# my tweaks for gotomydvr service



## SteveT (Oct 23, 2002)

I've been using the excellent (and free!) gotomydvr service to access tivowebplus over the internet and would like to share a couple of techniques I've used to improve my usage. (See tcf thread for background.) My internet connection drops regularly, so 1 & 2 may not be needed by everyone. #3 should be helpful to anyone using gotomydvr, however.

1. I replaced the dbclient program with a newer (0.50.1) version provided by supernaut. (attached) This eliminated the high CPU usage I was seeing when running gotomydvr. It also provided a couple of additional flags used in #2. 
2. I modified the watchdog.sh and rc.gotomydvr scripts to increase the timeouts and ignore some warnings. (attached)
3. I overcame the extremely small window size by the following technique:
a) open the gotomydvr site and select your tivo as normal.
b) once the tivo is connected, I open a new page linked to http*s*://gotomydvr.com/ This page opens without the frame, giving full-screen access to tivowebplus.
c) I created 2 quick links on my toolbar to https://gotomydvr.com/select.php and https://gotomydvr.com/. The first lets me select which of my tivos to connect to (and asks for signon if first time), the second opens the full-screen version.

These tweaks have kept my 3 tivos available for a couple of weeks now.

Please use at your own risk. If you have difficulties, just reinstall from the gotomydvr site.


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## mtcbuilder (Nov 9, 2006)

To get a full screen, just right click on the frame, select frames> then click "show only this frame".


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## SteveT (Oct 23, 2002)

mtcbuilder said:


> To get a full screen, just right click on the frame, select frames> then click "show only this frame".


An excellent tip for those using FireFox. Thanks.


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## Francesco (Oct 4, 1999)

A little trouble getting it going with my humble way of doing things (I'm really un-savvy), but I finally switched the dbclient and it indeed dropped my CPU usage on the 540 from 85-90% down to 2-7%. One thing I notice though is that top now updates every three seconds or so and dbclient has a new PID every time.

But well done!


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## goofeyfoot (Nov 17, 2005)

Don't know whether this is the correct place to post but here goes.

SVR2000. Have Turbo Net Card.

Telnet seems to work real good. But can't seem to properly install the gotomydvr application (whatever it is called)


Here is the error I got when I did this. It's a direct quotation off the Telnet session:

"TiVo: {/var/tmp} % /gotomydvr/bin/dbclient: TCP forward failed: Error listening:
Address already in use
/gotomydvr/bin/dbclient: Failed local port forward 7:127.0.0.1:7"

Anyone know how to fix this?

Thanks in advance

Michael


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## SteveT (Oct 23, 2002)

goofeyfoot said:


> Don't know whether this is the correct place to post but here goes.
> 
> SVR2000. Have Turbo Net Card.
> 
> ...


Michael, I would suggest posting in the gotomydvr thread for install problems like this.


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## Soapm (May 9, 2007)

I decided to give this version a try since the service was usually not running when I wanted to remote in. I get this error when it starts;

WARNING: Ignoring unknown argument '-y' 

Any thoughts? S2 649DT OS 9.1


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## SteveT (Oct 23, 2002)

Soapm said:


> I decided to give this version a try since the service was usually not running when I wanted to remote in. I get this error when it starts;
> 
> WARNING: Ignoring unknown argument '-y'
> 
> Any thoughts? S2 649DT OS 9.1


My first guess would be that the replacement dbclient is not installed, or your script is finding another one, because the -y argument is one of the items added in the new version.


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## Soapm (May 9, 2007)

Thanks, I'll give it another try this evening but will run dos2unix on each file first


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## tony4pres (Dec 9, 2007)

Hello everyone. My first post here. I'm trying to set up gotomydvr program and for some reason I can't write anything in the telnet box once connected. it won't allow me to type at all. I've tried another program called ttpro313 to try to write to my tivo with no luck. Please forgive me for being so dumb but I've been reading everything I can for the last 6 hours and haven't gotten any closer to making anything work.I'm so freaking confused.LOL


I have a series two dual tuner 80 hour tivo. It's hard wired to the network and I've used tivo desktop to pull videos from my tivo. What I'm hoping to accomplish is remotely accessing my tivo while on business trips. Is that possible or should I buy a sling box?

Please don't beat me down for this post. I'm going to apologize in advance if I've broken any rules.

