Maintenance Mode - Not available in Telnet and touch /var/lib/humaxtv/mod/maintenance.boot doesn't work

flasbyst

New Member
Maintenance Mode - Not available in Telnet and touch /var/lib/humaxtv/mod/maintenance.boot doesn't work
I'm looking to try and setup a bigger disk ( 4TB - boldly going it seems ) but as I can't get to the maintenance menu I'm a bit stuck.

I've installed the firmware as per the WIKI page Install_Modified_Firmware and then installed the full web GUI.
The Humax is pretty ancient so potentially I am out of luck
4162
 
Maintenance Mode - Were you looking at the HDR-Fox T2 (Freeview) instead of the HDR-Foxsat (Freesat)

You say that you've installed the custom firmware and the full webif - Then look at the Documentation for:
(a) Custom Firmware, Custom Apps : Pre-installed, Maintenance Mode - 'fix-disk' check and repair utility
(b) FAQs, Upgrading/Replacing the Hard Disk.
 
as per the WIKI page Install_Modified_Firmware
I'm not aware of a wiki for the FOXSAT-HDR custom firmware, so you need to be very careful you are following instructions for the FOXSAT not the HDR-FOX (which is a Freeview PVR, not satellite). They are not the same, and the general information on this forum (not including this particular section of the forum) is about HDR-FOX.

As noted in the post above, the documentation for the FOXSAT custom firmware is accessed through the CF itself.
 
It is the FOXSAT HDR which I own (see screenshot in the original post). The firmware update is successful, works mostly very well and provides a number of very good features.
Still, I was looking to use the 'menu' which is frequently talked about in the WIKI and Forums.
When I connect via telnet there is no menu displayed. The instructions in the FAQ at
wiki.hummy.tv/wiki/FAQs#How_do_I_convert_a_drive_to_EXT2.3F (I'm not allowed to post links here)
where it suggests to touch /var/lib/humaxtv/mod/maintenance.boot doesn't work for me as beast claims that the file-system is read only.

Can anyone suggest how I can get the telnet menu to work.

Cheers - Steve
 
Ah, I've re-read the posts above a couple more times and gone back to the web interface.
I'll read the documentation there rather than poking about in the wiki.

As my new drive has 4K physical sectors, there is some (admittedly small) hope that I can get more the 2TB visible.
We will see. If I have any success I'll post here for reference.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers - Steve
 
Can anyone suggest how I can get the telnet menu to work.
Assuming there is a Telnet menu for FOXSAT (somebody confirm?), what are you doing to try to access it? The whole point is that Telnet is a simple interface to the OS for when nothing else works, and requires a Telnet terminal at the computer end - what are you using?

See https://wiki.hummy.tv/wiki/Telnet (yes, I know what I said before, but this time we are dealing with the client end so most of the article is applicable).
 
The custom firmware install I ran adds telnet by default if you use the provided USB Stick image. You can then add ssh using the Custom Firmware web interface, which I have done.
I'm a white-haired old developer and use Linux daily. I normally use putty, but will fall back to telnet or ssh in a terminal depending on how I feel at the time.
I've been working with Linux, Solaris and, if I'm forced to, Windows for over 30 years so I can drive most stuff.

The HUMAX is more of a mystery to me despite it being Linux underneath.

My confusion was that when I login over telnet I don't see the 'menu' which is discussed and shown in a number of places. If I understand correctly then this is not something applicable to FOXSAT-HDR.

Currently I am formatting the 4TB disk on another Linux system. I'm not actually very hopeful that I'll get anywhere, but at least I'll know what I tried. At a minimum I hope to be able use 2TB of the disk I bought if I manually format it.

@BlackHole - I read your 'about' page. Very good. And just to say clearly, I am not being critical in any of my posts, just struggling to properly understand something new to me. I don't troll.

Cheers - Steve
 
You've already been told all the answers.
You say you are formatting something, but without saying how you partitioned it. As you are supposedly experienced with this stuff, you should know about MBR vs GPT and 32/64 bit limits on things to do with filesystems.

Now, if I put a bigger storage card in to my Panasonic camera, will that convert it to a 4K television with surround sound? I'll be very disappointed if it doesn't, and I'm going to blame you for wasting my money.
 
