PrepareTiVoDisk
From NLTiVo
Welcome to the HowTo for installing the 3.0 TiVo software image for The Netherlands. This document is designed to help you install the software onto your hard disk, to do the Guided Setup and to keep your TiVo cared for and well-fed.
This is the current guide to setup 3.0 Release 1.5 for The Netherlands as of 28 November 2005. A reference to instructions for upgrading to release 1.6 is included at the end of this howto.
Table of Contents
Contents |
Downloading and Installing the Software
Select and download the apropriate image
Our latest installer ISO releases are based on the Sony & Philips images. You can use either image in any of the recommended TiVo's for use in The Netherlands (Philips, Sony, Thompson), though the Philips image is the most popular. There is no difference in functionality, just the look of the menu backgrounds.
Go into the iso-area and download one of the iso files (~90Mb) use this file with your CD burning software to create a bootable installation CD. The installer images are called:
- (Philips): nlTiVo_installer_HDRX12-xxxxxxxx.iso
- (Sony): nlTiVo_installer_SVR2000-xxxxxxxx.iso
The xxxxxxxx represent the release date of the current release, e.g. nlTiVo_installer_HDRX12-20051128.iso
For a list of bugs and todo-items on the nlTiVo-image, see: nlTiVo-image todo.
Burn the image to a CD-ROM
Some software suggested for buring the ISO images to CD:
- For Windows, get a program called "DeepBurner", there's a free version for non commercial use available, get it from www.deepburner.com.
- For Linux, "K3B" is a gui to the "cdrecord" tool, making it a bit easier to burn the image.
Connect the disk
Remove the power cable from your PC before connecting up the HD to be imaged. It's preferable to only have the new TiVo disk and your CD connected (to avoid accidentally writing over your PC disk!)
Setup
Boot up from the CD and press enter at the "boot:" prompt (or simply wait as it will auto-boot after a few seconds).
After a welcome message and a warning/recommendation regarding only having TiVo disks connected you reach the main install menu.
- Select - use this option to identify which disk is your TiVo disk - even if there's only one.
- Image - use this option to select and restore the image file to the disk.
- Mfsadd - only required if you have a second disk to install in the TiVo.
- Network - configure your TiVo networking here. Choose your network card (if applicable) and configure the networking as appropriate to your setup.
- CSPselect - required if you are using a hardware palmodification. You can choose a provider here. When chosen, the frequencies of all the stations are being pre-configured.
- Palmod - only required if you need to reconfigure palmod. Not usually required although if you are considering archiving to DVD it is a good idea to change the horizontal resolution to 720 (option 4 followed by option 1). For those who have had the tuner mod done the image comes with the internal tuner setting defaulted to Samsung/ALPS.
- Sysinit - allows you to edit rc.sysinit.author - only required for advanced configuration.
- Exit - Exits the menu system to a bash prompt.
Swap
The default (127MB) swap partition size is OK for total disk storage of up to 274GB. Above that, the rule of thumb is to divide the disk capacity (in GB) by 2 and to use that many megabytes (for example use 300MB for a 600GB TiVo). The largest value for swap supported by mfsrestore is 511MB. If you are restoring an image to an original TiVo drive (eg. to a 40GB drive or smaller) then you should use a size of 64MB (otherwise you will see a message stating that the drive is too small).
Restore
You will be given a final warning before the restore is commenced. It only takes a minute or so. Note that the progress percentage does pause a few times - this is normal. When it has finished you will see an estimated recording capacity - this is at basic quality recording.
Final tweaks
The file /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit.author is used for starting up optional hacks at boot time. You can control this by (un)commenting commands in the file. The image comes with a recommended suite of hacks, such as endpadplus and trickey already enabled.
One change you might like to make is to modify the amount of padding used by endpadplus. By default it is set to add 5 minutes before and 15 minutes after programs (where the recording schedule permits).
When you are finished: shut down, power off and remove the power lead from your PC before removing the drive.
Preparing for the Guided Setup
Once your hard disk has the software loaded, you can put the disk into your TiVo (remember to take out the power cord). Make sure you set the jumpers back to make it the master drive (if you changed them!). This page gives details on how to install the hard disk using the Tivo mounting brackets. Now you can boot your TiVo.
In order to do the Guided Setup, you must have:
- a TV connected to your TiVo.
- some form of networking that works.
- A Dutch power cable. The Series 1 TiVo will accept our 240V which is fine (series 2 (Not Supported or working) is a different story), but you will need a new power cable.
- some form of video input. If you are going to be using your VCR or STB with the TiVo, get it connected now! The same goes if you have a PAL tuner and you are going to use your antenna.
We would also recommend that you build or buy a serial cable, regardless of what networking you choose to use. If the networking fails, this will be your only way to get "into" the TiVo to diagnose the problem.
Also be aware that windows telnet and some linux telnets crash out of the tivo. PuTTY is known to work. Linux telnet works when you provide the -r switch.
Running The Guided Setup, or "GS"
Please refer to the Guided Setup section.
Forcing a Daily Call
Normally your TiVo will phone home each day to see if there is any new program guide data. You can force your TiVo to make a daily call early, but you can't do this using the on-screen TV menus, as the "Phone" menu doesn't work in PAL mode. Instead there are two ways you can force a daily call:
- You can use your web browser to connect to the TiVoWeb server on your TiVo, and then use the Phone menu there.
- You can press CLEAR, LIVE TV, CLEAR to force a daily call (only when the Trickey-service is runnning (default in the nlTiVo-image)).
Redoing Guided Setup
If for some reason the Guided Setup fails (maybe the networking didn't work), then you should be able to reboot your TiVo and it will retry the Guided Setup again. This is true for the nlTiVo hardisk-image. However, if you find that it doesn't do this, and you need to redo the Guided Setup.
The easy way
The easiest way to get back to Guided Setup is to point a web browser at the TiVo's IP address and select Enable Guided Setup in PAL from the PAL/NTSC menu.
The hard way
If you don't have networking working yet, but you can get to the Bash prompt on the TiVo, you can do this command:
[TiVo] # bootpage -p /dev/hda
Note lower case!
The output will look something like this:
root=/dev/hda4 TV_STD=PAL GS=0 netcard=turbonet
The output is the current boot parameters. GS has to be 1 to run Guided Setup or any of the hidden menus on a PAL TiVo, so we have to rewrite the boot params with GS=1. On the other hand is TiVo seems to be stuck in Maintenance Mode, you will want to set GS=0.
If your boot param output is as above, this command would update them to enable Guided Setup:
[TiVo] # bootpage -P 'root=/dev/hda4 TV_STD=PAL GS=1 netcard=turbonet' /dev/hda
Note upper case!
Make certain to enclose the new params in single quotes. Everything between the quotes should be the same as the output of the first step _except_ the value of GS
Reboot
Reboot the TiVo for the change to take effect, and keep your eye on the second boot menu. If it says "Maintenance Mode" you will be able to navigate through the menus to get to GS: Messages & Setup, System Reset, Run Guided Setup.
Update to v1.6
Although release 1.6 is available, there is not (yet) an iso-image available. You have to update manually afterwards. See this guide for instructions on how to update. The releasenotes can be found here.
