 137GB, just use Tyger's original CD... I don't think there's a way to only expand partially, and that's what you'd need to accomplish what you want on an LBA48-compatible CD such as PTVupgrade's.

However, all Series2's have LBA48 support once they've been upgraded to software version 5.x or higher. You can put your TSN on the priority list at http://research.tivo.com/tivotogo/, and it should get software version 7.1 within a few days (unless it's a DVD burner unit, but I think most of them came with 5.x anyway).

Drew

[dmbong]

azitnay, would that include HDVR2's? I've seen it said here that it's a Series2 and other times that it's not. Pretty sure mine has 7.1.x on it already.

-Brian

[azitnay]

I don't know much about DirecTV units... You most likely have software version 6.x. I don't know the LBA48 status of that software version.

Drew

[dmbong]

Ah. Ok. You may be right. I'll check the version again when I get home. :)

Thanks,

-Brian

[winders]

dmbong,

If you have an HDVR2 with the latest software, it has version 6.2 which has an LBA48 kernel.

Scott

[SrLANGuy]

I'm interested in upgrading my hi def DirecTivo, the HR110-250, using PTVnet. But rather than replacing my current HD (its only 4months old) I'd rather have an add-on kit. This will make allow not only networking, but also have a dual drive with lots of hard drive space.

Is there any way to do this? I don't see this option.
You should be able to:

1) Remove your original hard drive and replace it with the PTVnet hard drive.
2) Add your original hard drive as a second hard drive to give you more space.

[BBURNES]

SrLANGuy,

Thanks. Since I'm not a tech guy, another question: would I have to wipe out my original HD to make sure that I don't have 2 sets of Tivo software (one on new drive, one on old) ??

[azitnay]

The mfsadd command you use to add the original drive back will take care of wiping it clean.

Drew

[quiddich]

I tried to use the copy of dd_rescue on PTVupgrade 4.01 to copy my crashed harddisk, but it was very slow (2mb/second), and I noticed it was old compared to the current version (and didn't have the same options as those I'd found in the forums).

I wound up booting a RIP image, which had a dd_rescue which matched current hints -- it also copied at 28mb/second, which was much better!

I don't know if the difference in speed is due to my specifying the right options or if DMA was involved, too (I hit "enter" to boot each of the images, not taking any options), but if you rebuild the PTVupgrade image, could you update dd_rescue?

And THANKS for making the image available in the first place and for answering questions here -- I was able to salvage my HDTiVo and save all the programs, which made my family very happy! :)

[Callindril]

Howdy,

Got a Phillips 704 recently, and wanted to upgrade it to use a 200g drive...

It has 6.2 on the original disk, so I made a MFSBackup of it, restored it to the 200g disk, and put the 3.1.5 killhdinitrd kernel from the s2_kernel/3.1.5 directory from the PTVUpgrade CD (The one you buy for $5) in both the kernel partitions.

Now my question: is this 3.1.5 killhdinitrd kernel an LBA kernel? Can I just boot again with the PTVUpgrade disk (which boots with an LBA kernel) and do a regular MFS Expand and safely take full advanatge of the 200g drive ?

Thanks
Cal

[tivoupgrade]

Howdy,

Got a Phillips 704 recently, and wanted to upgrade it to use a 200g drive...

It has 6.2 on the original disk, so I made a MFSBackup of it, restored it to the 200g disk, and put the 3.1.5 killhdinitrd kernel from the s2_kernel/3.1.5 directory from the PTVUpgrade CD (The one you buy for $5) in both the kernel partitions.

Now my question: is this 3.1.5 killhdinitrd kernel an LBA kernel? Can I just boot again with the PTVUpgrade disk (which boots with an LBA kernel) and do a regular MFS Expand and safely take full advanatge of the 200g drive ?

Thanks
Cal

You don't need to install a new kernel on your upgraded disk; the kernel that is part of the 6.2 release of the software is already LBA48-aware.

[Callindril]

You don't need to install a new kernel on your upgraded disk; the kernel that is part of the 6.2 release of the software is already LBA48-aware.


That would be true, if all I wanted to do was upgrade the HD size...

But I also want to put on Telnet, FTP, TIVOWebPlus, TYTools...and so on....

