BootHDR and 1.03.06 firmware

[MontysEvilTwin]

I reinstalled the BootHDR package on my HD-Fox using the extracted 'official' 1.03.06 firmware, rather than the usual 1.02.20. The installation appeared to hang but it did work. I don't think this behaviour is related to the firmware version as I have seen similar behaviour with a standard install recently.

I haven't tested it extensively yet, but I have had the new version of BBC iPlayer working happily on the HD-Fox. The standard file decryption method (opt+ copy from the remote) also works as before.

I have noticed that the tuner behaves better with this version. With HDR 1.02.20 booted, I noticed that the signal monitor you get in the banner did not work, it just went to 100% on strength and quality: it works now. Also, when changing channels in HDR mode, this was OK within the same multiplex, but on going to a channel in a different multiplex it did not tune and gave no picture: presumably it was trying to tune in with the nonexistent second tuner. This works fine now with 1.03.06. I tried to record but this did not work. As expected, the front panel does not work.

What prevents recording and the DLNA server from running? With the tuner behaving as it does with this version is there any possibility of turning a HD into a single tuner HDR?

 

[Black Hole]

As far as the DLNA server is concerned, we have no certainty that the HD-FOX has the necessary hardware.

 

[Drutt]

Nice one - it had crossed my mind to try this, mainly to check out the new iplayer, but haven't had the time, and I must admit was mildly worried it might brick it . I think the reason DLNA doesn't work is more down to the fact I could never persuade it to believe it had an internal hard drive, despite attempting to mount the external drive over the mountpoints the hdr software was expecting. This is the same reason recording won't work. Maybe someone with a better knowledge of the hdr (and one to play with) could manage it, in which case we could just run the hdr software on the hd all the time which would be fab. Challenge for af123?

 

[MontysEvilTwin]

I have been having a play but have not got much further. My hope is to be able to make recording possible in HDR mode, which is probably a bit fanciful with my almost non-existent knowledge of Linux.

To mimic the HDR more closely, I took a 500 GB USB hard drive and formatted it with three EXT3 partitions: P1 = 2 GB (1 GB on HDR), P3 = 10 GB and P2 = the rest: each partition was labelled 'hmx_int_stor' to mimic the HDR. I plugged this into a HD Fox which already had the CF installed (1.02.29/ 2.19) but had no other drive attached. I was pleasantly surprised when I typed the IP address into a browser to get the 'download full interface' screen. Web-If etc. installed happily: with mod and other folders created on drive1. I ran the 'assignhd' diagnostic and this enabled recording on drive2. A small tweak to the 'autounprotect' startup file and this was running on drive2. This structure messes up packages like 'undelete' but I'm sure these issues could be sorted out without too much trouble. I quite like this structure as it puts all the mod file gubbins in drive1, with recordings saved in drive2.

I then installed 'bootHDR' with the 1.03.06 'hdf' in /mod. The HD could then be booted into HDR mode and worked as before: recordings decrypted using 'opt+' and running iPlayer (new version ) created a streamer down file on drive1 which could be saved as an mp4 file: this makes me think that the 3rd partition is unnecessary. However it is still not possible to record, the data storage option is greyed out in the Humax on screen menu, and remains so if you plug in a USB pen drive. It could be a configuration issue, but the 'My Video' folder created by bootHDR is in the correct place (mounted under /media). Are the 'My Video' and other folders created too late during the boot up process? I also wondered if it was to do with mounting of the drives as 'sda' or 'sdb' but I think it is correct to say that the internal disc on HDR may be mounted as either depending on whether a USB drive is present on start up or not. The HD Fox requires the external drive to be registered on the system before recording, I think based on the UUID. If you swap the internal hard drive of a HDR with a cloned drive (I did this in the past when replacing a drive due to an increasing reallocated sector count) it just works: is the internal drive re-registered on each boot? It is not possible record directly on a USB drive attached to a HDR (I have not tried booting one up with a USB drive attached and the internal drive disconnected). Is there a specific routine in the HDR software that blocks recording to a USB drive? If so is there any way of fooling the system that a USB drive is connected by SATA?

Any suggestions gratefully received.

 

[af123]

I think you have hit the nail on the head. The HDR probably sees that it is a removable rather than fixed disk and disables recording to it. It should be possible to work out how it's doing that though and change its view of the world... or at least its view of the disk.

One way it can tell is:

humax# cat /sys/block/sda/removable
0

 

[MontysEvilTwin]

I think you have hit the nail on the head. The HDR probably sees that it is a removable rather than fixed disk and disables recording to it. It should be possible to work out how it's doing that though and change its view of the world... or at least its view of the disk.

One way it can tell is:

humax# cat /sys/block/sda/removable
0

Is there a command that can be run after booting into HDR mode that will enable recording to a USB or is that what the above code might do? I really don't know much about Linux!

 

[af123]

Not yet. That command just shows whether the disk is regarded as a removable device.

 

[MontysEvilTwin]

Not yet. That command just shows whether the disk is regarded as a removable device.

I ran the command line on a HDR with a USB drive plugged in and it returned a zero (USB was mounted as SDA). I substituted 'SDB' and it also returned a zero. Is this behaviour as expected?

I tried out turning on a HDR with the internal disk disconnected. With a USB drive plugged in before or after booting, pressing the media button on the remote does not show any connected drives, but the USB symbol does appear on the front display. The data storage option in settings>system is greyed out like with the HD Fox in HDR mode. It may yet be possible to record in HDR mode.

 

[xyz321]

The method used by fix-disk to find the internal disk is to check if it appears to be on a "PCI" bus, the humaxtv app. may do something similar.

# ls -l /sys/block/sda/device
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root             0 Nov 11 08:16 /sys/block/sda/device -> ../../devices/pci0000:01/0000:01:00.0/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/
# ls -l /sys/block/sdb/device
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root             0 Nov 11 08:29 /sys/block/sdb/device -> ../../devices/platform/brcm-ehci.0/usb1/1-1/1-1:1.0/host2/target2:0:0/2:0:0:0/

 

[Drutt]

Been hammering at this a little. Not much progress yet but a few initial thoughts and observations...

Sadly its not as simple as the drive being marked as removable - the 1st usb device on the hd, mapped to sda is flagged as non-removable anyway. cat /sys/block/sda/removable gives 0 also.

I searched the humaxTV binaries for any ascii references to "/devices/pci", "/proc/" etc for any clues as to what it might be looking for (particularly differences). There are a fair few strings came up, but always identical between the 2 platforms. "/devices/pci" is there though.

As I just mentioned here it looks perfectly easy to map the video folder anywhere, but only once we've initially persuaded the box to enable it! If we could set up some kind of dummy device (even a ram disk or something) to fool it, it should be easy from there. Or there could be some settings file somewhere that could be patched into to fool it into thinking the inital HD setup in done.