TiVo Community Forums Archives - Problem with MFS Tools 2.0

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Problem with MFS Tools 2.0
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Posted by: Rangers4me

I am trying to upgrade my Dual Drive DirecTv Tivo with an 120gb Western Digital Drive. After Three Burns, I finally got an MFS 2.0 disk to boot in to the linux prompt. I hit enter when i get the boot option, and then it goes through the whole thing where it goes through all your harddrives, CD rom drives, etc. First of all the drive weren't listed hda hdb hdc hdd. they were hdc hdd hde hdf. Is this because I am going through a controller card? Do I just change the letters accordingly (a/e b/f) when I am backing up. Not only did that happen but at the end of all the listings no # linux prompt comes up. I can't type any of the comands. I quit the upgrade and put the tivo back together for the night and will try again tommorow.

Thanks for answering my questions in advance

TIVO BOARD PEOPLE ARE THE BEST!!!

Posted by: Robert S

Despite your title, the problem is actually with the Linux boot disk (you haven't had the chance to start MFS Tools yet!).

It should be pretty obvious which device nodes correspond to which drive, just change them as appropriate. Use dmesg | more to review the boot log if you're having trouble. You won't see the partition tables printed out on the TiVo drives - you'll have to work it out from the size of the disk.

If you can't get the TiVo boot disk Linux to boot properly (do make sure it's not something dumb like a poorly adjusted monitor!), you can try a more current Linux. I think Tom's Root and Boot Disk is fairly current.

You would copy the mfstool binary to your backup drive (download the ZIP if you can't copy it off the CD) and invoke it as mfstool backup instead of mfsbackup.

Posted by: Rangers4me

The monitior is fine, any other reasons why the boot disk wouldn't work properly. Could it be that I am running windows XP? I failed an upgrade about 6 months ago on a windows 98 computer with MFS tools 1.1, the disk worked fine though. Should I try that disk? What are the disadvantages of doing that? Thanks

Posted by: Robert S

I would recommend using MFS Tools 2.0, but you can run that from the MFS Tools 1.1 boot disk. Copy the mfstool binary from the MFS Tools 2.0 disk to your upgrade drive.

The only disadvantage of doing it this way is that you have to invoke MFS Tools as mfstool backup or mfstool restore rather than mfsbackup and mfsrestore (you'll have to use the full path, actually - /mnt/dos/mfstool backup ...), but it's the same program you would have used if you'd been able to boot the MFS Tools 2.0 CD.

Posted by: enigma2175

Also, I don't believe you'll be able to mount your partitions (to edit files, add modules, etc.) if you are running the Tivo drive on anything but hdb, hdc or hdd. These are the only disks that are byteswapped by the various boot disks. IIRC, mfs tools has internal byteswapping and so you should be able to do a backup, but many of the other utilities require the drive already be byteswapped. Also, many of the tools have hard-coded device names in them and will not work at all with hde, hdf, sda, etc. even if you do have them byteswapped.

Posted by: Rangers4me

Can anyone else confirm that the upgrade wont work if the drives are hde and hdf?

Posted by: Robert S

I don't think MFS Tools 2.0 will have a problem with hde/f.
BlessTiVo is the tool with the device nodes hard coded into it (there's a reason for that, but it's a very un-Unix thing to do).

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