Custom firmware fails to load after applying Nowster patch

akiller

New Member
Hi all,

Quick summary of what I did:
  • Upgraded to custom 4.1.3 firmware. It booted fine.
  • Put Nowster's patch on a USB stick and installed as per instructions. Rather than reboot back to the firmware as expected it got stuck in a loop: BOOT displays on the screen then ~30 seconds later it powers off and resets. After a few minutes I concluded it wasn't working and powered it off.

    Checking the USB stick the patch did create a blank (0KB) log file, so it definitely tried to do something but failed.
  • Turned it back on, still the same problem after several attempts.
  • Re-flashed official 4.1.2 firmware and it booted fine
  • Reflashed custom 4.1.2 firmware (without Nowster's patch on the USB stick) and it got stuck in the boot loop again.
Anyone have any ideas? If I pull the disk out and mount it on my PC have I got a better chance of diagnosing / solving the issue?
 
Slight update: disconnected the hard disk and it does now seem to boot fully into the firmware.

Hopefully this should make solving it easier if anyone has any ideas where to start?

Cheers.
 
If I pull the disk out and mount it on my PC have I got a better chance of diagnosing / solving the issue?
No, not in Windows. Windows will not read rthe drice correctly and if you initiallis it, you could be in trouble. Your second post is a lot more than a 'slight update' and indicates that there is probably a HDD fault as that test would likely have been the first test suggested. Try to be patient as system expert will be along soon to advise you no doubt.
 
Good point, and sorry should have said - I can do it from a Linux live CD if need be as I assume it's formatted in ext3. Hopefully someone can help manually uninstall the patch so I can try it again, or just apply it manually if need be. Normally I'd agree and assume it was a bad HD too but I find it odd that it appears to boot the stock firmware without issue and the modified one without the patch.

On the positive side I have just managed to resurrect my satellite signal with the help of a stick to prod the dish until it worked :D.

This box has been sat dormant for a year, so I'm very patient :).
 
If in doubt, poke it with a stick.:) I wonder if that would work on the HDD, but I suppose you have already tried that.
There is a fixdisk utility for the Fox T2 but I'm not certain whether there is an equivalent for the Foxsat.
EDIT. Yes there is but hopefully raydon (the expert on foxsat custom firmware) will be along ssoon to point you in the right direction.
 
Good point, and sorry should have said - I can do it from a Linux live CD if need be as I assume it's formatted in ext3. Hopefully someone can help manually uninstall the patch so I can try it again, or just apply it manually if need be. Normally I'd agree and assume it was a bad HD too but I find it odd that it appears to boot the stock firmware without issue and the modified one without the patch.

On the positive side I have just managed to resurrect my satellite signal with the help of a stick to prod the dish until it worked :D.

This box has been sat dormant for a year, so I'm very patient :).

Reflashing with the original Humax firmware or Raydons version should overwrite the patch. I have doubts that it's the issue though. It must have been used thousands of times and never seen anything like this reported. Where did you source the patch from ?.

Re the drive - yes it's EXT3 and can be used on a windows machine using EXT2FSD.
 
I got it from www nowster org uk/humax/settop-patch_4.0.9utc_mips.opk which I believe to be the official link (can't post links as I don't have enough posts, so ignore the spaces).

I just put the HD into my PC and the SMART data checks out OK: no CRC / reallocated sectors which is good.

Extracting settop-patch_4.0.9utc_mips.opk then poking around the filesystem on the HD I can see that it is definitely still there. Files such as /opt/bin/settop-new exist (3,121 KB) are there which appear to be created by a script which runs during the patch install. So flashing firmwares doesn't appear to remove old packages?

I agree that lots of other people have used this patch so it shouldn't be an issue. It's the only common factor I can think of right now though.

I have also read about people having issues with their 0.ts file. My /Video/0.ts file is just under 17 GB but it plays back fine in VLC so I assume it's OK.
 