So the question still remains...

Is the 3.1.5 killhdinitrd kernel on the PTVUpgrade CD (The one you buy for $5) an LBA kernel?

[tivoupgrade]

That would be true, if all I wanted to do was upgrade the HD size...

But I also want to put on Telnet, FTP, TIVOWebPlus, TYTools...and so on....

So the question still remains...

Is the 3.1.5 killhdinitrd kernel on the PTVUpgrade CD (The one you buy for $5) an LBA kernel?

yes, the modified kernel on that CD contains LBA48 support

[ETD66SS]

Just bought 2 160GB drives to upgrade my HDR110.

I've never upgraded a Tivo b4, and don't have much XP with Linux.

Will the ptvlba48-4.01 ISO I downloaded from this site give me everything I'll need?

I also bought a cachecard, do I wait to do that after I have the 2 new drives working?

[Christovich]

Has anyone experienced any issues with rerunning Guided Setup after upgrading to 2 drives? Mine is rebooting everytime it gets to the dial portion of a call, be it network or phone. (I have adjusted the phone settings for either case).

I have a series 2 T140060.

Thank you for your help.

[Mr. Funny Pants]

Sorry for the carry over from my other thread ("Probably...") but I thought these details made more sense in this thread.

SAT-60, two 120GB drives. One was going bad, so I wanted to replace it with a 200GB drive and preserve my recordings. Used DD (which took almost 10 hours), then used Copykern and married the drives. The unit operates perfectly, but refuses to see the extra space, even up to 137GB; it's still reporting the original 214 hours of capacity that it had when it was two 120's. I've tried reversing the order of marrying and using Copykern, and just using Copykern, still no dice, but the unit continues to function fine and all 160+ hours of recordings were preserved.

When I do the Copykern, here is the output:

/cdrom/s1_kernels/kernel-3.1/vmlinux-3.1.px.gz: no such file or directory
Writing 1065472 bytes to '/mnt/kernel.orig'
tpip: unknown boot block signature: ox132027f0
Kernel updated

Any ideas?

[binki]

I am trying to upgrade my HDR112 and having trouble. Here's the situation: it was upgraded a few years ago with two 100GB drives. Lately I've had stutters and freezes and figured a drive must be failing. So I got two 120GB drives, cleared off the extraneous files from the limping TiVo, borrowed a PC (all my computers are Macs), made a boot floppy, and hooked everything up and ran the line of code from section 10C of the lovely instructions online. It all seemed to be running just fine but after about 4 hours of copying I got an error--my beloved spouse saw it and didn't write down the exact wording--but it seems it timed out due to errors on the hdd drive, the old B drive from the TiVo.

Complications include: there is no hard drive or CD drive on this borrowed PC. I didn't do a backup because of this, and I'm not sure it would have worked anyway with this wonky "d" drive.

Is there anything I can do? Are there tools I can put on a floppy to fix the old drive enough to copy it to the new one, or can I just maybe bless it or something and sacrifice the recordings that were on the old B drive? Or can I at least try again but only copy the B drive, to try to save a few hours of the process?

Should I just run it again? Any chance it'd be able to jump over those bad sectors if I just kept trying?

Any words of wisdom are greatly appreciated. Live TV is so lame....

[azitnay]

Are you trying to copy all recordings, etc.? If so, since that's not working, try copying only the OS and settings instead.

If you can't even get a valid image off the old drives that way, it's time to look for an image for your unit. Try PM'ing StanSimmons, or purchase InstantCake from http://www.ptvupgrade.com/.

Drew

[binki]

I was trying to copy the recordings, yes. I'd really like to keep them if there is any way at all to do so. It seems the B drive is the bad one; am I correct in thinking the OS would be on the A drive?

if it stops halfway through like it did, waiting for the B drive, would that mean the A drive copied okay, with OS and all?

Is there any way to fix the old B drive enough to make this copy go through? Even if it means losing some recordings, is there any way to get it to block out the bad sectors?

Is there any chance of this working or am I holding onto false hope here?

I'm just hoping there are options other than blanking it all out and starting over. My original tiny drive is still in the closet so if worse came to worst I could reinstall that or something...but ugh, that's sure not what I'd rather do.

