thank you (B-rad and Bob) for your efforts !

Is there a way to shrink the root.bin’s (DEBIAN-WDLXTV-LIVE) size ? I want to try this on a 1GB pendrive.

I’m not familiar with linux so I’m waiting for the optware “thing” for WLive (maybe it’s easier to set up).

regards
Mike

<<< edit:
dd if=/dev/zero of=new.root.bin bs=1024k count=768
mke2fs -F -L debian-wdlxtv new.root.bin
mkdir /tmp/big /tmp/smaller
mount -o loop root.bin /tmp/big
mount -o loop new.root.bin /tmp/smaller
rsync -avHS /tmp/big/* /tmp/smaller
sync
umount /tmp/big
umount /tmp/smaller
mv root.bin root.bin.old
mv new.root.bin root.bin

–b-rad >>>

just downloaded a linux system (kubuntu), and tried the method you wrote.

I’ve got a problem with 2nd line (mke2fs …).
Terminal gave me this error message:
“mke2fs: invalid fragment size – -L”

Tried google, so I tried 512, 1024 etc. No luck.

1024 result was:
“Warning: fragments not supported. Ignoring -f option”….
“new.root.bin is not a block special device
Proceed anyway? (y,n)”

512 was:
“invalid fragment size”

Maybe my linux distribution is not the perfect choice… but could you help me with this problem?

<<< edit: sorry, big eff instead of little. Original post corrected. –b-rad >>>

OMG b-rad, thanks a ton for all of your work! Your progress is truly amazing. You really should be working for WD and make this stuff official!

Do you think this could be also expanded to work with the WDTV?

The WDTV seems so hackable… If it’s possible to get a debian system running, I wonder it would be possible to run other distros running, get gnome working, or even *gasp* VLC running. If a mips compilation of VLC were used maybe people won’t be locked into the limitations of the codecs that come with the official firmware. Think something along these lines could mean DTS support for the WDTV (since it’s not using the built in official player)? Maybe VLC under gnome would be too much, so possibly a framebuffer could be used instead?

Just wondering what your thoughts were on this. Sorry in advance if my questions have been answered already or if they’re just dumb.

Thanks again, you rock!

(P.S. – It seems like you made this version a live version only because it was too big for the internal flash, but I personally like “live” versions better, like the ext3-boot. They’re easier to swap different versions and easier on the life span of the internal flash. Would it be too much work to have 2 versions of every release you make – one flashable and one live?)

<<< edit: Its ‘live’ because apt-get and a lot of other pieces of debian rely on writeable root, where the internal NAND is read only. I wouldn’t be worried about lifespan either; I’ve probably flashed my original wdtv thousands of times, plus I’ve bricked it a handful of times requiring manual intervention–and its still just like new As for ext3-boot-live? Hmm…well…ok, just for you: ext3-boot-live. –b-rad >>>

Sorry ignore my previous comment (except for the part where I say how awesome you are hahaha). I just found out there’s no framebuffer.

<<< edit: Theres no X. The WM is microwindows, now known as nanoX. The biggest problem is that even if everything fell into place and there was a desktop and X there would still be no acceleration using the 8655 since that is closed off and proprietary. Have you ever tried watching a 1080p mkv on a 500MHz computer with 200MB ram? –b-rad >>>

The same chroot trick will also work with the original WDTV. I successfully chrooted into Debian into my WDTV and was able to compile rtorrent and transmission in there.

<<< edit: I’m about to backport a lot of wdlxtv-live changes into wdlxtv, I’ll see about making a debian root.bin for original. –b-rad >>>

Succesfully chrooted into debian, compiled rtorrent, but now I can’t see my ext. hard drive. Can you please tell me, how to mount it?

I’ll answer myself: “Just mount your ext. hard drive, before you chroot”

can’t make it to work

i have wdlxtv-live 0.2.2.1 i put the root.bin on a usbstick fat32 put it in usb1
than reboot then i only see the background no menu no nothing

<<< edit: try, try, then try some more. -b-rad >>>

Great stuff b-rad. I must get round to dropping a donation your way.

Has anyone been brave enough to ‘upgrade’ sid? I gave it a go, but haven’t had time to check it very much.

Getting warnings about libssl and libcrypt not being built with version numbers.

Once again, thanks!

That’s what happens when upgrading from Stable to Unstable. Library versions will break and all sorts of dependency issues occur. So how about aiming for the middle and going with Squeeze? It works .

I’ve always dreamed of chrooting into Debian Squeeze on a mipsel machine. After running debootstrap from my Lenny PC to generate a Squeeze file system for mipsel, I copied it to my wdtv Live, and not hoping for much, did chroot. To my surprise, I was able to chroot into Squeeze. So this was good news. Squeeze must have been happy with kernel 2.6.22.19 of the wdtv Live. Running debootstrap again brought Squeeze up to date and ready for some apt-get action! Now it was time to see if my dream would come true. Would I be able to run deluged on it? With fingers crossed, I waited impatiently after running apt-get install deluge deluged. And to my surprise again, it went without a hitch. Time to run deluged. I knew it wouldn’t run. Surely lightning wouldn’t strike three times. Well, it did run. Now I dared to hope. Started the deluge webui, and it ran without any issue too. Logged into the webui at port 8112. Worked too. Now this was getting ridiculous. Something would go wrong. Tried logging in using the GTK interface, and that worked too! What was going on?