I got it from www nowster org uk/humax/settop-patch_4.0.9utc_mips.opk which I believe to be the official link (can't post links as I don't have enough posts, so ignore the spaces).

I just put the HD into my PC and the SMART data checks out OK: no CRC / reallocated sectors which is good.

Extracting settop-patch_4.0.9utc_mips.opk then poking around the filesystem on the HD I can see that it is definitely still there. Files such as /opt/bin/settop-new exist (3,121 KB) are there which appear to be created by a script which runs during the patch install. So flashing firmwares doesn't appear to remove old packages?

I agree that lots of other people have used this patch so it shouldn't be an issue. It's the only common factor I can think of right now though.

I have also read about people having issues with their 0.ts file. My /Video/0.ts file is just under 17 GB but it plays back fine in VLC so I assume it's OK.

Tis a strange one, you appear to have done everything correctly (you could try manually installing via telnet (I think the instructions are in the documentation somewhere) . Re 0.ts mine is 19,126,026 Bytes. If I remember correctly it takes a while to build to it's final size on a new machine, thereafter it stays at this size.
 
With the HDD attached to your PC, locate and delete the file /mnt/hd4/opt/etc/init.d/S99settop.sh then reinstall the HDD back into your HDR. It will then boot OK with custom firmware. Install telnet if you have not already done so, and from a telnet session enter opkg remove settop-patch. This will remove the remnants of what is, I suspect, a corrupt install. Finally enter opkg install hxxp://yyy.nowster.org.uk/humax/settop-patch_4.0.9utc_mips.opk
(replacing the x's in hxxp://yyy with t's and the y's with w's). This will install nowster's patch directly from the Internet, no need for USB stick. Reboot to activate patch.
 
raydon, thanks for your input. I feel slightly duped now because I'd mostly done that myself (deleted the sh script) and was about to explain how I'd fixed it :). I used your method to reapply the patch over telnet and that seems to have worked fine too. Just pulled a HD recording to my PC without issue.

Now to figure out how best to implement this with my media server (running XBMC/NextPVR as an SD Freeview recording backend). I was toying between re-using the Humax or buying a DVB-T2 card for HD stuff. Whilst I know XBMC can be configured to talk directly to the Humax I'd probably need to script it to pull the media directly to the PC as streaming HD won't be pleasant over 100Mbps (the media server's sat on 1Gbps so that's not an issue).

Decisions plenty!

Thanks again.
 
raydon, thanks for your input. I feel slightly duped now because I'd mostly done that myself (deleted the sh script) and was about to explain how I'd fixed it :). I used your method to reapply the patch over telnet and that seems to have worked fine too. Just pulled a HD recording to my PC without issue.

Now to figure out how best to implement this with my media server (running XBMC/NextPVR as an SD Freeview recording backend). I was toying between re-using the Humax or buying a DVB-T2 card for HD stuff. Whilst I know XBMC can be configured to talk directly to the Humax I'd probably need to script it to pull the media directly to the PC as streaming HD won't be pleasant over 100Mbps (the media server's sat on 1Gbps so that's not an issue).

Decisions plenty!

Thanks again.

HD Satellite and Freeview broadcast bitrates are a fraction of 100Mbps. Even the highest bitrates (probably 4HD) are about 8Mbps. BBC average ones are a lot less. a 10/100 network won't even break into a sweat. I can stream any HD channel to either a Samsung full-HD display smart phone or a Nexus 7 tablet.

Using a DNLA server on the Foxsat can easily support multiple HD streams to different devices using a bog standard cat5 network.

Never tried it but I remember others reporting streaming up to 4 HD recordings while recording two other live HD channels.

Even a 1080p24 full quality Blu-ray streamed file is less than 30Mpbs.
 
Just gave it a try and you're right, it seems nice and snappy. I'm used to these sorts of devices having awful throughput on ethernet ports - should have checked first!
 
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