# Upgrade Problems. Help Pls.



## jed (Oct 16, 2001)

Hi, I upgraded my own Tivo a number of months ago, and am now having problems doing an upgrade for a mate. Where am I going wrong?

I'm following http://www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo/upgrade3.html this time - well mostly!!!

I already have the mfstools-large-disk.iso image on CD and my old tivo.bak on my PC, so forget the backup first part of it.

I attach the new drive to hdb (as Linux reports) and it correctly shows it to be a 250Gb drive.
I then
mkdir /mnt/dos
mount /dev/hda1 / mnt/dos
restore -x -s 300 -zpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdb
Which seems to work fine.

Now if I just enter copykern it doesn't find it, so I first
mkdir /mnt/cdr
mount /dev/hdc /mnt/cdr (which gives a read only warning)
/mnt/cdr/.live/bin/copykern

Follow the prompts which seems to work.

However when I stick the new drive in the Tivo I just get looping GSOD.
I had the jumpers on CS all the time (which obviously didn't hurt in my PC, although I have tried changing to master in the Tivo - but no difference - CS works on my current identical drive in my Tivo).

I did try kickstart, but can't get that working. Enter pause when the orange light comes on, wait until both lights are orange, enter, 57 etc but it doesn't do anything other than keep looping through GSOD.

What am I doing wrong this time please?

Thanks,
Jed


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Try mounting the mfstools CD at /cdrom instead of /mnt/cdr

Copykern expects the kernel to be at /cdrom/kernels/kernel-2.5/vmlinux-2.5.px


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## jed (Oct 16, 2001)

OK, thanks for the suggestion, however whilst that does enable copykern to run with specifying the full path I now just get stuck at Welcome Powering Up.
(Now I have tried all sort of other things since I last wrote - hoping I can't have done any damage to the drive in all my attempts - I'm assuming the drive doesn't need any sort of formatting between attempts here).
Is there a way I can verify what I have on my new drive for validity?


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## jed (Oct 16, 2001)

Hmmm, rather worringly my computers BIOS is now reporting the new HDD as 137.5Gb rather than the 250Gb it should be! Things are going from bad to worse here!
Does it make any difference which backup I use? I have a backup of my old 40Gb hard drive (taken with the msftools utils from 2001) and of my 40+80 pair (not sure which utils I used to take this) and one of my current 250Gb drive) - none of which seem to make much difference.
Does it make any difference which tools I use to restore (again I've tried Tigers, Large-disk and the one from Steves page -PVT Large) none of which make any difference.

(One likes to help mates out, but right now I'm really regretting offering!!!)
Jed


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

jed said:


> Hmmm, rather worringly my computers BIOS is now reporting the new HDD as 137.5Gb rather than the 250Gb it should be!


I'm not 100% sure, but I think that's just a jumper issue.



> Things are going from bad to worse here!


You could be a struggling poet who gets up on a morning to write, but that would be going from bed to verse, I suppose


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## jed (Oct 16, 2001)

Cheers Carl, although I'm pretty sure I have my jumpers right (setup as slave and is on HDB - Primary Slave). Interestingly the PVTLinux does report hdb as 250Gb anyway - not sure which to believe.

If poetry is the order of the day, I can try a bit of Haiku

Man Upgrades his Tivo
teeth gnashing
will it ever work

struggling certainly!


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

jed said:


> Cheers Carl, although I'm pretty sure I have my jumpers right (setup as slave and is on HDB - Primary Slave). Interestingly the PVTLinux does report hdb as 250Gb anyway - not sure which to believe.


The latter. I think  Oh, and if I knew what a haiku was I might be impressed


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## mike0151 (Dec 13, 2001)

It is generally better to put the upgrade drive as master on hda, due to byte swapping issues. MFSTOOLS will do the byteswapping in software as hda isn't byteswapped by default.

I'd trust what Linux reports over the BIOS. Most people set the BIOS to NONE, especially in the days of older PCs where the BIOS didn't recognise large drives.

HTH
Mike


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

If the drive won't boot past powering up then you may have accidentally trashed the boot sector.

Have a look at MakeTiVoBootable.


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## jed (Oct 16, 2001)

Cheers for the suggestions guys. 
I'm confident that I haven't accidentally booted into Windoze, however the drive was supplied to me already in opened packaging, so I guess I can't be certain of it's history - although it was supposedly just bought from PCW. 

I'm happy to try MTB but since things are starting to get slightly serious here (if you know what I mean), I'd sort of like to know I have an insurance policy in case things go wrong (yeah, ok, looks like they already have!).