[cwilkins]

if it stops halfway through like it did, waiting for the B drive, would that mean the A drive copied okay, with OS and all?

Is there any way to fix the old B drive enough to make this copy go through? Even if it means losing some recordings, is there any way to get it to block out the bad sectors?


You shouldn't be guessing if you have a bad drive or which one is bad. Figure out who made the drive(s), go off to the manufacturer's site, download their diagnostic util and use it. Better yet, use Spinrite instead, in mode 2. If there's any chance of recovery, Spinrite will recover the data, and it works with TiVo drives.

I've always been suspect of the drive manufacturer's utils, but recently had Western Digital's "Data Lifegaurd Diagnotistics" claim there were no problems with a TiVo drive that had confirmed unrecoverable sectors. Spinrite could not completely repair the drive, but it fixed it well enough so that my TiVo would boot, after which the TiVo itself did a GSOD fsfix and cleaned up any remaining problems.

-cw-

[kitschcamp]

Don't use Spinrite if you're in a rush - even with a small 40GB drive it can take a very long time to check.

[binki]

Would those diagnostics work even though the drives had been formatted for TiVo and used that way for years?

The old drives are Western Digital Caviar drives, for what that's worth.

[azitnay]

Manufacturer diagnostics typically have an option that simply checks the physical condition of the disk, and not the individual partitions, files, etc. on the disk. That's what you want to start with.

Drew

[HomeUser]

Would those diagnostics work even though the drives had been formatted for TiVo and used that way for years?

The old drives are Western Digital Caviar drives, for what that's worth.
SpinRite is an excellent choice I use it to test every new hard drive I install. I just recently recovered a 120G TiVo drive using it. Just note any full hard drive diagnostic will run all night even longer if it finds errors.

Check it out at Gibson Research Corporations SpinRite (http://www.grc.com/default.htm)

[binki]

I just looked at the SpinRite page. Is there any way to do this that doesn't cost 90 bucks?
I don't own a PC, I borrowed one for this TiVo job, and will probably never use it again!

- -

on edit:

I'm at the Western Digital site now, but I'm baffled by the options.
Can someone explain to me, as if talking to a child, what I need, exactly? The computer has nothing at all in it, no CD drive, no hard drive, so I'm not sure what OS the diagnostic needs to be for. I believe I have to be able to make a boot floppy, but which one?

[azitnay]

Support -> Downloads -> Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for DOS (Floppy) is the one I usually use. It allows you to download an .exe that creates a boot floppy for you.

If you're not running Windows, or don't have a floppy drive, you can probably use Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for DOS (CD) instead and burn the .iso to a CD-R.

Drew

[ashu]

binki, for starters also consider downloading the Ultimate Boot CD. (http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/)

It has some ultra-powerful (and scary!) tools, but has all the latest disk manufacturers' diagnostics too (remember to scroll on the disk diagnostics' page after booting from this CD).

Rule of thumb - if you're not sure what a tool is about to do and it DOES pop up a "You can't revert and this may make permanent changes" message box, cancel ouy. The basic tools should give you a good idea what's going on with the disk.

[binki]

There's no CD drive in that machine, nor any kind of Ethernet/internet ability (no hard drive, no OS, nuttin'!) but I'll give that Data Lifeguard a shot. I'll ask a PC-enabled friend to make me a floppy.

Thanks... hope I won't be back here with further woe...

[Xezoid]

I just want to say thanks I replaced my HD-Tivo drives with two Seagate 400 GB I bought from Fry's ($169.00 each). I have now 100 hours of recording space. Just in time for Fall TV shows.

:up:

BTW I used the LBA48 Upgrade CD.

[binki]

Data Lifeguard throws up its hands and says there are too many errors. Is there any chance SpinRite or any other floppy-based utility would be able to patch this thing up? I have all the time in the world; if I have to run a program a thousand times, fixing a bit or two each time, that's fine with me.

So one of my drives seems to have copied successfully, and the other is dead unless there's some good utility out there that can reanimate it.

Assuming the worst, what are my options now? Is there any way to try to save the drive's worth that successfully made it to the new drive? What can I do with the other new drive, which is presumably still blank right now? Do I need to format it or bless it or something?

