# I've screwed up my Tivo



## intastella (Feb 3, 2002)

Well, the tivo itself is running fine, but I've lost communication with my turbonet card so I can't access the tivo remotely and it hasn't done any EPG updates in weeks.

The last thing I did, which caused my communication with the network card to be lost, was make a small change in the rc.author. file thing to get the tivoweb to start up automatically, and now I've lost contact with the tivo.

The network cable says there's a link, but I can't ping, I can't ftp, I can't telnet.

I'm wondering if the IP address has changed or something.

I'm not sure what to do next. Does this mean I have to take the hard drives out and re-install the turbonet software?

Is there anything I can do to re-establish a link? Does anyone know of a webpage, or thread somewhere where something like this has already happened?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks
intastella


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## MasterYoda (Feb 18, 2002)

http://www.angryziber.com/ipscan/ would allow you to scan for the tivo on a new ip


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## Blacque Jacque (Dec 26, 2006)

I believe the default ip is 192.168.1.200, you could try that one


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

intastella said:


> The last thing I did, which caused my communication with the network card to be lost, was make a small change in the rc.author. file thing to get the tivoweb to start up automatically, and now I've lost contact with the tivo.


But messing with your rc.sysinit.author file and saving it in a non Linux format etc will prevent the Tivo from starting up. That is why it is best to install Sanderton's Startup Editor to edit it or to use Hackman.

I have a feeling you will have to pull the drives if you can't telnet or ftp to the machine. Although have you tried rebooting it to see if Telnet or FTP become reavailable?


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## Raisltin Majere (Mar 13, 2004)

Pete77 said:


> But messing with your rc.sysinit.author file and saving it in a non Linux format etc will prevent the Tivo from starting up. That is why it is best to install Sanderton's Startup Editor to edit it or to use Hackman.


I don't think that's right. Amending rc.sysinit (which the OP appears to have done - did you mean that?) can stop tivo booting. Which, I have always thought, is why we use rc.sysinit.author?

To the OP - it's always best to create rc.sysinit.author and amend that as opposed to rc.sysinit, most guides recommend this. My understanding is that when tivo boots it runs rc.sysinit and then looks for rc.sysinit.somethingelse

ETA: Sorry I see the OP says rc.author. I read rc.sysinit (sorry)


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Raisltin Majere said:


> I don't think that's right. Amending rc.sysinit (which the OP appears to have done - did you mean that?) can stop tivo booting. Which, I have always thought, is why we use rc.sysinit.author?
> 
> To the OP - it's always best to create rc.sysinit.author and amend that as opposed to rc.sysinit, most guides recommend this. My understanding is that when tivo boots it runs rc.sysinit and then looks for rc.sysinit.somethingelse


The file I'm editing is rc.sysinit.author.edit via sanderton's Startup Editor utility. The further away you are from the actual rc.sysinit file the better.

I can't think if there's anyway to recover from this other than starting again and copying the whole system across again from a backup image?


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## Raisltin Majere (Mar 13, 2004)

Pete77 said:


> The file I'm editing is rc.sysinit.author.edit via sanderton's Startup Editor utility. The further away you are from the actual rc.sysinit file the better.
> 
> I can't think if there's anyway to recover from this other than starting again and copying the whole system across again from a backup image?


Yeah, .author's the correct one to edit.



intastella said:


> Well, the tivo itself is running fine,


This suggests tivo's booting okay, I wouldn't have reimaging the drive would be necessary.

Worst case scenario would be to pull the drives and put the turbonet drivers back on, stipulating the IP you want to use.

Isn't there a way to check the IP of tivo in backdoors? Then you could change the IP of anything else on the network to connect, and change it all back again.


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## intastella (Feb 3, 2002)

Hey everyone, thanks for all the feedback, this forum is God-send.

I did actually edit the rc.sysinit.author using Hackman. Although all I did was remove what I thought was a dead link to a previous location of the tivoweb software.

I tried to ping 192.168.1.200 (my network's range is in the 192.168.1.xxx area) but didn't get any response.

The tivo itself is working normally (apart from the daily call - is there a way to get tivo to dial the phone number again without taking out the drives?).

So, I suppose the next step is to take it apart again and re-install the turbonet drivers. Bit of a pain for such a small mistake.

