# Troubleshooting Series 1 NO BOOT



## wa4otj (Mar 16, 2007)

I blew it! Stupid! Stupid! Brain fart!

My original Series 1 Tivo has been running faithfully for years. It is upgraded with an Ethernet card and 2 120 GB hard drives, for 240 GB.

Yesterday, for reasons that are not important, I needed to change it's IP address. I telnetted in, mounted the partition as RW, edited the rc.arch file to change the IP address with Joe, also edited rc.sysinit to change the path to include my /var/hack directory, which I had always before just manually added when I wanted to work on the machine, and then rebooted. Unfortunately, I forgot to remount the partition as RO. IDIOT!

It broke something!!

Long story short, the Tivo won't boot. I removed the drives and put them in a PC, booted the MFS Tools CD and checked them out. Everything looks perfect. rc.sysinit and rc.arch look fine to my eye.

I checked /var/log/kernel for errors, and it appears to run thru the rc.sysinit without complaint. I did see a message about fsck. So I kinda assumed it was going to run fsck. I left it on overnight, still no joy.

I need some additional pointers on troubleshooting. Can I run fsck on the PC? What other steps might help?

I was going to try today to get bash running on the serial port so I can get into it and poke around. Been a long time since I did that, don't remember how, but I think I can find docs online.

But I really need suggestions here. Is there a more painless way to get this thing restored? Or should I get Instantcake and just reimage the drive?

I'd hate to lose the video on the machine, but on the other hand I'd rather do that than give up, or be down for an extended time. 

I also have a friend with another similar machine, maybe I can borrow hers and copy her drives to mine. But it intuitively feels like there should be a simpler solution.

Pointers anyone?

In the case of fsck, how long should I leave it before concluding it ain't working? I cannot feel any hard drive activity when I touch the drives, so I am not sure it is really running fsck. I did not tell it to do so, but the message in the log led me to believe it was doing so automatically. But maybe not.

Should I add a fsck command to the startup sequence to ensure it really runs it? 

Thanks,
Nat


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## wa4otj (Mar 16, 2007)

Well, I guess no one has any suggestions. Anyone? Anything?

I have dug thru the file directories endlessly with the drives in the PC using MFStools. I tried to use fsck from MFStools but it does not seem to be on the CD. Is there an fsck tool available anywhere that will do the job?

I have not as yet figured out bash on the serial port. Years ago when I did that I had completely different software, and I can't figure it out with this MFStools. Maybe it's no longer possible. I was looking for the CD with the older software on it, but can't find it.

At one point I was able to ping the machine, but not telnet to it. That implied the kernel was running but the telnet daemon was not. Now it is not responding to ping even though I haven't really changed anything. I have no clue why Ping stopped working. It does post the startup splash screen, implying that at least the rc.sysinit script gets executed.

If anyone has anything to suggest, all input is welcome. I had hoped I could get bash going on the serial port, watch it boot and see if any obvious error messages pop out, and run fsck, and it would be back to normal. But this simple approach seems blocked. Unless someone can give me a clue on that, I guess I will just have to reimage the thing and get it back in service. 

Thanks anyway,
Nat


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

IIRC, the OS partition is automatically mounted as read-only when the Tivo boots so chances are that's not the issue. I'm not sure why you would have anything located in the /var partition to begin with as the Tivo tends to delete the partition and rebuild it from scratch without warning. I'd think that's more likely the case in your situation.

I assume you have a Turbonet card installed if you have a series 1 Tivo. I would reinstall the Turbonet software, which should restore your telnet settings. Check out the 9th Tee website for links to the Turbonet software. It will require that you pull the A drive and install it in a PC so you can boot from the Turbonet install CD.

Using bash via serial port is mainly a matter of setting the baud rate to the proper value (119200?) for the serial port in use on your PC and then connecting to the Tivo. This is assuming that you have the serial cable configured properly and it is connected to the Tivo's serial port. If telnet is running you should get a bash prompt within seconds after setting the baud rate and hitting Enter.

One other little tip that's saved me countless headaches is to make sure that whenever you edit an executable file on the Tivo you should rerun the chmod command from bash to make sure the file is still executable.


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## wa4otj (Mar 16, 2007)

Thanks, that last, about chmod, is something I didn't think of. I will check that. I am pretty sure it is executing the rc.sysinit, as that is what shows the splash screen on startup. But the rc.arch, which sets up the network, etc, maybe not. Well worth a look.

Bash is not on the serial port by default. Or at least I am fairly sure it's not. Didn't used to be. The old software I used had something called "spawnbash" that had to be run. But I can't find that in MFStools. I have a terminal on the serial port, and it speaks nothing... It's 115200 baud. Also, it doesn't seem as if telnetd is running...

I still think if I could run fsck I could salvage it. But I'm not figuring that out yet. If I don't figure it out soon, I guess I'll reimage. But I sure hate to admit defeat. It's becoming a challenge.  Maybe I'll try sticking the fsck command in the rc.sysinit right after the show splash screen step... Only thing is, I don't know for sure that fsck is even on the system, or that it's in the path.

Does anyone know the answer to that.

Thanks,
Nathan


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Go here:

http://tivo.stevejenkins.com/network_cd.html

Read. Learn.


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## martinfick (Apr 26, 2006)

wa4otj said:


> Yesterday, for reasons that are not important, I needed to change it's IP address. I telnetted in, mounted the partition as RW, edited the rc.arch file to change the IP address with Joe, also edited rc.sysinit to change the path to include my /var/hack directory, which I had always before just manually added when I wanted to work on the machine, and then rebooted. Unfortunately, I forgot to remount the partition as RO. IDIOT!
> 
> Long story short, the Tivo won't boot. I removed the drives and put them in a PC, booted the MFS Tools CD and checked them out. Everything looks perfect. rc.sysinit and rc.arch look fine to my eye.


I don't think fsck is your problem. Did you try just moving the rc.arch out of the way or using a simpler or older version just to see if some typo is screwing up the boot? Check your rc.sysinit file again, maybe it has a typo, maybe get an original one if you need to. Did you by mistake change the IP to one not on your current subnet (that would not explain the no boot though...)?


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