[HomeUser]

First make sure that you have a very good EIDE 133 ribbon cable a lot of hard drive problems are caused by bad cables or using the old IDE cables (half the wires) with new HD's.

I would give SpinRite a try, then of course I all ready purchased a copy for the computer that I use to do TiVo setup. SpinRite worked for me recovered all data on the @%$!! 200G Maxtor drive.

[binki]

Used Data Lifeguard, which didn't do much, but I guess it fixed things a little. We put the limping drives back into the TiVo to capture the valuable recordings to video. That worked, we erased all the recordings, and then back into the PC. We uttered the appropriate incantations to copy the drives onto the new ones. It kicked out a lot of errors but didn't give up like it had the last time; just complained a lot and finally got back to the octothorpe. Took the drives out, put them in the TiVo and now it's looping, GSOD to startup to "just a few minutes please" to GSOD.

It's not currently plugged into a phone line, but will be soon.
Think it'll resurrect itself?

[azitnay]

You could give it a shot, but if it's looping a ton very quickly, probably not. Did you give it enough swap to complete the GSOD?

Drew

[Nightfall]

I just wanted to write a note saying thanks for everyone's assistance here. I upgraded my HDVR2s a few years ago using 160GB upgrade drives from the 40GB that were in the machines. After both machines started having rebooting problems with the 6.2 upgrade, I got replacement Phillips 708s. I just upgraded those to 250gb hard drives.

Your help is greatly appreciated. :)

[smacdon]

I upgraded my Series 1 HDR112 to a 250gig hard drive using Ver 4.0 of the PTVUgrade CD. All went well, except went I attempted to Copykern. I got the following error:

tpip: unknown boot block signature: ox132027f0

The Tivo works OK, but the Kernel has definitely not been replaced on the Tivo. Anyone know what this error might mean?

[BobCamp1]

I upgraded my Series 1 HDR112 to a 250gig hard drive using Ver 4.0 of the PTVUgrade CD. All went well, except went I attempted to Copykern. I got the following error:

tpip: unknown boot block signature: ox132027f0

The Tivo works OK, but the Kernel has definitely not been replaced on the Tivo. Anyone know what this error might mean?

Don't know what the error means, but if the kernel didn't copy over, your Tivo will die before the end of the month.

If you can't get copykern to work, the Instantcake image has LBA48 support.

[smacdon]

Yep, I found that out. I started losing previously recorded programs. I managed to get the new kernel copied over by running the TPIP command directly, not through copykern. Don't know why it worked, but it did.

[brooksnicholai]

I just upgraded my series 1 tivo using the ptvupgrade cd with LBA48 support.

I have a 200gig WD hdd. The upgrade went smoothly except when I ran copykern the first time it couldn't find the kernel on the cd-rom as it wasn't mounted properly, so I mounted the cd-rom and reran copykern with success.

During the upgrade mfs tools said my upgrade was 222 hours up from 21 hours. I replaced the 21 hour drive with the 200 gig drive as it was failing.

However when I placed the new 200gig drive in the tivo and when to the info screen, it said I have 247 hours?? what gives. This seems high. I'm worried that it didn't work properly.

Any ideas?

[Blurayfan]

I just upgraded my series 1 tivo using the ptvupgrade cd with LBA48 support.

I have a 200gig WD hdd. The upgrade went smoothly except when I ran copykern the first time it couldn't find the kernel on the cd-rom as it wasn't mounted properly, so I mounted the cd-rom and reran copykern with success.

During the upgrade mfs tools said my upgrade was 222 hours up from 21 hours. I replaced the 21 hour drive with the 200 gig drive as it was failing.

However when I placed the new 200gig drive in the tivo and when to the info screen, it said I have 247 hours?? what gives. This seems high. I'm worried that it didn't work properly.

Any ideas?
The recording time displayed by your TiVo appears accurate for a Series 1.

[Krookut]

I'm in the process of changing out failed drives in a Series 1 SVR 2000 with a 250 GB drive, do I specify a 250 MB swap file? Thanks for any help.

[azitnay]

127MB (the max you can specify without tpip) is enough for a 250GB drive.

Drew

[Krookut]

127MB (the max you can specify without tpip) is enough for a 250GB drive.