Please can anyone confirm that if all else fails here, that booting into Linux and using dd (and my current identical working drive) or using a util like Partition Magic from CD (which I believe copies an entire disk including boot sector) would result in a good drive? 
(Although I'd rather not use those other than as a last resort, as copying 250Gb could take quite a while - and that puts my Tivo out of action  )

Thanks guys!
Jed


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

I would suggest taking a fresh MFSTools backup of your working drive without compression:-

mfsbackup -l32 -so /mnt/dos/tivonew.bak /dev/hdX

(That should be around 1.3gb in size but can be compressed using winzip (or gzip) for archiving to CD if required.)

Then restore that to your new drive:-

mfsrestore -s 300 -r4 -xzpi /mnt/dos/tivonew.bak /dev/hdY

and run copykern, choosing kernel option 1. 

The above should take no more than 10 minutes in total, which is a darn sight quicker then DDing a full 250gb drive


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## jed (Oct 16, 2001)

Sorry, I was just thinking about DD or Partition Magic in terms of getting a good boot sector if I have problems with MTB. I don't think mfsutils touch the boot sector do they?


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Yes - they restore everything required to make a working TiVo drive :up:

So if you can get a good backup you should be able to restore it and have a working TiVo without messing with MTB.


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## jed (Oct 16, 2001)

Now that sounds like an excellent plan! 

Very many thanks.
Jed


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## jed (Oct 16, 2001)

More problems?
I've done as suggested with the mfsbackup and mfsrestore, however the restore ends with
Cleaning up restore. Pls wait. 
Restore Done!
Not enough extra space to expand on A drive. 
(hda is where my new drive is mounted).

Is this critical?

I thought I'd continue with the copykern anyway (which apparently doesn't work on hda, so I had to move the drive to hdb for that) however after I put the drive in the Tivo it got stuck on the Welcome screen.  

Any suggestions please?


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

IIRC copykern expects the CDROM to be on hdb. Try putting the target drive on hdc and redoing the restore from the new image.


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## jed (Oct 16, 2001)

Gosh, there are an awful lot of assumptions here that I either missed or aren't in the doc I used.

So, it looks like I need to find out what the jumper setting need to be for my CDROM to change it to slave. Then it's Windows drive on deva, CDROM on devb, new Tivo drive on hdc and mount cdrom at /cdrom.

I assume the previous backup I took is ok, so then it's
/mkdir /mnt/dos
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos 
mfsrestore -s 300 -r4 -xzpi /mnt/dos/tivonew.bak /dev/hdc
mkdir /cdrom (mind this already appeared to be there last time I tried)
mount /dev/hcd /cdrom
copykern using option 1 and hcd
umount -f -a -r 
pull and drop into Tivo.

Also, not sure if is relevant, but the last restore I did took a long time! (30mins). Started fast, but then slowed right down. Not sure if this points to something wrong.

I'll try the above tonight and see where we go.

Cheers again...
Jed


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## jed (Oct 16, 2001)

Yaarrgghhh, that isn't going to work, the primary cable isn't long enough to go from my PC hard drive to the CDROM drive (short of removing one of the drives in the PC and that's a nightmare in itself as I can only get to the screws on one side). 
So I put the new Tivo drive on deva the cdrom on hdb and my PC drive on hdc.
This time the restore was very quick (about 1min).
Now move my Tivo drive to hdc (copykern can't use hda) leaving cdrom on devb, and run copykern which also appears to work (although still with the not enough space message).
Now drop the drive back into the Tivo and yet again I'm stuck at the Welcome, Powering Up screen. 
It now seems every time I do anything, this is all I get. 

I am right in understanding from the above that the large version of mfsrestore does restore the boot sector doesn't it or do I still need to run MTB.

I have tried running MTB as I'm getting desperate, but still I get stuck at Welcome Powering Up.

I think I have also seen msgs about no partitions on the disk, I did see a ref to someone using mkfs to get around this, however I don't have linux (and can't see that util on the large.iso)

Help please!!!


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

1 minute sounds too fast for a proper restore, even if you have a fast PC. 

You shouldn't need to run MTB as mfsrestore restores everything you need, but if you have a drive > 137gb and your backup image doesn't already have the LBA48 kernel you need to run copykern to copy it. You also need copykern (or tpip) to initialise the 300mb swap. 

Assuming you aren't getting an error from copykern and it does say it has initialised a 300mb swap then I would suspect your backup.


