Help, please - MFSLive, VMware Fusion, Mac, USB, image, commands...

[Goobergirl]

I've been reading and searching and testing and trying for two days. I'm finally feeling hopeless. I'm sure it's something simple here and there, I would be so grateful if someone could show me what I'm doing wrong.

I want to make an image of my 80gig Tivo to use to transfer to a bigger drive. Standard stuff.

I'm on a Mac.

I have read the "easy" instructions a thousand times, and it assumes a lot.

Anyway, I downloaded MFS live cd, I got VMWare fusion up and running, booting from MFSlive.

I connected my Tivo drive using a USB adaptor.

I found the little icon that says "connect USB standard 2333" and clicked.

The screen did the following:

usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using ehci-hcd and address 2
usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB mass Storage devices
scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access SMSC 223 U HS-CF 3.60 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
scsi 1:0:0:1: Direct-Access SMSC 223 U HS-MS 3.60 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
scsi 1:0:0:2: Direct-Access SMSC 223 U HS-SM 3.60 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
scsi 1:0:0:3: Direct-Access SMSC 223 U HS-SD/MMC 3.60 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0

sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI removable disk
sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type0
sd 0:0:0:1: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
sd 0:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg1 type0
sd 0:0:0:2: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk
sd 0:0:0:2: Attached scsi generic sg2 type0
sd 0:0:0:3: [sdd] Attached SCSI removable disk
sd 0:0:0:3: Attached scsi generic sg3 type0


So then, as the main Mac-VM-Tivo guide suggests:

When you bootup in Fusion with MFS Live, it will boot to Linux and show you the USB drives. Once booted to the
command line in MFS Live, you can issue the following command to check for the presence of the USB drives:
dmesg | grep -i "/dev/[sh][d]"

None of that did much of anything at all. Just... nothing.

So then I tried to do the next thing:

Depending on which one got detected as what, note down the one that is the original Tivo drive and which one is
the new blank drive. You can validate which one is which with the following command: mfsinfo [device
path you want to test]
Ex:
mfsinfo /dev/sda

OK...

So here's some examples of what happened when I tried that...


mfsinfo /dev/sda
mfsinfo /dev/sda/10: Not a directory


mfsinfo [/dev/sda/]
msinfo: no such file or directory



And lots of variations, as I tried to enter it a dozen ways. I also tried sdB, sdC, sdD, and when I first tried it, something about hdY and hdX came up so I tried those...and it's obvious there are important things I'm completely clueless about.

Please, please, please... can someone be a little bit more specific and clear with me? I do not normally do ANY command-line stuff, so it's ALL greek and the only thing I do know how to do is type exactly what I'm told.

I want to be CERTAIN that my drive is seen and functional, I want to back it up to an IMAGE file, and I want to restore that image file to a BIGGER drive. And I want to be absolutely certian that I don't overwrite any of my internal harddrives (I have 4 total) and I don't overwrite the original Tivo.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

[HomeUser]

On my MacBook Pro the USB drive is on /dev/sdb remember Linux is case sensitave "/dev/sdB" is not the same as "/dev/sdb"

You can find the drives location using the command cat /proc/partitions the TiVo's drive will be the one that has more then 10 partitions.

[Goobergirl]

Thank you for responding.

The reaction from Mslive was:

major minor#blocks name

twice.

(Incidentally, thanks for the case tip, but I had capitalized the last letter in the post for emphasis, not when I was in mslive. Good to know, though.)

[HomeUser]

There should be lots of information in the columns

This is what "cat /proc/partitions" with an 8G USB drive looks like
major minor #blocks name
8 16 7843848 sdb
8 17 7839744 sdb1

The TiVo drive would go up to sdb13

The CD/Image drive that you booted from should be listed in any case.

Check the "Settings" for your vm machine see if the SATA/USB adapter is listed as a different device.

[Goobergirl]

]More thanks for your time and efforts to help.

I tried by starting fresh in VM Ware with a new virtual machine.

Everything came out the same.

See below.

http://web.me.com/stoidy/Site_2/Blank_files/mfsliveprob.jpg

[HomeUser]

The USB2223 looks like it is a memory card reader.
MFSLive is not seeing any disk drives, it looks like you have another USB device next to the USB2223 have you tried that one?
What are you using as the IDE to USB adapter?

The drive needs an external power supply attached.

[Goobergirl]

Hmmm. I have hubs hooked up, but no memory card reader. It identified everything else by name except that - the adapter is Lantec's sata/ide to USB 2.0 adapter.

The power supply is separate and attached and the drive is spinning and the red light indicating USB is on.

