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MFS Tools CD: failed...success
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Posted by: Kevin G

Using PII 350 with 192 megs to try upgrade Philips DSR6000:

MFS CD from 9tee boots fine recognizes my C: as "hda" at right size on Primary Master; recognizes my DirecTiVo Quantum 40 gb as "hdb" Primary Slave at right size; begins backup but 5% into "39 hour" file quits and says:
"Backup failed: /mnt/dos/tivo.bak: Success"

Tried 3 times same result. C: is a Quantum 10 gb Fireball jumped as "Master"
I trried change to "Cable select" with same result/message.

I am a Mac guy so tried to "find" in Windows and "tivo.bak" is not there (as expected).

Appreciate tips. Oh, is there a right orientation to jumper pins as goes over the pins?? AmI putting on upside down??

Thanx,
Kevin
******

Posted by: Robert S

If you'd got the jumpers wrong your drives would appear as the wrong device, or, more likely conflict with another device and the PC wouldn't boot.

Check the partition table on hda as Linux boots (use dmesg | more to review the boot log). If there's more than hda1 listed, try the other partitions.

This error is usually generated when the target device runs out of space. The fact that you can't find tivo.bak (it'll be c:\tivo.bak) also suggests you aren't mounting your C: drive, but instead a hidden partition. Your C: drive is probably hda2, or maybe hda5.

Posted by: Kevin G

Good Morning!! A bit of followup for those of you scratching your head at about 200 AM cuz you are getting the 50th rendition of the infamous infamous nonsequitur:

"Backup failed: /mnt/dos/tivo.bak: Success"

You were pumped up as I was and you felt this forum implied a cretin can do an upgrade. Now despite two grad degrees and having been an Army grunt that HAD to make things work that were inherently defective, I FAILED. For you it is probably about 1 or 2 AM. Your jumper permutations are reminiscent of the Kama Sutra. You are really, really out of all combinations aren't you, Boobie. It is supposedly SO simple you just HAD to do it when you got home from work. The hell with denying yourself the sensuous delight of "Super-TiVo" until the weekend--do it know!!. DON'T DESPAIR.

This is a five step program that may solve your problem. First, call work and leave a message at your job that you may be late tomorrow. Second, splash cold water on your face but don't drip any on that damn power supply that they told you might kill you if you even look at it. Third make a strong pot of coffee. Four, tell your significant other that you have it under control and they should go back to bed. Five, read below.

I tried hda1, hda2, etc. All failed. Linux showed only hda and one ref to hda1. Out of desperation did procedure below from Tiger 2.0 CD read me file:

"10A) Replacing single drive TiVo with new larger A drive and optional new B drive"

the command:

"# mfsbackup -aqo - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -xpi - /dev/hda"

worked like a charm. then did "Step 11" as described. I had deliberately left a 30 min show on old A drive. Took 1.5 hours to copy old A to new A. The new 80 meg Seagate Baracuda IV showed "67 hours variable" in TiVo, runs 2 degrees cooler. The saved show was there also and played as perfect as it did on the replaced stock A (Quantum Fireball 40 meg).

I am disappointed at lack of response (now 5 days later) to my late evening query from author, supplier since search shows this to be a VERY common gripe from other (Alas) cretins. Is it a known flaw? Again I bought the CD from 9thtee. Price very reasonable CD fine (when worked) but shipping is expensive if you want cd in 2-4 days (not 9th's fault). Was it the fact am using PII 350?? Or is it the CD or code to blame for "tivo.bak" failed gestation?????

Anyone contemplating a similar old A>new A upgrade as I did would be WELL ADVISED to get answer to above "queries" FIRST. I wasted 8 hours on above crap before in desperation at 4AM did the above "workaround". Mounted old A to check after all the messing around with jumpers, etc. It is still perfect. The new A is quiet and flawless and cooler and noticeably faster (ca 15%) in many screens.

I am curious if author(s), suppliers could tell me if any downside to procedure i used?? Note you will NOT get the illusory "tivo.bak" image from this process but you will be able to get to bed by 530 AM. The lack of image is not a big deal since I wanted to save stock drive intact anyway as spare. All the other steps of upgrade other cretins CAN do. Attention to detail thou. Also as a Mac guy, I don't do dos/Linux so I was surprised that the code has intentional spaces (unlike dos, I believe) as depicted and not just an artifact of page layout. (Hint to those responsible....you KNOW who you are!!). Also at 0429 AM after 10 mins I found the character " : " as in the line (....hdc : mfsrestore...) above on my wife's Gateway keyboard. Hope this helps until THOSE RESPONSIBLE help out us cretins by either fixing their code or modifying their "Read me" by adding a better explanation of equiptment needed or a Cretin Addendum. I'm going to bed right now.

Thanx,
Kevin
******

Posted by: Robert S

The pipe transfer method you used is perfectly safe (you should have added -s 127 to the restore options to increase swap, but the failure to do that certainly won't cause you a problem in your current configuration and is very unlikely to cause a problem if you add a big B drive later). It is the recommended way to replace the A drive if you want to save recordings.

It's a shame you couldn't get your C: drive mounted, but you don't give enough info for me to see what the problem is. The lack of a backup might bite you if you have a disk failure, but you still have the original A drive and you can download backups.

Tiger has been incommunicado since shortly after the release of MFS Tools 2.0. There are some serious errors in the MFS Tools 2.0 docs that we would like to see fixed. Hinsdale has revised his How-To to give more accurate advice. That has nothing to do with your problem, though.

What operating system is your PC running?

Posted by: Kevin G

Windows 98.

Thanx,
Kevin
******