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## jed (Oct 16, 2001)

OK, lets try again.
old tivo 250gb drive /hdb (I can't easily make it hdc); PC drive /deva ;cdrom /devc 
mkdir /mnt/dos
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos
mfsbackup -l32 -so .mnt/dos/tivo2.bak /dev/hdb
Reports source 39 hours upgraded to 282 backup will be 282.
Uncompressed size 1041mb
Backups about <1mb / sec to start with it slowing down a bit towards the end to maybe 2mb per sec (7200rpm drive, 1.4AMD athlon processor)
Pauses at 1036mb before finishing backup done!
umount -f -a -r
reboot / stop PC
swap old Tivo drive with new identical 250gb drive
mkdir /mnt/dos
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos
mfsrestore -s 300 -r4 -xzpi /mnt/dos/tivo2.bak /dev.hdb
Does first 10% in about 10 secs then slows right down taking about 30mins to complete the restore (don't understand why the backup takes around 1min and the restore takes so much longer)/
Restore complete 100%. 
Cleans up restore after a number of mins.
Restore done!
NOT ENOUGH EXTRA SPACE TO EXPAND ON A DRIVE.
umount -f -a -r
reboot and turn PC off
Swap the Tivo drive to hdc and make the cdrom hdb
copykern using option 1 and hdc
it reports writing 869376 bytes to /mnt/kernel.orig and initing 300mib swap partition (version 1)
umount -f -a -r
pull and drop into Tivo.

Guess what!
Hangs on welcome screen.

Is there anything I can actually do to check the drive is ok?? I didn't have much hair to start with - I've almost run out altogether now...


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Well, that all looks OK except perhaps for the 30 minutes to restore. I'd expect something more like 2-5 minutes from an uncompressed backup. 

Your backup isn't divorcing but that shouldn't cause a problem like this and I can see no obvious reason why it should hang on "powering up...". You mentioned the source drive was identical - what swapsize do you have on that? If an increase in swap was preventing the final MFS partition from fitting then you should get the error "drive is not big enough", not the "not enough space to expand" warning you're seeing. 

You could try leaving the -x off the restore to avoid the warning about not enough space and see if you then get the other error - maybe there's a bug in the error handling and mfsrestore is failing to finalise the drive properly but not telling you...


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## jed (Oct 16, 2001)

Good question, I have a funny feeling that the instructions I used last time were for a swap size of 127mb. I'll try another restore using 127 again and drop the x see what that produces. 

However the more I think about it, the more I think my problem is more fundamental. When I followed the instructions in MTB that suggested I could tell if it needed to be run from the display after booting linux, and it did, and even after running mtb, it still appeared to need to be run. I also have a nasty feeling about this no partitions message I keep seeing. 
I'm sure at one point (early on when I was getting GSOD) I got a display which showed about 14 partitions on the tivo disk (was that using pdisk?), now I can't get that.
I also tried downloading knoppix and mounting my tivo drive on that, however I think it was here I just got unknown partition table.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

TiVo Series 1 drives are byteswapped so won't normally be readable by another linux distro unless booted in byteswapped mode.

If you boot from the LBA48 CD in byteswapped mode with the new TiVo drive attached it should list the partitions and you should be able to mount/edit the system root (/) partition on 4 or 7 and the /var partiton on 9. 

To boot with byteswapping enabled, type the following at the "Boot:" prompt (remembering to substitute the right drive port for hdX):-

vmlnodma hdX=bswap


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## jed (Oct 16, 2001)

The more I think about it, the more I think I am going to go with old drive on hda; new drive on hdb; cdrom on hdc with large boot CD in it and then just issue

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

(hmm, maybe it would be faster with old drive on hda new drive on hdc and cdrom on hdb or hdd as that then splits the two drives onto different cables.) 

it may take a couple of days, but the alternative is I waste another 2 evenings and still don't have a working new drive. If that fails, then at least it should give some meaningful messages or point to a genuine error on the new drive which can then be taken back to PCW.
I think I'll worry about what to do in two days time when the dd is still running and not reporting on its progress then.

Thanks ever so much for your help, but my understanding of Tivo innards and Linux aren't good enough to do the more complex stuff we are now getting onto.

Now where is that sledge-hammer...

Fingers crossed.
Jed


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## jed (Oct 16, 2001)

Well at last - hurray!!! Wooooohooooo

I did a dd copy - which amazed me by taking less that 3 hours for a 250gb drive (not sure how much less, I started it at 7:45 and have only just checked it at 10:30) stuck the original drive in - phew still works - put the new drive in and it was as hoped identical (recordings and all).

Now I just need to perform a complete reset to wipe all the data before handing to my mate (sure he doesn't want all my trash) - check it still works and I think I'm there.

If anyone else is thinking of backing up a drive to a same sized drive - I'd certainly recommend dd - one simple command and a few hours and you're done! No mucking around with loads of commands and worrying about byte swapping, running assorted utils. Just make VERY sure you get your in and out files the right way around.

Very many thanks to blindlemon for his support and suggestions. Let me know if you're ever going to be around Petersfield area - I owe you a beer or two!

Now time for a very well deserved beer myself I think (and to decide whether to tell my mate the fun and games I had (which may make him feel guilty) or not.

   
Jed


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## mike0151 (Dec 13, 2001)

Just be sure that the drives are absolutely identical in size or that the desination drive is a bit bigger otherwise the copy will fail.

Always try and make the friend feel bad about how much effort it took LOL. At least a bottle of whisky worth


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