Stuffed up filesystem

Hi all,

I have been messing about with my old TiVo and it looks like I may have buggered up the filesystem on it.

I used WinMFS to backup the bootpage and active kernel, and I think I messed it up.

If I use the OzTiVo boot USB stick I have to patch the tivoapp, it exits after complaining there is no tivoapp.

If I boot with a copy of MFSLive V1.4 it detects the TiVo disk, sees the partitions then hangs.

My question is, does anyone know of a way to restore the filesystem without loosing my recordings?

In WinMFS I can use the Info option and see the partitions etc, and that looks fine to my untrained eye.

I saved a copy of the details from the Info option if that would help any.:(

Thanks,
Raff.

You have given some details of what you have tried to do to fix the problem, but I don't really see much description of the original problem. I would be interested to know what happens if you just restart the TiVo normally. As part of the restart it should automatically do a file system check (fsck) for the root file system and /var. That might take longer than usual if it needs to do some file system repairs (which should happen automatically if the file system problems are relatively minor).

Hi David,

I have left the TiVo turned on and it seems to hang on the "just a few minutes more" page, is it possible that its doing the file system check at that point? it has a 1Tb drive in it so I guess that might take quite a while to check.

The original problem was that I was trying to fix the issue I had with it not responding to the remote control, so I backed up the active kernel and tried replacing it with a known working drives kernel.

Regards,
Raff

Yes, I'd expect the file system check (for root) to be while it says "just a few minutes more". I replaced that image on my main TiVo with an OzTiVo image that says "just a lengthy wait now" which seems a bit more honest (at least for my TiVo).

I would allow a few hours for a TiVo to start, if it has file system problems (although I don't really have much experience with that).

Hi everyone,

Just a quick update that may help others in the future, or indeed myself if I forget what I did and stuff it up again!

I got my TiVo working again.

What I did:

Boot the OzTivo install CD or usb

mount the active kernel partition of my old known working drive, in my case sdc4

mounted my windows hard disk as /windows

made a backup directory on the windows drive

copied the contents of the tvbin directory to the backup directory

shutdown

restarted with the messed up TiVo drive and booted again with the OzTiVo CD or USB

mounted the active kernel partition, again it was sdc4

deleted the tvbin directory and its contents

copied the tvbin directory and contents I had backed up in /windows/backup

shutdown

reinstall TiVo hard disk and its booted!

Regards,
Raff