??

I had attached other drives to the computer with this adapter just before doing this and they worked.

hmm.

[HomeUser]

Using MFSLive what device does the other drives show up on?

I just connected an IDE drive using the Kingwin USI-2535 IDE/SATA USB adapter and the drive shows up as /dev/hdb

[Goobergirl]

Well, I think I've solved part of the problem, thanks to your observations... I switched adapters, and got a new selection: JMicron/Jmicron USA USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge.

Connected.

But MSFinfo still fails in all the same ways: either "no such device or address" or "No medium Found"

I notice that when it returns the funky results it inserts "10" as follows:

[mfslive:/]# mfsinfo /dev/hdc
mfsinfo: /dev/hdc10: no such device or address

By the way, I'm really grateful for your continued efforts to help me. Thank you so much!

I just made homemade from scratch cinnamon rolls. Want one? :)


http://web.me.com/stoidy/Site_2/Blank_files/Picture%202.jpg

[Goobergirl]

By the way...


Using MFSLive what device does the other drives show up on?


I'm pretty much clueless about how to answer this or find the answer.

As I've said... I just type in EXACTLY what I'm told, I have no underlying knowledge or understanding that would allow me to switch gears and figure things out.

And that bothers me enormously, by the way, I'm not the sort of person who is comfortable just pressing the buttons I'm told to press for exactly this reason; it leaves me helpless when the buttons dont' do what I'm told they should, and I have no way to figure out how to make them. I used to be a serious Mac weenie, I knew every file, every part, inside out. When OSX and the dreaded UNix-ness of it all happened, I felt very lost. I'm better, but there's still way too much scary mystery in Terminal...I'm a GUI girl. :D

[Goobergirl]

the drive shows up as /dev/hdb

Exactly how do you know this?

[HomeUser]

Exactly how do you know this?

I used the command cat /proc/partitions to locate the drive. when you typed the command before you just saw the header "major minor#blocks name" because no drives were connected. When there is a drive connected you will see the drive's label (sda, sdb, sdc ...) and how the drive is partitioned. The number part (sda1, sda2 sda3 ...) all are parts (partitions) of the drive sda.

The /dev/ is like a directory where devices (like the hard drive gets attached) thats why the /dev/ is atached to the location /dev/hda

mfsinfo needs to know what drive you want to see the command should be mfsinfo /dev/hda or mfsinfo /dev/hdb

mfsinfo looks in partition 10 /dev/sda10 to find the info for the drive the 10 is assumed so you only give it the drive's label /dev/sda

homemade cinnamon rolls, Yes please i'll take 2

[Goobergirl]

heheh

Okay,I'm making progress. I FINALLY SEE THE DRIVE! TA DA!

NOW... I need to know how to make an IMAGE of my tivo drive on a SATA internal hard drive, if possible. Starting, I guess, with how to make LInux/mFStools SEE the drives... I have four internal SATAs and two external SATAs and the only thing I can get MFStools/Linux to see are the two USBs - one of them is very big, but it's full, so I don't want to back up to it. (he other is the Tivo drive)

However I have a nearly empty drive that is connected via SATA that I would like to use to back up an image to.

So that's the two things I need to know... find the drive, backup to an image. Because all the information I can find assumes I'm on Windows with C: drives or that I'm restoring and EXISTING image, or that I have two IDE drives installed inside my computer, or two USBS...

My biggest fear, frankly, is that somehow I will overwrite existing data. Not TIVO data, but just my other data. So I want to work with empty drives, and while I have drives coming out my ears, they are mostly loaded up. Since I'm such a ninny about all this, I want to be as safe as possible.

And I have a fresh batch coming out of the oven...

[HomeUser]

Do you have any other Virtual machines setup in Fusion? You might be better off using WINmfs from a Windows virtual machine.

To continue:
You could create a small (1gig would be enough) virtual disk drive on one of your SATA drives, format it FAT32, mount it in /dos and then make a truncated backup from MFSLive using the backup command "backup -f 9999 -qso - /dev/sd? -o /dos/mybackup.tbf"
(substitute sd? with the label for the TiVo drive)

mount command looks like
mount /dev/sd? /dos
(substitute sd? with the label of the fat32 drive)

[Goobergirl]

By "label" you mean...? MY name for it? Some other name I have to figure out?

I already formatted a complete 500gig drive as a DOS drive yesterday, it's empty except for the virtual machine, because that's where I put it.

[HomeUser]

Perfict, connect it boot MFSLive and see if it shows up with the command cat /proc/partitions.