Now I have deluge set it up to download 4 torrents at a time. Now I can add 10 or 20 torrents more without worrying about flooding my machine with connections and using up resources because the Queue function of deluge will take care of it.

Should we start bragging that our wdtv Live machines are the first embedded media players capable of running Deluge 1.2.0-rc3?

My comment was deleted.

I was wondering, with the introduction of Debian do you think it would be possible to run XBMC.

<<< edit: never –b-rad >>>

Haha.. great.. let’s see if I can remember the commands from my old slackware days

B-rad.. thank you very very much for pushing the wdtv towards it’s full potential!

I got deleted too…

Any chance that Debian on the WDTV Live will lead to YAMJ support of some kind?

Thanks!

<<< edit: completely unrelated & impossible atm. –b-rad >>>

playdude: is it possible to publish your workaround (and the compiled files…) to running Deluge on WDTVLive /especially for linux newbie users/ ?

b-rad: Thanks for the clarification

Is there a way to browse the web with the wdtv live, with debian or custom firmware? Any hope or solution maybe in the future?

<<< edit: yeh, install lynx -b-rad >>>

eM82

Here are the instructions. They’re still very messy. Hopefully you won’t get too confused by them. Cheers.

http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php?topic=3303.0

playdude: thank you ! I will try tonight. (google could help me if I get stuck )

Hi b-rad,
Sorry for going Off-Topic, but did you take a look at the WDTV Gen.2 firmware if it is possible to crossflash your WDLXTV Live firmwares onto it?
The only difference for an outsider like me seems to be the missing LAN port on the WDTV Gen.2 compared to WDTV Live?
Thanks.

<<< edi: There are more differences than that and I guarantee you’d brick your gen2 if you actually managed to somehow flash it. I won’t be working on gen2 unless someone buys me one. –b-rad >>>

b-rad,

I am looking for a custom version source that I can burn on the WDTVLIVE so that it is locked into my website alone, with a Web Browser feature where I can enter a website name and a web based configuration and lock-in of the setup.

Can you please provide such a version?

I have $100 ready to be sent out using PayPal.

Thanks

Seshu Kanuri

< << edit: $100 wouldn't even cover a tenth of what you're requesting. --b-rad >>>

Hi,

I am using Monoprice dongle which has been confirmed working by others (same thing as Sabrent and Arkview, different name). The dongle works on my PC and seems to be recognized by WD TV. The log saver shows references to it (WDTV-a32b5 user.notice root: [0b95:1780] 1-1( 2.00,480m) AX88178 /000002). However, I am not able to get an IP no matter what I do. I’ve tried everything I could think of: cold boots, resets, passive hubs, powered hubs, direct connect to WD, DHCP or no DHCP, reverted back to every single firmware since 0.5.3.2, and still no luck. I would really appreciate any ideas you might have, as I’m fresh out of things to try …

Thanks in advance.

<<< edit: why are you posting this comment on the Debian on WDTV Live page? Go to a forum. –b-rad >>>

b-rad: Sorry, I thought I was on WDLXTV page. Too many windows open …

Hi B-RAD

–SNIP–

That can tell about it. In what here a problem?

<<< edit: You’ve done something bad to the original firmware partition, it can’t boot from the second and it stuck in upgrade mode now. –b-rad >>>

I’m experiencing reboot problem. When I type reboot -f into console, the WDTV never reach booted up state. But when I unplug the power connector and plug it again, the WDTV boots up normally. I’m running Debian-WDLXTV now, so i think the problem is there, because without Debian it works as it should. Any ideas?

Why does my WDTV Live display

WDTVLIVE:~# cat /conf_src/version
1.01.11.DEBIAN_WDLXTV_LIVE-0.2.2

and not 0.2.2.1? I downloaded the root.bin today. So it’s not because it is outdated.

<<< edit: probably because I neglected to tack on a .1 –b-rad >>>

Presumably a USB DVB tuner could be used to dump digital TV directly to an attached hard drive?

= WDTV Live PVR?

<<< edit: If you make it happen. –b-rad >>>

The device still probably to restore? How?

<<< edit: Go to a forum and ask, there is not enough space here for me to give you a detailed writeup on fixing your device. –b-rad >>>

Hi
Thanks to b-rad for all his effort!
One simple question.
Does the debian-wdlxtv-live run entierly from the root.bin file? Is it just like a “live cd” ?
Does it use any of the files internally in the wd tv live at all?

Thanks!

<<< edit: NAND flash is umounted and entire system runs live. –b-rad >>>

Just got the WD TV Live, and within min. it’s running lasted(0.2.2.1) hacked fw. But I can’t login.
root/ ???? wdtvlive ??

Not working..Something I am missing ??

/M

Got in.. Just a normal telnet without pw..