Drew

Thanks!

[simonalope]

127MB (the max you can specify without tpip) is enough for a 250GB drive.

Drew

I used InstantCake to prepare a 300GB drive for use in my 240040A (single-drive configuration). Should I be okay in terms of swap size? I used the Instant Cake download designated for TCD240 units that have already upgraded to 7.1b, and after the upgrade my TiVo re-downloaded the 7.2 update. I haven't had any problems thus far, but I'm worried by the reports of upgraded TiVos not being able to recover from a crash post-7.2 if they have insufficient swap space.

[bmatson]

First of all, thanks to all the dedicated hackers that keep me and my Tivo happy.

I just restored a backup (mfsrestore -s 300 ...) to a 300 Gb drive (previously a windows XP NTFS drive), booting from the PTV ver 4.01 CD. (BTW the 300 Mb swap is anticipating a possible 2nd 300 Gb drive in the future.)

I then ran copykern (no arguments... I never saw any doc specifying arguments to this command), and assumed it would properly initialize the 300 Mb swap. But among the output was a suspicious line that said:

"tpip: Unknown boot block signature: 0x0"
"Kernel Updated"

Does this indicate a failure in tpip? Did I not initialize swap properly? How can I tell? I don't really want to replace the drive in my SAT T-60 until I know for sure.

Is it possible that it is complaining about where it stored the original kernel? I had my backup (FAT) drive mounted on /mnt/dos but copykern copied the original kernel (as backup) onto /mnt/kernel.original. (I'm not concerned about the success of this original kernel backup.) Just a thought.

Can I safely repeat this command (copykern) to try again?

I did a search and found this message referred to several times, but with no information as to whether it is a problem or not. Any ideas on how to tell, or instructions on how to redo this manually.

In the meantime, I'll watch a few backlogged DVDs.

Thanks.

[Krookut]

I upgraded my Series 1 HDR112 to a 250gig hard drive using Ver 4.0 of the PTVUgrade CD. All went well, except went I attempted to Copykern. I got the following error:

tpip: unknown boot block signature: ox132027f0

The Tivo works OK, but the Kernel has definitely not been replaced on the Tivo. Anyone know what this error might mean?

I also got this message after restoring to a 250GB drive and running copykern.

Smacdon, could you tell me how to use tpip to transfer the kernel? I don't know what commands to use with tpip.

Or at least how do I make the drive usable, even if only for 137 GB? Thanks for any help.

[Spotty53]

I've downloaded PTVupgrade 4.01 and burned it onto CD as ISO image.
I went to test it out on 2 different computers and it won't boot.
What am I doing wrong? :confused:

[dsmturbo]

Spotty53, what program did you use to burn the image file? Sounds like all you have on your CD is the actual .ISO file.
I use Nero and Under Recorder menu ( I think it is) Choose Burn Image

[Spotty53]

I used Nero and burned as "ISO image" the file I downloaded from PTVupgrade, LBA48 CD v. 4.01 --- ptvlba48-4.01.iso
What am I doing wrong?

[Spotty53]

Found my problem.... I didn't realize that the WinXP machine that I downloaded to had blocked the file. I unblocked it then re-burned the CD and it works fine!
Still learning all the nuances of XP .. :D
Thanks for your help, dsmturbo!

[bmatson]

I wrote (a few posts ago) that...

I then ran copykern (no arguments... I never saw any doc specifying arguments to this command), and assumed it would properly initialize the 300 Mb swap. But among the output was a suspicious line that said:

"tpip: Unknown boot block signature: 0x0"
"Kernel Updated"

I have now figured out that the swap indeed did not initialize. (Login to Tivo with bash, "cat /var/log/kernel | grep swap" and I got the swap error messages detailed in the thread regarding MFS 2.0 swap problems). BTW, I'm not posting there (yet) because I started this post here, regarding a copykern issue.

I believe I just need to initialize the swap space I reserved with "mfsrestore -s 300 ...". Is there a way to do this without removing the drive again? I do have a bash prompt. I'm not sure if tpip is on the Tivo (amazingly, I don't have "ls" on the Tivo to look for it), or if I can execute it from the Tivo.

Is there any other way? If I have to remove the drive, what is the precise tpip command, and how can I check if I actually reserved 300 Mb for swap? Thanks.