Please help a brother out.LOL


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## SteveT (Oct 23, 2002)

tony4pres said:


> Hello everyone. My first post here. I'm trying to set up gotomydvr program and for some reason I can't write anything in the telnet box once connected. it won't allow me to type at all. I've tried another program called ttpro313 to try to write to my tivo with no luck. Please forgive me for being so dumb but I've been reading everything I can for the last 6 hours and haven't gotten any closer to making anything work.I'm so freaking confused.LOL
> 
> I have a series two dual tuner 80 hour tivo. It's hard wired to the network and I've used tivo desktop to pull videos from my tivo. What I'm hoping to accomplish is remotely accessing my tivo while on business trips. Is that possible or should I buy a sling box?
> 
> ...


I suggest you ask general setup questions over in the gotomydvr thread


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## Soapm (May 9, 2007)

Last two days my logs have been filled with these entries. Thoughts?

Host '68.178.174.173' key accepted unconditionally. 
(fingerprint md5 7c:f1:17:0a:21:0f:7f:2f:90:3d:7d:08:4a:b7:9b:4d) 
/gotomydvr/bin/dbclient: Warning: failed creating //.ssh: Read-only file system 
Dec 12 11:41PM (none) kernel:


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## SteveT (Oct 23, 2002)

Soapm said:


> Last two days my logs have been filled with these entries. Thoughts?
> 
> Host '68.178.174.173' key accepted unconditionally.
> (fingerprint md5 7c:f1:17:0a:21:0f:7f:2f:90:3d:7d:08:4a:b7:9b:4d)
> ...


Afraid I have no suggestions. Perhaps someone with more dropbear knowledge will pitch in.

My only suggestion would be to set the root to RW, let gotomydvr run a while, then set it back to RO and see if you still get the message. There might be something it needs to build only once.


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## Soapm (May 9, 2007)

SteveT said:


> Afraid I have no suggestions. Perhaps someone with more dropbear knowledge will pitch in.
> 
> My only suggestion would be to set the root to RW, let gotomydvr run a while, then set it back to RO and see if you still get the message. There might be something it needs to build only once.


No good, I got the same message except without the read only part.

I put the original dbclient back in and those messages stopped. I prefer just getting the -y error to having my logs full of those entries. The service works both ways it is just a matter of logging.


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## SteveT (Oct 23, 2002)

Soapm said:


> No good, I got the same message except without the read only part.
> 
> I put the original dbclient back in and those messages stopped. I prefer just getting the -y error to having my logs full of those entries. The service works both ways it is just a matter of logging.


Cool. You can eliminate the -y message by removing the -y from the command string at the bottom of rc.gotomydvr.


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## Soapm (May 9, 2007)

SteveT said:


> Cool. You can eliminate the -y message by removing the -y from the command string at the bottom of rc.gotomydvr.


Now that worked, thanks...


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## tivoupgrade (Sep 27, 2000)

SteveT said:


> I've been using the excellent (and free!) gotomydvr service to access tivowebplus over the internet and would like to share a couple of techniques I've used to improve my usage. (See tcf thread for background.) My internet connection drops regularly, so 1 & 2 may not be needed by everyone. #3 should be helpful to anyone using gotomydvr, however.
> 
> 1. I replaced the dbclient program with a newer (0.50.1) version provided by supernaut. (attached) This eliminated the high CPU usage I was seeing when running gotomydvr. It also provided a couple of additional flags used in #2.
> 2. I modified the watchdog.sh and rc.gotomydvr scripts to increase the timeouts and ignore some warnings. (attached)
> ...


SteveT,

Thanks for these contributions. I'm looking into things further and trying to integrate your changes, but so far have only had limited success. For some reason, I cannot automate the startup of dbclient with your script, but I can run it manually, but not in the background. I think it has something to do with id_rsa.db not being picked up by dbclient when it is run. Any thoughts on this?


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## SteveT (Oct 23, 2002)

tivoupgrade said:


> SteveT,
> 
> Thanks for these contributions. I'm looking into things further and trying to integrate your changes, but so far have only had limited success. For some reason, I cannot automate the startup of dbclient with your script, but I can run it manually, but not in the background. I think it has something to do with id_rsa.db not being picked up by dbclient when it is run. Any thoughts on this?


Sorry for not noticing this question earlier, but the "noise" level on TCF is so high I don't attempt to keep up.
Unfortunately, I have nothing to suggest, as I'm no longer using gotomydvr, and was never an expert at any of the ssh or dropbear stuff anyway.


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## Soapm (May 9, 2007)

SteveT said:


> Sorry for not noticing this question earlier, but the "noise" level on TCF is so high I don't attempt to keep up.
> Unfortunately, I have nothing to suggest, as I'm no longer using gotomydvr, and was never an expert at any of the ssh or dropbear stuff anyway.


Are you using something different? Care to share?


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## SteveT (Oct 23, 2002)

Soapm said:


> Are you using something different? Care to share?


I finally got broadband, and configured a direct connection to/through my router.


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