My confusion was that when I login over telnet I don't see the 'menu' which is discussed and shown in a number of places. If I understand correctly then this is not something applicable to FOXSAT-HDR.
Plenty of people have made the same mistake in assuming all the features of the HDR-FOX T2 custom firmware are available on the FOXSAT HDR but sadly that is not true for various reasons.
Currently I am formatting the 4TB disk on another Linux system. I'm not actually very hopeful that I'll get anywhere, but at least I'll know what I tried. At a minimum I hope to be able use 2TB of the disk I bought if I manually format it.
I would expect that if you format it with an MBR partition style you will be able to use 2TB.
 
#flasbyst Have you read the documentation in the WebIf that I referred to in Post #3?
This will answer your questions on Maintenance Mode and how to upgrade the HDD.

Look at the WebIf Documentation for:
(a) Custom Firmware, Custom Apps : Pre-installed, Maintenance Mode - 'fix-disk' check and repair utility
(b) FAQs, Upgrading/Replacing the Hard Disk
.
 
I normally use putty
That seems to be the answer to my question, without all the extra verbiage.


I read your 'about' page. Very good
...but inapplicable to you, because I only write about HDR-FOX.


I am not being critical in any of my posts,
Never suggested you were. What I'm trying to convey is not to confuse information about HDR-FOX as being necessarily applicable to FOXSAT.
 
Thanks everyone who's been supportive.
@David500 - I have read the documentation in the Web IF and am following it - have to work the rest of this week so there'll be no updates for a while. I don't have any hope, but will continue to the end just for the hell of it.

@BlackHole - was just trying to provide some background - thanks.

@prpr - good luck with your 4K TV project - Actually, for MBR vs. GPT there's quite an interesting reply from the dev of gdisk at superuser.com/questions/1005475/trying-to-understand-linux-support-for-4tb-hard-disk-drive-on-legacy-bios where he talks about how MBR could, in theory, support larger partions that 2TB. Annoyingly, the disk, I have despite having 4K physical sectors, will only talk 512 logical sectors on the interface so I reckon I am out of luck with this disk.

Still learning something new every day. Marvelous.

Cheers - Steve
 
MBR could, in theory, support larger partions that 2TB.
We know:


See Things Every... (click) section 12.

It's one thing getting the OS to recognise a larger disk capacity, but whether the Humax code can actually use the extra capacity is another. Our experience with HDR-FOX is (I would describe as) "mixed". The problem is that the Humax code has been written with assumptions built in - one of which being that the counters and pointers are only big enough to cope with a 2TB disk, because the design team didn't need to support people fitting bigger disks than cameras standard (even 2TB support only came along as an afterthought in a firmware update).

Being older, the FOXSAT code is almost certain to be even more limited. What were the sizes of disk fitted in FOXSAT-HDR as standard? Has anyone reported success exceeding those?

@BlackHole
You need a space in there.
 
Thanks for the links - I'll follow up on them.
I had previous success going from the standard (500GB I think) to 1TB with absolutely no issues - just shoved it in if I remember correctly.
A 2TB has apparently just been delivered to my house, so I have numerous possibilities to play with over the coming weekend.
 
Thought I'd report back as I hate threads when stuff is now working bit nobody ever says what was a success.
As expected, the 4TB disk got nowhere. After suitable formatting (non- MBR of course) the receiver wouldn't even start properly. I'll be using that disk for something else.
The 2TB install was completely successful. I partitioned manually with 3 of the 4 partitions more or less the same size as the disk automatically partitioned and formatted by the receiver. I the made the big partition occupy what was left.
Partitioning was done using GParted and the data on the old disk copied across as root. ( cp -rp .... )
Startup is now slightly slower than previously, maybe 5 or 10 seconds more, but otherwise appears to be fine.
Networking typically fails after a time with not even pings being answered by the FOXSAT, but I suppose that's acceptable strangeness.
The only thing which is a bit weird is a pair of files called 0.ts & 0.nts which are about 20GB in total. I'm guessing these form the buffer for the pause and rewind feature.

Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions and encouragement.

Cheers - Steve
 
Just to report back on the final issue of the network strangeness.
I had the box manually configured to use a static IP address, but it seems that after some time it gives up on this static address and requests and gets a new one from my DHCP server which it then continues to use.
Using only a DHCP provided address appears to resolve this.

Cheers - Steve
 
I had the box manually configured to use a static IP address, but it seems that after some time it gives up on this static address and requests and gets a new one from my DHCP server which it then continues to use.
I find that hard to believe. I have several boxes on static addresses and they always work as you would expect.
 
but it seems that after some time it gives up on this static address
It seems to me there is a possibility the box is going back to default settings, which will include DHCP. If it's not that, are you sure the static address you chose is within the supported range of your router?
 
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