I finally got the Iomega GPL source to compile and link in a way that didn't lock up when I did a chroot :) The uClibc binary library is a very close match to the uClibc library on the SPP. Not perfect yet, I'm getting there. But as close as it is now, I've been able to get some things working that weren't working before.
SSH, for one.
Now, a warning. The SSH is for encrypted transmission. I believe this encryption process slows down the throughput rate of the Screenplay. When doing scp to transfer a file, the fastest I got was about 300 KB/s going over wifi. That's not very good. The FTP found at rtd1261.wikidot.com runs at about 500 KB/s over the same connection. Nonetheless, there are a variety of options in SSH and maybe somebody more knowledgable about SSH than me can figure out how to fine tune this and make it faster for the SPP.
So, if you want to install SSH anyway you start by downloading the binaries I created:
http://www.box.net/shared/o4e84c03ag
Unzip the file into the root of the screenplay, preserving the directories. Now, if you have previously used the IomTools and had to unzip the Setup files, then all you need to do is turn off and turn on the screenplay again and that I10SetupSSH.sh script will automatically run. Otherwise, you will need to run the script yourself.
Now, if you haven't already set the root password, then I have to ask if you are really that serious about security... Anyway, if you haven't, then telnet into the device and set the root password. You should then be able to use ssh to do all further communications.
How did I create the binaries? SSH was an option in the buildroot, so all I did to create the files was to turn on the option and rebuild. Then it was just a matter of copying the libraries and executables one at a time until I had determined which ones were needed to get it started.
SSH does not appear to have the 2 GB limit problem like the FTP from rtd1261.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
1.8 firmware differences
For those not already aware, iomega has released its 1.8 firmware available on the support download page.
Doing a quick comparison of the 1.8 firmware vs the 1.0 firmware files:
New Files:
ufsd.ko - Paragon NTFS driver (possibly fixes the Norton problem)
ntfsmount - another NTFS driver from ntfsprogs
DejaVuSans.ttf - font
DroidSansFallback.ttf - font
Grotesk Pro Regular.otf - font
snmpd and some directories with many snmp related files.
Removed Files:
arial.ttf
cwheib.ttf
cwyen.ttf
gkai00mp.ttf
Changed files:
inetd.conf - commented out telnet and www. Added in iodiscovery, and a commented out snmp with a note saying snmpd moved to rcS1.
rcS1 - now installs ufsd.ko and mounts the media partition using that. The "8th" partition (not on any SPP drives I've seen) is being mounted using ntfsmount.
rcS1.4partition - same changes as rcS1
services - added iodiscovery, port 6553 udp and tcp.
smb.conf - Comments removed, making it more difficult for people not familiar with the smb.conf file to change it. Max opened files upped from 1000 to 10000. Max connections upped to 4. Max smbd processed upped to 4. Log size increased to 1000. passdb backend changed to smbpasswd instead of tdbsam. oplocks changed to yes.
removed:
write cache size = 0
max mux = 10
min protocol = NT1
stat cache = no
strict sync = yes
sync always = yes
added:
socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_SNDBUF=2048 SO_RCVBUF=2048
read raw=yes
write raw=yes
max xmit=65535
dead time=15
getwd cache=yes
lpq cache=30
read prediction=yes
client NTLMv2 auth=yes
.str files: renamed Shared key (WEP) to WEP Key. Added ShiftJIS and Cyrillic strings. In those where the aspect was listed as 16:09, it was changed to 16:9. Many russian translations changed.
Binaries that changed:
DvdPlayer - Main player menu program
wpa_cli - WPA command line interface to wpa_supplicant
wpa_supplicant - WPA authentication provider
IO_Discovery - Daemon for responding to Discovery calls from the PC
IO_Discovery1 - Same, although slightly different binary.
nmbd - Part of Samba, Responds to NetBios over IP requests
smbd - Part of Samba, responds to file sharing requests
initrd.bin - Initial ram disk boot
install_ide_pvrbox_pc_v2 - Screenplay program that executes after copying firmware to do the install.