I've actually installed so many tweaks and then during another blip when I had to reset things, the tivo seemed to mount the other partition (I'm sketchy on this stuff) so I put in all the tivoweb hacks again - part of me wants to wipe the slate clean and remove all the hacks and start again (without deleting any shows or tivo data). Has anyone seen instructions anywhere on doing this, or is it as simple as deleting the contents of the var/hacks folder?

Thank you again for all the help and guidance on this.
intastella


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## intastella (Feb 3, 2002)

Just in case this happens to anyone else, I thought I'd report back with the solution:

I took the drive out and hooked it up to my PC and low and behold, I was missing the & at the end of my tivoweb line in the rc.sysinit.author file.

I put that in and now everything's fine.

A user called jafa in the silicondust forums very kindly helped me out.
http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2582

intastella


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

intastella said:


> I took the drive out and hooked it up to my PC and low and behold, I was missing the & at the end of my tivoweb line in the rc.sysinit.author file.
> 
> I put that in and now everything's fine.
> 
> ...


*>/dev/null 2>&1 &* at the end of each line in the file rather than just an *&* sign works better though.

jafa basically is Mr Silicon Dust as I understand it.


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## intastella (Feb 3, 2002)

I take your point about the


> /dev/null 2>&1 &


 and am planning to put it in, but I've screwed up my rc.sysinit.author once before, and I plan to be much more careful with the next move.

At the moment, my rc.sysinit.author file looks like this:



> # Call the Tivo Package Manager Startup Scripts
> /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit.tpm
> 
> /var/hack/tserver &
> /var/hack/TivoWebPlus/tivoweb &


but I went to Hackman, it told me this:



> A path, pathname or startup conflict has been found...
> (this message is informational, and does not indicate an error) hackman found /var/hack/tserver startup commands in /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit.author
> but found --unavailable-- in the file scan.
> tytoolpathname has been set to /var/hack/tserver.
> ...


SO, basically I need some help.

I want to start tserver and TivoWeb to start on each reboot (and will probably stick endpad back on and want that too).

How do I put these instructions in without killing my tivo? I'm scared to do this on my own, the last mistake was such a huge pain...

Thanks in advance
intastella


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

intastella said:


> How do I put these instructions in without killing my tivo? I'm scared to do this on my own, the last mistake was such a huge pain...
> 
> Thanks in advance
> intastella


You want to follow the instructions to install Sanderton's Startup Editor file utility for TivoWeb and you can then edit the rc.sysinit.author.edit file (which is the one then used) via TivoWeb as many times as you want without any further hassle or diffiiculty with using the Joe editor at the Telnet prompt etc. I don't trust the editing facility for this file in Hackman by comparison.

See:-

http://archive2.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=146542&page=1&pp=30

Here is my current Startup file:-



> /var/hack/setpri ts 0 $$ >/dev/null 2>&1 &
> /var/hack/tivoweb-tcl/tivoweb >/dev/null 2>&1 &
> /var/hack/endpad.tcl -s 2 -e 4 -sugqual 0 -sugeq -auto >/dev/null 2>&1 &
> /var/hack/setrgb.sh >/dev/null 2>&1 &
> /var/hack/autospace.tcl start >/dev/null 2>&1 &


I also wouldn't advise starting up tserver in the rc.sysinit file every time the machine starts up as it takes up a lot of memory and you only need to use it periodically. You can tell tserver to start when you need it directly from the Server drop down menu in TyTools. However you need to not have a command to start tserver in rc.sysinit for the option to start and stop it from TyTools to work.

Are you aware of all the TivoWeb modules to be found at:-

http://alt.org/wiki/index.php/TiVoWeb Modules


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## intastella (Feb 3, 2002)

Wow, that's great. Lots of fresh modules and I see now how things are meant to appear in the rc.sysinit.author file.

Thanks for the advice on tserver, too. I'll just load it when I need it as I always have.

Thanks!


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

intastella said:


> Wow, that's great. Lots of fresh modules and I see now how things are meant to appear in the rc.sysinit.author file.


With sanderton's startup editor its actually a file called rc.sysinit.author.edit which is one stage further back that is edited and this in some way makes the editing process even safer. The rc.sysinit.author file gets pointed to use the contents of the .edit file variant instead as I understand it.

P.S. I have just edited a couple of the Wiki module links which were out of date due to the thread concerned having gone into the Tivo Archive.


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