# So what are my options w/r/t LBA48-copykern....



## smw6230 (Aug 25, 2009)

and installing that on a new HD for a Series 1 Tivo?

As I detailed in the MFStools Boot CD sticky above I've been trying for three days to complete my first upgrade and I'm completely stuck on the last issue. Namely how do I load copykern onto a new HD when I only have 1 IDE controller (CDROM) on my computer and everything else is SATA? 

I've read all sorts of similar questions but after a couple of days of reading and endless frustration I'm more confused than when I started. 

Is there an adapter that I can buy? Or another program that I can use. Should I buy a 120gb drive and pay someone to do an LBA48 aware upgrade for me, then shelve that copy and use it as sort of a master for any future upgrades.

There has to be some way to accomplish this task w/o having to buy a new (old) computer. This is an especially sore point since I killed my old computer, which had three IDE controllers, on Fri in a fruitless attempt to do an upgrade using instantcake.

Obviously, I can't make this work with a computer with one IDE so right now I'm just looking for any solutions that can make this upgrade nightmare end .

Thanks for any and all help.


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## smw6230 (Aug 25, 2009)

An updated question. 

I'm still trying to figure out how to load the LBA48 boot disk. After booting the disk while viewing the logs I realized that the disk was seeing all of my devices and listed them in the log. 

My CDROM is 'hda'
My target drive shows up as 'hdb' 
My Sata hard drive shows up as 'hde'

So I should be able to run copykern, right?

If so what command do I use? I've tried everything to get the CDROM to mount but evidently to no avail because whenever I go to copykern I still can't it to function properly. 

Also if this can't work I'd appreciate any known workaround, or information on any SATA to IDE converter, that might finally allow me to finalize the drive, so to speak.


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## ronsch (Sep 7, 2001)

Are you running copykern by itself or as part of Instacake or as part of the free dvrupgrade cd?

On some PCs you have to manually mount the cdrom before you can use copykern from the free dvrupgrade cd properly. There is at least one thread out here about that already.


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## smw6230 (Aug 25, 2009)

ronsch said:


> Are you running copykern by itself or as part of Instacake or as part of the free dvrupgrade cd?
> 
> On some PCs you have to manually mount the cdrom before you can use copykern from the free dvrupgrade cd properly. There is at least one thread out here about that already.


Thanks for the response, I'm running 'copykern' from the free LBA48 Boot Disk. I think I'm almost there but I just can't figure out how to mount the CDROM and/or initiate the kernel swap. I can't believe that my entire upgrade is getting foiled on the final, and seemingly, easiest task.

In the log it recognizes the CDR as 'hda' and the target drive as 'hdb' so everything should work but alas no glory.

I just tried it a few moments ago and I got a 'unknown boot block signature 0xffff0046' after I typed 'y' to install the S1 kernel.

EDIT - This may be a major issue but to this point I have NOT tried to upgrade to the new expanded byte-swapped hard drive. That drive works flawlessly minus the lba48 kernel. Since this is my first try of an upgrade I don't want to mess that drive up so I'm trying to put the kernel on another Tivo hard drive. What I do notice is that in the logs for the LBA48 disk it recognizes the HD but can't read the partitions. That is to be expected as the WD25000JB (Caviar Blue) is a drive notorious for their incompatibility with Tivo's. I pulled that drive from a S1 (SVR-2000) and I'm just using it as sort of a upgrade test vehicle.

Could the failure to read the partitions (perhaps a corrupted drive) in the target drive be what is causing my 'copykern' transfer command not to execute properly?

I could try the good disk but as I said I jus don't want to mess it up as that part of the upgrade went perfect.

Also FWIW, in reading several boards someone had the same exact issue and they resolved it by 'mounting /dev/hda (my cdrom) to the cdrom dir. This let the copykern command to work correctly.'

I'd gladly try that but I (obviously) don't know how to mount anything to this point.


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## smw6230 (Aug 25, 2009)

smw6230 said:


> EDIT - This may be a major issue but to this point I have NOT tried to upgrade to the new expanded byte-swapped hard drive. That drive works flawlessly minus the lba48 kernel. Since this is my first try of an upgrade I don't want to mess that drive up so I'm trying to put the kernel on another Tivo hard drive. What I do notice is that in the logs for the LBA48 disk it recognizes the HD but can't read the partitions. That is to be expected as the WD25000JB (Caviar Blue) is a drive notorious for their incompatibility with Tivo's. I pulled that drive from a S1 (SVR-2000) and I'm just using it as sort of a upgrade test vehicle.
> 
> Could the failure to read the partitions (perhaps a corrupted drive) in the target drive be what is causing my 'copykern' transfer command not to execute properly?
> 
> I could try the good disk but as I said I just don't want to mess it up as that part of the upgrade went perfect.


And to close this subject out, *how utterly stupid of me!*

The "problem" that I spent 3 days trying to solve was exactly what I described above. Everything I was doing was exactly right. My mistake was my fear of ruining my upgraded drive led to me using a known defective control.

That was all it was. After I wrote the post above I kept thinking about what I had just said and everything made sense. So I grabbed the virgin HD that the unit came with and tested the LBA disk on that and everything ran smoothly.