The following files are significant in the fact that they did NOT change.
busybox - no new linux commands
All files in the kernel/usb directory - meaning no new wifi devices supported
video_firmware.bin - meaning no new codecs or changes to existing ones.
hotplug - meaning the attaching of external USB drives will still be mounted using the kernel NTFS driver for those NTFS drives. So if those drives have been "modified" by Norton antivirus products, those would effectively stop the screenplay from booting still. Edit: Not true, see comment.
Doing a quick comparison of the 1.8 firmware vs the 1.0 firmware files:
New Files:
ufsd.ko - Paragon NTFS driver (possibly fixes the Norton problem)
ntfsmount - another NTFS driver from ntfsprogs
DejaVuSans.ttf - font
DroidSansFallback.ttf - font
Grotesk Pro Regular.otf - font
snmpd and some directories with many snmp related files.
Removed Files:
arial.ttf
cwheib.ttf
cwyen.ttf
gkai00mp.ttf
Changed files:
inetd.conf - commented out telnet and www. Added in iodiscovery, and a commented out snmp with a note saying snmpd moved to rcS1.
rcS1 - now installs ufsd.ko and mounts the media partition using that. The "8th" partition (not on any SPP drives I've seen) is being mounted using ntfsmount.
rcS1.4partition - same changes as rcS1
services - added iodiscovery, port 6553 udp and tcp.
smb.conf - Comments removed, making it more difficult for people not familiar with the smb.conf file to change it. Max opened files upped from 1000 to 10000. Max connections upped to 4. Max smbd processed upped to 4. Log size increased to 1000. passdb backend changed to smbpasswd instead of tdbsam. oplocks changed to yes.
removed:
write cache size = 0
max mux = 10
min protocol = NT1
stat cache = no
strict sync = yes
sync always = yes
added:
socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_SNDBUF=2048 SO_RCVBUF=2048
read raw=yes
write raw=yes
max xmit=65535
dead time=15
getwd cache=yes
lpq cache=30
read prediction=yes
client NTLMv2 auth=yes
.str files: renamed Shared key (WEP) to WEP Key. Added ShiftJIS and Cyrillic strings. In those where the aspect was listed as 16:09, it was changed to 16:9. Many russian translations changed.
Binaries that changed:
DvdPlayer - Main player menu program
wpa_cli - WPA command line interface to wpa_supplicant
wpa_supplicant - WPA authentication provider
IO_Discovery - Daemon for responding to Discovery calls from the PC
IO_Discovery1 - Same, although slightly different binary.
nmbd - Part of Samba, Responds to NetBios over IP requests
smbd - Part of Samba, responds to file sharing requests
initrd.bin - Initial ram disk boot
install_ide_pvrbox_pc_v2 - Screenplay program that executes after copying firmware to do the install.
The following files are significant in the fact that they did NOT change.
busybox - no new linux commands
All files in the kernel/usb directory - meaning no new wifi devices supported
video_firmware.bin - meaning no new codecs or changes to existing ones.
hotplug - meaning the attaching of external USB drives will still be mounted using the kernel NTFS driver for those NTFS drives. So if those drives have been "modified" by Norton antivirus products, those would effectively stop the screenplay from booting still. Edit: Not true, see comment.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
I'm still here
Just a quick update. I know I haven't posted anything recently. I've been really busy with work. It's been eating up all of my personal time. What I was working on before that onslaught of endless and challenging work assignments was merging the code published by Iomega and the code published by some other RTD 1262 players into the buildroot I had constructed. I was able to rebuild it, and executables that weren't working before started working. However, it could no longer chroot successfully due to some problem with the uclibc main library. So I did some comparisons and I've been recompiling with different options to get the working and nonworking libraries closer to the same code. When I get there, I'll publish the results. I think this will give me everything I need to build the kernel modules.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Examining the 8 files.
One of the 8 files extracted during the last blog entry is called "install_ide_pvrbox_pc_v2"
Well, this file has the familiar 3 letter word at the beginning... ELF!
