Dylan's Linux Boot Disk & Mike's BlessTiVo program. Initially Created September 3rd 2000, updated February 25, 2003 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- WARNING!!!! You should not attempt to add a new drive to your TiVo until AFTER you have backed up your original A drive in your TiVo. Failure to do so will not enable you to restore your TiVo if the upgrade fails, TiVo makes a change that requires you to go back to your original setup, etc. So backup before you even think about using this software! We are not liable for any damage you cause, or this program causes. Use at your own risk. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents Section 1: Building the bootdisk Section 2: Overview of the bootdisk Section 3: Blessing your new TiVo B drive Section 4: Advanced BlessTiVo options Section 5: Troubleshooting Section 6: How to contact us Section 1: Building the bootdisk Linux: Put a blank formatted floppy in your A drive and do the following. dd if=tivoboot.img of=/dev/fd0 Windows: Put a blank formatted floppy in your A drive and do the following. double click or execute MakeBoot.bat You can read on through section two if you want to see what Dylan has put on the bootdisk, or proceed to section three to bless your drive. Section 2: Overview of the bootdisk Most of the bootdisk comes from Linux Mandrake 7.1. The kernel is version 2.4.0-test1 with the custom Mac partition code released by cc, Peter Creath, TiVoTechie and Ron Curry. A few basic Linux utilities as well as the joe editor are included. You can run the editor by typing "joe", "edit" or "vi". Follow the on screen instructions for help. Some basic commands and their DOS equivalents for Linux newbies: Linux DOS ----- --- ls dir /w ls -l dir cd cd more type edit edit rm delete cp copy Section 3: Blessing your new TiVo B drive Connect your new hard drive you wish to bless to your PC's IDE connector. You can connect it to the Primary Slave, Secondary Master, or Secondary Slave. You can not hook it up to your Primary Master. Make sure to do this with the POWER OFF. Once you have it connected you will need to go into your PC's CMOS and make sure your PC can recognize the new drive. Make sure that if your drive is a 30GB drive that your PC sees it as such. Assuming that works, boot your PC with the Linux boot floppy you created earlier. Log in as root at the "login" prompt. To do this just type "root" without the quotes and hit enter. You are now logged in. At the command line you will want to type ONE of the following commands depending on what IDE port your new drive is connected. Do NOT type the quotes. "BlessTiVo /dev/hdb" Type this if connected to Primary/Slave "BlessTiVo /dev/hdc" Type this if connected to Secondary/Master "BlessTiVo /dev/hdd" Type this if connected to Secondary/Slave The program will first check to see if the drive exists. Then it will make sure that it is not a DOS or Linux partition. If it is, it will warn you. You can still proceed if you want. This is just a safety check and if you are using a drive you previously had Windows or Linux on you will get this warning. If you tell it to proceed it will start to bless the drive. If the drive is neither a DOS or Linux partition you will be asked also if you are sure you wish to proceed. If you say yes the drive blessing procedure will be started. To bless a drive the program does these things. First it erases the first few sectors of the drive for you. Second it writes a valid bootpage to the first sector on the drive. Third it partitions the drive into three partitions. And fourth it writes the TiVo ID's out to the third partition The system will print out a message as each stage is done. The whole process takes about 5 seconds! When the last stage is complete the program prints out a message telling you the drive was blessed and also tells you the size of the data partition the TiVo will store video on. It is VERY important you check this value. It should be within about 3GB of your actual drive size. I strip off the decimal point on this value, so if you have a 20GB drive you blessed and it says it is 19GB you are fine. If it reports back the wrong size, see the troubleshooting section below. DO NOT place a blessed drive in your TiVo if the reported size is wrong. If you put a 30GB drive in your TiVo that was blessed and BlessTiVo reported back it is a 8GB drive you will be adding only 8GB of space to your TiVo and currently their is NO WAY to reverse the process, without restoring your A drive backup. If the bless process finished correctly and you are happy with the drive size, you can shutdown your PC and install the new drive in your TiVo. Make sure to set the new drive as the slave before connecting it to your TiVo. Power up your TiVo and go to the System Information screen in the setup menu and see if you're new space is available for recordings. If not go to the troubleshooting section. Section 4: Advanced BlessTiVo options The BlessTiVo program also supports doing each of the blessing stages manually. This option is for people who know EXACTLY what they are doing. To use it use the following command line options. (Without quotes) "BlessTiVo /dev/hdX erase" (Erases the first few sectors on the drive) "BlessTiVo /dev/hdX bpage" (Creates bootpage on sector 