TiVo Community Forums Archives - How does TiVoBless work?

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How does TiVoBless work?
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Posted by: jfjellstad

I was wondering how this program works? Anyone know the technical details?

Reason is, I recently did an upgrade of my Tivo (Philips).
I did this to preserve my recordings (mfstools v1.1):

./mfstools -Tao /dev/hda /dev/hdb | ./mfstools -Bo /dev/hdc

I then put the new harddrive in my system, and ran it without problem (was able to see one of my old recordings).

I then put the new 120 Gb harddrive in my computer with another 120 Gb harddrive (same type, MAXTOR), and blessed it using the CD (with the mad/setup.sh).

When putting it back into the Tivo, I got the infinitive bootup loop with green screen.

So, something happened when I blessed it. Anyone have any idea? (note, I later gave up on preserving my records, and just did a straight backup/restore/expand/bless, and it works fine)

Thanks,
John

Posted by: Otto

Okay, well, first, is it a standalone box or a combo? If it's a combo, you should use DTivomadB4 instead.

BlessTiVo simply changes the drive so that the unit will recognize it. But TivoMad does some other stuff to expand the size of the original drive.

Posted by: Spartan

First thing I'd check if I get boot loop problem when upgrading is jumper settings on hard drives.

Posted by: Tiger

quote:
Originally posted by jfjellstad

./mfstools -Tao /dev/hda /dev/hdb | ./mfstools -Bo /dev/hdc

What sort of TiVo do you have? Since it is 2 drives as the above command indicates, if it is a 312 or a DirecTV TiVo, that means it has possibly already been upgraded in the factory. I am guessing a 312, since with a DirecTV combo, it would not have done anything after blessing.

That said, all blessing does is create a partition table and a special signature that TiVo recognizes as a drive to be added. The real work happen inside TiVo when you power it on. It runs a program called 'mfsadd' which sees the signature and performs the upgrade. However, that program expects the drive to be in it's creation state. Once it has been updated, when it tries to do another add, it hits a bug in TiVo's software and trashes the system. So therefore, you can not currently save your recordings and upgrade the drives.

Posted by: ADent

Ah. Sooo nice to see a detailed and accurate answer.

Thanx for showing up Tiger.

Posted by: philhu

If it was a 2 drive to start, then mfstool 1.1 wrote the b drive partitions onto the A drive as partition 13 and 14.

Then the blessing of a b drive is what killed you as it cannot mount drive b as 13/14

You can take,say a 30 and 60 gig system and mfs backup and restore to a 120 gig a only, it works fine, but then you CANNOT add a 2nd drive due to the above limitations.