TiVo Community Forums Archives - DD and MFSADD Problems... Please help

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DD and MFSADD Problems... Please help
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Posted by: FourDoor

DTivo: SAT-T60 with original quantum 40gig as A and Maxtor 120gig as B (120gig was added using UPGRADE CONFIGURATION #1 from hinsdale so swap file was not increased)

Goal: Replace 40gig quantum with another 120gig Maxtor AND SAVE CURRENT RECORDINGS to make a 240gig DTivo with all the current fixings.

I followed Hinsdales: UPGRADE CONFIGURATION #4
(I changed hdc to hdd since the cdrom was installed as secondary master and the new A drive was in secondary slave)

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdd bs=1024k

Everything runs fine and the in/out #'s were the same

Problem herein lies with:

mfsadd –x /dev/hdd /dev/hdb

I got a message similar to this:
current standalone hours is 174
Nothing to add!

i ran it several times and still the same results.

The first time I ran it, I plugged the new 120gig A drive with the 120gig B drive back in the tivo and got GSOD! I pulled out the new 120gig A drive and replaced it with the old 40gig A drive and everthing booted up fine. Recordings and all settings were saved. Whew! So I figured I just got a bad DD of the original A drive AND the MFSADD didnt work.

I tried it again. Another 3 hours of waiting... In/out #s were the same again. I ran the same mfsadd command and DOH! The same error with nothing to add! So I decide to try to pop in the new 120 A and 120 B in the tivo and for some miracle it booted up! Shows were still saved along with the rest of the settings. BUT the recording capacity didn't change. Still at 147 hours with 240gigs in the tivo! I figured it was because MFSADD didnt work. I pulled the Adrive out and plug it back in the PC and ran this reran the original hinsdale command as well as this if I could just expand the A drive:

mfsadd –x /dev/hdd

No luck. So I decide I might just go and return the new 120 and popped the old 40gig back in! Big mistake! I got GSOD! I'm guessing its because the new 120A drive married itself to the 120 B during bootup making the 40gig invalid. So I put the 120gig A drive back in and everything still works but only 147 hours!

Can someone please point me to how to expand the rest of the 120gig drive A? I'm pulling my hair out here... :confused:

Posted by: Robert S

Our record for fixing these isn't that great. However, there are a few things to mention:

Check that the drives are being recognised as the correct sizes in the Linux boot print-out (do dmesg | more if necessary), although I think dd would have complained.

Do mfsinfo /dev/hdd /dev/hdb and check that there are only two pairs of MFS partitions on the A drive.

Try mfsadd -X /dev/hdd /dev/hdb. The capital X tells it to only look to expand the A drive.

Posted by: FourDoor

Thanks again for the tips Robert. I will try the capital "-X" next and recheck the sizes. It's actually my brothers DTivo and he took it back last night just so he can use it in the interim while I ask the experts here so he can decide if he wants to archive any of his recordings onto tape (just in case we have to do a complete fresh backup without his recordings)

So just to confirm here:

The original 40gig A now is toast correct? The recordings are gone on that drive and I have to restore my backup image to get it running again.

If I can't expand the 120gig A drive in there now to recognize the space, is it safe to say its a lost cause or lost recording space at this time?

Posted by: Robert S

You can sometimes get away with dd'ing to a new drive, booting it and then putting the original back in, but it's not a good idea. Once you've made a recording with one configuration the other configuration will probably GSOD and may not recover.

mfsinfo will tell you how many MFS partitions you've got. You can only have three pairs on the A drive, so if you already three pairs on the A drive you are stuck.

mfsadd is the only upgrade tool you can use, so if it refuses to co-operate then there's not much else you can do. As I said, though, I wouldn't say this is a well-understood problem.

Reverting to a compressed backup (make a fresh one from the current drive set if poss.) should fix the problem.

Posted by: FourDoor

Thanks Robert S. I'll report back later today as to what happens.

Posted by: FourDoor

I checked the drive sizes:

120gig A = 122942 MB w/ 7936KiB Cache
120gig B = 120034 MB w/ 2038 KiB Cache

(I thought we bought the same drive as the first time but I guess this one the first one only had a 2meg cache.)

I did msinfo and there are only 2 pairs of partitions on the 120A drive.

I tried the the "mfsadd -X /dev/hdd /dev/hdb" and got this message:

/dev/hdb10: Success
mfs_load_volume_header: mfsvol_read_data: Input/output error
Unable to open MFS drives

Posted by: Robert S

Why is there an hdb10? According to your mfsadd line hdb is the B drive, which should only have two partitions on it.

Posted by: FourDoor

quote:
Originally posted by Robert S
Why is there an hdb10? According to your mfsadd line hdb is the B drive, which should only have two partitions on it.

I don't know where its getting hdb10 from. I just redid msfinfo and it only reported hdb2 and hdb3

Posted by: FourDoor

Well I gave up on this little project. I restored T60 image i had and then mfsadded the second 120 drive and we now have a 240gig DTivo working nicely with the cache file updated. Thanks for all the help Robert. I now know not to try this upgrade on my own personal 40+120 T60 ... :D