Thanks for the reply b-rad.
I have been pkaying with debian-wdlxtv-live, installed nfs-common for my nfs share. I am trying to mount the filesystem on my laptop with sshfs, I read I need openssh server to get it to work but this requires some X related dependencies. What kind of ssh server is already installed in the root.bin? I also see a lot of the same enteries in the fstab, is it suppose to be this way?
One last thing. what is the proper way to shutdown debian? Standby disconnets usb and thats no good shutdown..? can I use “shutdown -h now” ?
Yes I know I have a lot of questions, but I thank you for all your help!!

I noticed that every time i use a xmount or when booting the system the files /etc/fstab and /etc/mtab are expanded with a mount command to mount the stick
/dev/sda1 /tmp/media/usb/Transcend vfat rw 0 0

and then for each NFS shares and entry is added to the end of the file and strange enough when it added one entry per NFS share on every boot the entries are repeated, i.e. after 7 boots I have 7 entries of every NFS share in net.mounts.

<<< edit: this amongst many other small bugs are being addressed. hang tight. –b-rad >>>

Poweroff is not really poweroff, it just disconnects power from the USB. Now with Debian this disconnects the root file system and now how can I wake it up again without power cycle the box?

<<< edit: This is the biggest issue since day #1. I’m investigating methods to work around. –b-rad >>>

I can´t resolve any Hostname with telnet etc … ping is working well.

telnet ssl-eu.astraweb.com 563

doesnt work for example. Dont´get any Connect. Any hint?

<<< edit: I’ve fixed hostname resolution, will be included in next release–due out soon. –b-rad >>>

Ok now all is working fine. Was a right-problem. On my Live runs now the Wired-Client and SABnzbd.

any chance that debian support may see XBMC on WDTV?

<<< edit: Most likely never. –b-rad >>>

took me 10 minutes to find work around for standby disconnecting live (root.bin style) filesystem ;> yep, i was lucky ;P

<<< edit: Awesome, this was on my critical to do list–next in line Please share, this really opens up everything now. –b-rad >>>

0x2b55c4 in dmaosd, check mail ;P

<<< –b-rad >>>

Cool stuff; WD TV Live on HDMI, Debian (with wierd “df” output) on ssh.

But: from my experience, this only works with root.bin on a FAT32-/dev/sda1; I mke2fs’d a 1 TB USB-HDD, put root.bin onto it and — nothing (WDXLTVLIVE ran, USB-HDD was seen as /dev/sda1).

root.bin on an FAT32 2-GB-USB-Stick instead works.

Very Interesting stuff indeed, I am by no means a linux guru, although I do do some development as a hobby, Im not sure if any of you are familiar with XBMC (http://xbmc.org/download/) but it is by far the best Media Player Software I have ever used, and they have a bootable live linux version… Do you think there is a way to boot this from a pen drive, its only 500mb, and then then through in a hub? That would be awesome.

let me know your thoughts, cheers

<<< edit: Never going to happen. –b-rad >>>

Additionally: http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=41582

How to run XBMC on debian

Hi b-rad,

thank you for your fantastic work!
It is possible for you to integrate openssl or something like that???

Thx and a happy new year!

Well.. everybody seems to be asking for something. If Western Digital’ programmers team can’t keep up with all the issues of WDTVLIVE, how can you expect from a single one (an outsider) to do it all ?
Great work, B-RAD, I admire you dedication.

<<< edit: cheers –b-rad >>>

Hey B-rad, really great work

One Question: Is it possible to add kernel sources or kernel headers to build extra modules?

Greetz mitch

Hi b-rad,
I´f got the FW version 1.01.17 on my WD Live, I can´t boot from USB.
The Stick is on the WDBox but nothing happens.

Thx for help

Hi, i have a little problem, i live the wd with debian with rtorrent running and later(many hours) when i go to conect by ssh i not able to log in it give me an error(but an connection error) but if check the downloads rtorrent is working then debian too.

Hi,
nice work! but I’m not be able to make it working …
USB pen FAT32 on USB1 with root.bin in the root directory.
Wdtvlive works as original (menu and media center functionalities) but I can’t enter in ssh or telnet.
I need to flash your wdtvlive firmware before trying with debianlive firmware?

Thanks a lot

Davide

<<< edit: of course –b-rad >>>

Hi,
can I use DEBIAN_WDLXTV_LIVE-0.2.2.1 with your firmware 0.4.1.0 ?

Can you port a broswer(firefox or other) to work with hack firmware (not debian) with a virtual keyboard like iphone?

<<< edit: impossible, there is no X. –b-rad >>>

Hi brad,
very tanx
sorry about my bad english
you told that the gui is nanox ,it is possible to change the application-window completely ?
,also i think there is some 2d acceleration in wdtv are those acceleration usable in new systems (api ready)
so we can port debian and build a light xbmc version to run.it is enough to run mplayer

<<< edit: Have at it then, I’m not putting a single second of effort in as it interests me zero –b-rad >>>

Is ist possible to use the WDTV with debian as a Desktop Computer? Like Webbrowsing, Email,
and Running a windowmanager?

Sorry ms englisch is not Good…

sincerely
thomy_pc

<<< edit: Zero chance. Theres no X and sigma display engine is proprietary. –brad >>>