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Television Media

Blowing TiVo's Lid 89

Posted by CmdrTaco from the because-you-can dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Taking things apart is just plain fun, but there's also a lot to learn about how to build a foolproof Linux-based appliance. Break out your Torx drivers and take a closer look at TiVo's inner Linux workings. Examining the TiVo system reveals how one company made the transition from desktop operating system to embedded system."
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Blowing TiVo's Lid More

Blowing TiVo's Lid

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  • didn't i read this 2.5 weeks ago?!?

    first posted on slashdot 7/6/05 - dang! [slashdot.org]
  • Not that I care too much, but wouldn't something like this be breaking the DMCA (assuming you are in the good old US of A)?

    • Re:Not that I care.... (Score:2, Informative)

      by jtdennis ( 77869 )
      it didn't talk about extracting or decrypting video, so no. It just voids your warranty.
    • Nope. Init scripts and the like are not an access control measure, thus you can hack away at it. Now, publishing a program to crack the tivo's encrypted video files would be a violation, but cracking open the case and having a looksee isn't.
  • I guess this is still news....

  • Summary of the article (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @11:35AM (#13150133)
    - I owns TiVo box, I want to open it, I make a photo

    - Oh, a hard-disk. Let's pull it off and mount it on a regular PC

    - See here how I can use bzip2 to make a backup of the drive, BUT BUT! also to restore the backup onto the drive! Shit I'm geeky...

    - Ok so now I tinker a bit and I find a bunch of partitions

    - I mount the partitions and notice a bunch of init scripts

    - I also notice a bunch of custom programs, written in whatever language does the job, but I decide it looks like a big mess

    - I insert a phrase saying that I'm not interesting in modifying the thing, just study it. You never know with these lawyers...

    - I conclude with vague statements about Linux philosophies

    (- Additionally, I post a black-and-white photo of me showing my long hair. That's how geeky I am!)

  • Deja Vu All Over Again (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Whafro ( 193881 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @11:39AM (#13150162) Homepage
    It's amazing how frequently I have these experiences of deja vu while reading Slashdot.

  • Conversation in my home (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24, 2005 @11:40AM (#13150168)
    Me: Hey Son, bring my toolbox.
    Son: What is it this time?
    Me: Dont worry. The Tivo box is gonna be alright.
    Son: Mamaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Dad is gonna blew something again. This time it is Tivo
    Me:I will just open and see.
    Wife: (looks at me)
    Me: Ok, forget it.

  • re: "transition" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ltwally ( 313043 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @11:59AM (#13150275) Homepage Journal
    "...how one company made the transition from desktop operating system to embedded system."
    So, what he's saying here is that linux has stronger roots in GUI's than it has in the embedded area. Hmm... interesting. Linux has been doing the embedded thing for some years now, and quite successfully... while you still read articles devoted to why linux still isn't ready for prime-time desktop useage.

    Basically, what I'm getting at is this: I automatically lose interest in an article when its opening statement is ignorant about the topic. The author's opening line made the rest of his entire arguement null-and-void, as far as I'm concerned. Claiming that linux has more successful roots in the desktop GUI market than it does in the embedded market is one of the more ignorant things he could have said.

    • Re: "transition" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by imsabbel ( 611519 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @12:27PM (#13150415)
      Er...
      Linux was created by Torvards for use on his home pc...
      I would call that pretty strong roots in desktop...
      • I have to agree with you. Just because the guy made one comment about a company going from "desktop operating system to embedded system" doesn't null and void the entire article!

        I mean really, it's no trivial matter to create a custom piece of hardware from scratch, make it run Linux, and make people have no idea that they're not just using another random hardware device.

        Claiming that linux has more successful roots in the desktop GUI market than it does in the embedded market is one of the more ignoran
  • You know that right now thousands of Tivo Boxes are feeling the cold dead stare of there Geek masters and know that they might be the next!!! (Shiver!!!)
  • 1 Google stock quotes?
    2 FreeBSD an unknown giant?
    3 The inside of a TiVo
    4 ...?
    5 Profit?
    6 goto 1

  • More Info (Score:3, Informative)

    by CowboyRobot ( 671517 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @12:29PM (#13150429) Homepage
    This article: http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=sh owpage&pid=53 [acmqueue.com] includes a lot more info about the history of tivo, specifically in regard to how it relies on open source software

  • Original Slashdot Story (Score:3, Informative)

    by echocharlie ( 715022 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @12:30PM (#13150437) Homepage
    This story was first posted [slashdot.org] back on July 6 when the article was first released.

