[jtback]

Just so everyone knows, I am NOT using this box to get DirecTV's or TiVo's service(A dish is useless on my North facing downstairs apartment.) I'm actually going to drop the TiVo service all together and build MCE's instead. I wan't to try to set these up for network storage so they don't go to waste.

It's the same SD-DVR40 I mentioned about in the other thread about being a webserver (Gave up that idea for now.) Here's what I did:

Pulled out the 40GB hard drive and threw in 120GB for messing around.
Got the Instantcake iso and the other stuff needed to Zipper it.
I got a Bash prompt and ftp access
I managed to "map" it as a network drive using NetDrive via ftp

Problem: I can only find 18.6 GB of the 120GB
Question: Which partition(s) actually used for storing the recordings?

I know I have to mount something but what to where? Also, once the capacity problem is worked out, I want to permanently give the storage directory full read/write and everything else readonly. I'm guessing by default it goes back to readonly when it reboots.

I'm still trying to figure out if I'm on the right track or what.
Can someone point me to some info?

 

[JimSpence]

You should ask the members in the Upgrade forum concerning the GB limit you found. I would have thought that the Zipper script would handle all of the inner workings. Oh yeah, what make is the hard drive? I seem to remember something about having to "unlock' certain makes.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=25

 

[kb7sei]

You are seeing the "root" partition when you FTP into a tivo. More specifically, the active root. You can't store normal files in the MFS partition (where the recordings are stored) with any tool I am aware of. The MFS file system is unlike anything else out there and it doesn't work like a normal file system. It's basically a database. If you are running Tivo software on the box, you can't really do what you are looking to do with a Tivo.

I suppose you could try to set it up like a "normal" computer, then you could run Samba on it and share the drive. But it's not a good use for a Tivo. The biggest reason I can think of is the slow as hell main CPU. It simply can't push the kind of data out that even an old Pentium can. With the backported USB2 driver set, I can get about 3MB/sec out of a Tivo box. You can bump that up a little by stopping the recording processes. I could damn near max out a 100Mbit line (about 9MB/sec) with an old AMD K6 based system, and with a gigabit card, I could go a bit faster than that.

Really, if you want a file server, you're better off selling the Tivo boxes and buying a low end CPU/mobo/RAM to build a file server out of.

 

[Da Goon]

Restore an image to your drive and don't expand it. That'll give you plenty of unused space. Then you can format that space, and install debian linux if you want. Never tried it myself, haven't heard of anyone doing too much with it.

 

[jtback]

OK, I got some success.....Here's my so far step by step:

1) Zippered empty 300GB in PC and stuck it back in tivo
2) Ran pdisk
2a) remove /dev/hda14 partition
2b) created new /dev/hda14 partion for ext2 fs
3) ran mke2fs /dev/hda14
4) mount /dev/hda14 /storage
5) started transfering a few files via FTP

So far so good since I'm not using the DirecTivo as a TiVo at all. I left all the other partitions intact since I'm still learning what does what in the box and pdisk was reading it as a 274GB partition which works for me at the moment.