0) "BlessTiVo /dev/hdX part" (Creates TiVo partitions) "BlessTiVo /dev/hdX id" (Generates TiVo ID string in partition 3) Substitute the X in the /dev/hdX with the letter for the blank drive Do not use these options unless you know what you are doing. For those who are wondering about their TiVo equivalents. The erase command does the same as the 'dd' command used in the many example to erase the first few sectors. The bpage command does the same thing as the BOOTPAGE program on the TiVo A drive. The part command does the same thing as the pdisk program. And finally the id command is the same as the GenAddDiskTiVoID program located on some TiVo's Remember you do not need to use these individual commands. The BlessTiVo program will do them all in the proper sequence for you when used as described in Section 3. Section 5: TROUBLESHOOTING Q) BlessTiVo says "No device specified when I run it. What am I doing wrong? A) You need to specify the name of the device for the drive you wish to bless. For example the following would bless the drive connected to the Secondary/Master connector on your motherboard or IDE controller. (type without quotes) "BlessTiVo /dev/hdc" Q) I get "Too many command line options" when I run BlessTiVo A) You are specifying too many things on the command line. See Section 3 on proper format. Q) I get "Unable to connect to /dev/hdX". What's up with that? A) Either the device name you specified is not what the drive is connected to on the motherboard, the drive jumper(s) are not set right, the drive doesn't have power, your CMOS BIOS is not set to recognize the drive, or the drive is bad. Lots of things to check, but it is usually the device name not matching the jumpers. Q) I get a warning that my drive appears to have a DOS partition. A) BlessTiVo looks at the drive to warn you of this just to play it safe. If the drive was previously used in your Windows box, you will get this message. If you still want to proceed then answer Yes to the prompt and it will be blessed. If you want to play it safe turn off your PC, disconnect any DOS drives and rerun with just the drive to be blessed being connected. Q) I get a warning that my drive appears to have a Linux partition. A) See the answer above for an explanation. The only difference is BlessTiVo found a potential Linux partition. Q) I get a warning that says this program could damage my hard drive on my PC or possibly render my TiVo useless. Help! A) This is my standard warning. I make no guarantees about this program. It has been tested well, but there are always glitches, or bugs. You could accidentally erase your DOS partitions and all kinds of stuff. So if you are going to do this, make sure you have a backup of the TiVo A drive. Q) My 30GB drive is reported as a 6GB drive. The blessing was fine though. What should I do? A) DO NOT PUT THIS DRIVE IN YOUR TiVo!!!!!!! Either your BIOS on the PC couldn't handle the large drive, or for some reason the Linux kernel you're using doesn't like that size drive. This is a problem with some Linux kernels. Dylan's bootdisk does not have this problem. If you encounter this problem drop one of us an email at the address at the bottom of this document. Q) I get an "Invalid Device specified". A) You are probably either typing the wrong device name or are trying to use "/dev/hda". Below are the only valid device names you can pass to BlessTiVo. /dev/hdb /dev/hdc /dev/hdd Q) I get a message saying "Unable to determine capacity of drive connected to /dev/hdX". Help me! A) You are probably trying to run BlessTiVo on a different Linux bootdisk than the one we distribute. To play it safe stick with Dylan's bootdisk. Use the download locations listed at the bottom of this document. Q) BlessTiVo said it blessed my drive and the size reported back is fine, but it is not recognized in my TiVo. I still only have my original capacity. A) Make sure you made the second drive the slave before putting it in the TiVo. Check to see if you connected the power tail to the drive also. If none of that helps format a blank DOS floppy disk on your Windows machine. Connect the drive that was blessed but did still not work. Boot Dylan's bootdisk. After logging in as root, run the following command. "LogDiskTiVo /dev/hdX" Do not type the quotes and substitute the X for the device name of your TiVo B drive. The program will prompt you to put in the blank formatted DOS disk, and it will generate some various log files. Take that disk and zip the log file up and send them to us. Please specify the following information in your email. What type/capacity TiVo unit you have Drive make and model you are adding Type of computer you're using to bless the drive What the computer reports the drive as when it first boots Q) Can your program backup my A drive for me? A) Not yet. That is coming. Q) Can I use your program to transfer my 15GB A drive in the TiVo to a 30GB drive and take advantage of the space? A) Not yet. That is coming. Q) My problem isn't answered here. Help. A) Email us at the below address. Section 6: How to contact us. You can download all official releases of this software at http://www.tivofaq.com/hack For Support with using BlessTiVo or hacking your Tivo go here. http://www.tivocommunity.com The unoffical TiVo hacking FAQ is there also.