  • Something useful? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dledeaux ( 174743 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @12:38PM (#13150481) Homepage Journal
    This article is a birds eye view of TiVo. It barely scratches the surface of the inner workings of the unit. He touches on things that people have known about for years.

    What I would love to see is someone totally hack a TiVo, and come up with their own distro that is capable of running MythTV.

    Yes, it may seem a little redundant, but with the future of TiVo up in the air, a lot of customers may have nothing but useless doorstops one day and having an alternate TiVo distro would be a great way to save them and keep them running. After all, why dedicate a PC to the task when you can have an embedded unit doing what it was designed to do.
    • "Tivo is dying!" ... again? Is that anything like "Oh no, Apple is dying!" ... again? People have said that for years and Apple's debt-free with tons of cash in the bank.

  • News Flash! (Score:4, Funny)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @12:51PM (#13150541)
    It's official - even CmdrTaco doesn't read Slashdot!

  • Old old old news (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JWSmythe ( 446288 ) * <jwsmythe@@@jwsmythe...com> on Sunday July 24, 2005 @01:40PM (#13150811) Homepage Journal

    God, this is old news...

    I upgraded my TiVo about ... ummm ... 2 years ago, maybe? I had read the stuff on *how* to do it before that. I just hadn't wanted to break a perfectly good box.

    Even my journal on here covers more than his did.

    http://slashdot.org/~JWSmythe/journal/98940 [slashdot.org]

    http://slashdot.org/~JWSmythe/journal/99310 [slashdot.org]

    http://slashdot.org/~JWSmythe/journal/99319 [slashdot.org]

    I've done lots more than this. I have 3 TiVo's upgraded, hacked, and working now. Two are at my house, one at my girlfriends. It's nice when people give you "broken" boxes, just to find out they weren't all that broken. One did have a completely failed modem, but that was easy enough to deal with. (Hmm, how do you do a fresh install with no modem? Magic. hehe)

    If he would have read up a little on the subject before making himself look like a complete freakin' moron, there are two pairs of boot/root partitions. 3/4 and 6/7 . They do this for upgrades. If you're using the 3/4 pair, the upgrade gets installed into the 6/7 pair. things that must survive through upgrades are kept in /var (partition 9). He completely missed the purpose of the MFS partitions. Those are the interesting ones, which the audio/video is actually stored. Hmmm. Imagine that. Dissecting a PVR, and actually wondering where the V goes. :)

    It's very likely to have a boot/root pair empty, or just to confuse our winner a little more, both of them populated, but having different versions of the OS in them.

    And... He did his examinations of the partitions the hardest way possible. There are plenty of boot CD's, which give support for the TiVo partition table (ya, ya, apple), and a few other customizations, to make things easy.

    Oh, and his comment saying S2 is worse that S1 for hacking is just stupid.

    God, I hope he didn't actually get paid to write that crap.
  • Now if just someone would publish something on the Dish PVR. I'm sure it's written in Java, and judging by when the hard drive spins up late at night, I'm betting its running Linux with a late night Cron task cleaning things up.
    • Yes the DishPVR runs Linux. It is a 2.4 kernel and they use XFS.

      1) Take its drive out and put it in a Linux box
      2) Mount the partitions of the hard drive (its formatted with XFS) /dev/hdc1 /mnt/DN/download xfs defaults,noatime,nodiratime 0 0 /dev/hdc5 /mnt/DN/root xfs defaults,noatime,nodiratime 1 1 /dev/hdc6 /mnt/DN?next_root xfs defaults,noatime,nodiratime 0 0 /dev/hdc8 /mnt/DN?video xfs defaults,noatime,nodiratime 0 0

      Yes like the TiVo boxes a Dishnet PVR used pivot root (hdc5 and hdc6). Most of the ha

  • So sad (Score:3, Funny)

    by saikou ( 211301 ) on Sunday July 24, 2005 @03:36PM (#13151382) Homepage
    What I don't understand is why he even bothered with this type of activity. Given a mountain of knowledge about Tivos, including partitions and OS dissection on the net, why not build on that? Simple search is not good enough? What's going to be next, "our expert have dissected a frog and found out this squishy part to be its stomach! Hooray!" published in medical magazines?
  • using the Leapfrog wireless A/V transmitter http://www.smarthome.com/7656.html [smarthome.com] and wireless internet, I have done some wonderful tings with my tivo... The leapfrog has a wonderful picture but does not support HD. It broadcasts through a cinder block wall very well. It also broadcasts outside my house. The tivo box stays where the Coax connection is. ;)
  • I wish the day that someone posts the necesary mod to use the Tivo outside the NTSC system or just english PAL.

    I want PAL-N for Argentina !

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