BufferHack (longer record buffer)

[thomson]

The bufferhack application has recently been updated to include support for v3.0 which is the version used on the oztivo image. By comparing a disassembly of the v3.0 tivoapp against the v2.5.5 tivoapp I have been able to update this application to support UK TiVo's running their standard 2.5.5 image. I have posted the changes under the Development Thread (using my DD/john1980 account) so they should be rolled into the next official release. [UPDATE: The owner of bufferhack has rolled the changes into his code, so I have replaced my patched code with his v3.0a release].

If you are keen to increase your "live buffer" from the standard 30 minutes then you may like to give this application a shot. Under the OZTiVo image you will need to remove the symbolic links before running the application otherwise you will get "Text file busy" error messages as it will be making copies of the symbolic links, rather than the actual binary file.

WARNING: Your TiVo will not boot if it is missing, or has a corrupt, /tvbin/tivoapp binary. There are a couple of ways to fix this, the simplest being reimaging the harddrive.

Do not "rm tivoapp" if it is not a symbolic link, otherwise the system will not be able to load after a reboot. The best way to see if you need to perform the following steps is to have a look at the outcome of the "du -sk /tvbin/tivoapp" command. If it returns "0 tivoapp" then it is a symbolic link, if it returns "6449 tivoapp" then it is a real file and the following extra steps do not need to be performed.

Put the file system in "read-write" mode:

[/tvbin]# rw

Check if "tivoapp" is a symbolic link by running the following?

[/tvbin]# cd /tvbin
[/tvbin]# du -sk tivoapp
0       tivoapp

If it responds with a size of 0 (as seen above) rather than 6449 then you will need to issue the following commands which will remove the symbolic link and create a copy of the binary. Firstly you need to make sure that tivoapp is a symbolic link, and that you have a tivoapp.orig binary on your system.

[/tvbin] ls -l tivoapp
[/tvbin] ls -l tivoapp.orig

Once you are sure of the above, then you can issue the following commands, making sure that last command does return a size of 6449 otherwise something has gone wrong, and you should not reboot the tivo until it has been fixed.

[/tvbin]# rm tivoapp
[/tvbin]# rm tivoapp.backup 
[/tvbin]# rm tivoapp.tmp

[/tvbin]# cp tivoapp.orig tivoapp
[/tvbin]# du -sk tivoapp
6449    tivoapp

Now you can set the buffer to 60 minutes. The following commands assume that you have placed the bufferhack script in the /var/hack/bin directory (it also includes commands to ensure that the file is in Unix format and is executable):

[/tvbin]# cd /var/hack/bin/
[/var/hack/bin]# rw
[/var/hack/bin]# dos2unix bufferhack30a.tcl
[/var/hack/bin]# chmod 755 bufferhack30a.tcl
[/var/hack/bin]# ./bufferhack30a.tcl 60
[/var/hack/bin]# ro

If everything has gone smoothly then you can reboot the system so that the patch can take effect:

[/var/hack/bin]# reboot