[Krookut]

NM my recent posts, I purchased Instant Cake for the restore, now have a 250 GB Maxtor QuickView drive in my SVR-2000, going to use "best" quality for all recordings from now on :)

[dsmturbo]

Found my problem.... I didn't realize that the WinXP machine that I downloaded to had blocked the file. I unblocked it then re-burned the CD and it works fine!
Still learning all the nuances of XP .. :D
Thanks for your help, dsmturbo!

Glad you got it working..and you are right..WinXP can be pretty strange at times

[brentboren]

I upgraded my Series 1 HDR112 to a 250gig hard drive using Ver 4.0 of the PTVUgrade CD. All went well, except went I attempted to Copykern. I got the following error:

tpip: unknown boot block signature: ox132027f0

The Tivo works OK, but the Kernel has definitely not been replaced on the Tivo. Anyone know what this error might mean?

I also got this message after restoring to a 250GB drive and running copykern.

Smacdon, could you tell me how to use tpip to transfer the kernel? I don't know what commands to use with tpip.

Or at least how do I make the drive usable, even if only for 137 GB? Thanks for any help.
...snip...I then ran copykern (no arguments... I never saw any doc specifying arguments to this command), and assumed it would properly initialize the 300 Mb swap. But among the output was a suspicious line that said:

"tpip: Unknown boot block signature: 0x0"
"Kernel Updated"

Does this indicate a failure in tpip? Did I not initialize swap properly? How can I tell? I don't really want to replace the drive in my SAT T-60 until I know for sure. ...snip...

I followed the treads posted above in the last few days trying to get past the same problem (tpip: Unknown boot block signature: 0x0...). Smacdon indicated the source of the error was somehow related to copykern. After digging into this for a bit, it seems that copykern makes some assumptions about where (and if) the cdrom ends up being mounted during the boot process. I downloaded 2 different versions of the PTV upgrade tools and they both made different - but incorrect - assumptions about where to find the kernel files that were to be used as replacement sources.

If you search through the cd to find the correct replacement kernel, note its name and path, and enter the same string generated by copykern with the corrected kernel name and path, tpip should work as advertised. I verified this on the 2 different PTV boot CDs I have been using and was able to make them both work.

My 2 cents. I hope this helps others save some of the debug time I have spent.
Brent

[LarryH]

Well, most of the day is gone with no success. I have a Series 2 DTV TiVo that had been upgraded to a 160G drive by Weaknees. The drive was flaky so I wanted to upgrade it myself. (Bad idea?)

I bought a 200G Maxtor and connected it as Primary Master. The Weaknees 160 is connected as Secondary Master.

First time through I tried the msftools and realized it wouldn't see past the 137 limit. So I downloaded Weaknees ISO. Thing kept hanging on Verifying DMI pool.

So next, I dl'd the PTVupgrade ISO. Booted like a champ and found my disks and identified the size for each. But each and every time I enter commands, I keep getting:

Restore failed: Backup target not large enough for entire backup by itself.

I've tried the Weaknees string:

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hda

I've tried the strings I found on Tyger's site with the same result.

I'm really lost now. I'd love some help. Thanks.

Larry

[mattack]

What exactly does the 'byteswap' option mean on these CDs? I mean, I understand what byte swapping *is*, of course.

I don't know when you'll use it with tivos and when you won't. Is it a S1 vs S2 issue?

I tried booting the 4.01 CD on a 'developer transition system' (Apple Intel machine), and it hangs while booting.. Possibly because one of the things mentioned (twice) is:
keyboard: Timeout - AT keyboard not present?

of course it's not present, since the machine has a USB keyboard.

I'm now wondering if I can install Linux on the existing (non-tivo of course) hard drive, and run the tools from the CD..

[azitnay]

Yes, S1 will want byteswapped, S2 not.

You should be able to run the mfstool binary from virtually any Linux system.

Drew

[sammyplo]

when u mention that extra files need to be added to the boot disk to add networking to a series 2 does that mean if a basic install is done then i will not be able to connect my tivo to my computer

[azitnay]

Not sure what you're talking about... Series2's have networking by default, you just need a USB adapter.

Drew