I'm 99.9% sure that I transferred the LBA48aware kernel but just to make sure, after I entered 'y' it said;

*initializing swap partition (version 0) @57191552 size=127mb
writing to block -55654976*

My one real question, would be if the swap partition number is right for a 320gb hard drive?

Secondly, I'm pretty confident the kernel went through because when I popped the drive back into the Tivo my basic hours went *down* from 440 to 403.

That was some sort of T&E experiment there but I'm glad that I did it. I learned a lot and now I know what to do.

Finally thanks to those who took the time to help.


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## ronsch (Sep 7, 2001)

The swap partition discussion seems to bring back another semi-lost memory about that LBA48 cd. Do some searches of the upgrade/underground forum. I seem to recall a bug in one of the TPIP releases involving creating the correct version 1 swap partition. However, if your only using a 127MB swap then the version 0 swap partition is fine.

There is a lot of debate about how useful using a larger swap partition really is with the bigger drives.

Congratulations!


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## smw6230 (Aug 25, 2009)

ronsch said:


> The swap partition discussion seems to bring back another semi-lost memory about that LBA48 cd. Do some searches of the upgrade/underground forum. I seem to recall a bug in one of the TPIP releases involving creating the correct version 1 swap partition. However, if your only using a 127MB swap then the version 0 swap partition is fine.
> 
> There is a lot of debate about how useful using a larger swap partition really is with the bigger drives.
> 
> Congratulations!


Thanks, do you mean this from the 'MFStools Boot CD - LBA48 Boot Disk for ALL Series1 and Series2 TiVo Models' thread.

*One last note, MFStool 2.0 (included on this CD as well) has a bug and will not properly initialize a swap partition greater than 127MB. If you are building a SERIES1 replacement drive, and are planning on using "copykern" you can use the -s option (hit F3 for MFStool usage examples) to define a larger than 127MB swap partition, and copykern will initialize it for you when replacing the kernel.*

I made a backup of the original 40gb drive with WinMFS, and copied that over to my new 320gb drive and used the 'expand the drive' option at after that was finished. I then used the 'copykern' off the LBA48 boot disk to cap the process off.

What concerns me though is the hours listed. I did a search looking for S1 320gb upgrades and none of the successful ones came in with 110 best / 403 basic hours.

Is there anyway to check to confirm?

What I'm unsure about is instead of WinMFS should I have used a different upgrade CD like MFSLive to do the copy/expand portion of the upgrade. I don't think so but........(what do I know)


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## ronsch (Sep 7, 2001)

smw6230 said:


> Thanks, do you mean this from the 'MFStools Boot CD - LBA48 Boot Disk for ALL Series1 and Series2 TiVo Models' thread.
> 
> *One last note, MFStool 2.0 (included on this CD as well) has a bug and will not properly initialize a swap partition greater than 127MB. If you are building a SERIES1 replacement drive, and are planning on using "copykern" you can use the -s option (hit F3 for MFStool usage examples) to define a larger than 127MB swap partition, and copykern will initialize it for you when replacing the kernel.*
> 
> ...


Actually I think it was one of the TPIP versions on the lba48 cd that copykern uses to initialize the swap partition. I think I got a newer version from Todd Miller's web site and did it manually. As far as the recording hours go I will have to check my S2 standalone and see what the hours range is on it. I know my S1 DirecTivo claims 484 hours for a 500GB drive.


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## smw6230 (Aug 25, 2009)

ronsch said:


> Actually I think it was one of the TPIP versions on the lba48 cd that copykern uses to initialize the swap partition. I think I got a newer version from Todd Miller's web site and did it manually. As far as the recording hours go I will have to check my S2 standalone and see what the hours range is on it. I know my S1 DirecTivo claims 484 hours for a 500GB drive.


Thanks, I should be ok because I'm using the latest version of the LBA48 disk. So far I haven't been able to find any threads about bugs with the kernel for the 3.0 standalone. I'd be curious as ti yiur best/basic numbers.


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## ronsch (Sep 7, 2001)

smw6230 said:


> Thanks, I should be ok because I'm using the latest version of the LBA48 disk. So far I haven't been able to find any threads about bugs with the kernel for the 3.0 standalone. I'd be curious as ti yiur best/basic numbers.


For a series 2 SA with a 500GB drive:

Best: 162 hours
High: 260 hours
Medium: 343 hours
Basic: 583 hours

I use Medium as my default.


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## smw6230 (Aug 25, 2009)

ronsch said:


> For a series 2 SA with a 500GB drive:
> 
> Best: 162 hours
> High: 260 hours
> ...


Yeah that is about right in line with what I have. Thanks.


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## tivoupgrade (Sep 27, 2000)

smw6230 said:


> Thanks, I should be ok because I'm using the latest version of the LBA48 disk. So far I haven't been able to find any threads about bugs with the kernel for the 3.0 standalone. I'd be curious as ti yiur best/basic numbers.


Pretty sure the one on the LBA48 disk is the latest version. No bugs to speak of. Regardless, what shows up in your system information screen, as far as hours are concerned, is not kernel dependent. You'll get the same numbers regardless of what kernel is running - its a function of the partition and drive sizes (and using some sort of LBA48 CD to create your new drive)...

Lou


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