Hmm, sounds like something that will install the PVR utilities... So I thought about it for a second, realized I had nothing on my SPP to lose right now anyway, so I went ahead and ran it.
PVR BOX from PC install v2 0......Aug 28 2008 19:05:32
It goes through a script and ultimately fails at the end. What it was trying to set up and run (which failed because I was logged into a drive that had mounted partitions) was the basic partitions that the screenplay starts with. So this is probably used for the initial setup to do everything required to set up the drive for the firmware installation. In fact, looking at the file in HxD, I see a bunch of interesting text. One seems to suggest that it can set up a FAT partition. So there may be some way to tell it to add PVR yet...
But this was also interesting: "tar -xjvf /mnt/hdc/ext3.img -C /mnt/hdc.ext3"
That is just a reference to the tarball in the install.img file. But that proves that his program is the one responsible for the update once you turn on the player after you've installed a firmware.
Video_firmware.bin is another one of the files in that set of 8. And I believe it is probably the microcode that gets flashed into the RTD 1262 chip itself. My basis for that belief is that if you look at the file using HxD in 16 bytes per row, you will find a graphical representation of the numbers 0-9, and then references to the decoders, MPEG-2, MPEG4, GOP, JPeg, YUV/RGB888/RGB565 -- these are all terms associated with encoders and decoders. My guess is that this will be the file we'll have to change to add H.264.
The GetUSBDev.dll, GetUSBDev.dat, and DeviceInfo.dll are probably just associated with hooking up to the ScreenPlay from the PC and transferring the information on. Arial.ttf, a font, is found on the screenplay itself, so it may just be there for when the installer wants to write some letters to the screen, such as "do not turn off".
That's all for now.
Well, this file has the familiar 3 letter word at the beginning... ELF!
Hmm, sounds like something that will install the PVR utilities... So I thought about it for a second, realized I had nothing on my SPP to lose right now anyway, so I went ahead and ran it.
PVR BOX from PC install v2 0......Aug 28 2008 19:05:32
It goes through a script and ultimately fails at the end. What it was trying to set up and run (which failed because I was logged into a drive that had mounted partitions) was the basic partitions that the screenplay starts with. So this is probably used for the initial setup to do everything required to set up the drive for the firmware installation. In fact, looking at the file in HxD, I see a bunch of interesting text. One seems to suggest that it can set up a FAT partition. So there may be some way to tell it to add PVR yet...
But this was also interesting: "tar -xjvf /mnt/hdc/ext3.img -C /mnt/hdc.ext3"
That is just a reference to the tarball in the install.img file. But that proves that his program is the one responsible for the update once you turn on the player after you've installed a firmware.
Video_firmware.bin is another one of the files in that set of 8. And I believe it is probably the microcode that gets flashed into the RTD 1262 chip itself. My basis for that belief is that if you look at the file using HxD in 16 bytes per row, you will find a graphical representation of the numbers 0-9, and then references to the decoders, MPEG-2, MPEG4, GOP, JPeg, YUV/RGB888/RGB565 -- these are all terms associated with encoders and decoders. My guess is that this will be the file we'll have to change to add H.264.
The GetUSBDev.dll, GetUSBDev.dat, and DeviceInfo.dll are probably just associated with hooking up to the ScreenPlay from the PC and transferring the information on. Arial.ttf, a font, is found on the screenplay itself, so it may just be there for when the installer wants to write some letters to the screen, such as "do not turn off".
That's all for now.
Cracking the upgrade.bin file
I needed to detail what I found out about the upgrade.bin file and how. If you want to know the format, just jump to the end of this post. I'm going to detail how I figured out the format.
For hacking this, HxD is one of the best programs in the world. And free, too!!
I set it to view 16 bytes at a time, both ascii and hex. Programmers like alignment on powers of two, and this is a very common one.
Right away, I see filenames near the beginning. And appearing in a fixed pattern too. The pattern repeats itself every 0x40 (64) bytes. It appears to start at 0x20, so there's some sort of header we'll have to decipher before that. But lets finish with the file structure.
Obviously the filename starts at offset 0x8 in that file structure. All of them are 24 bytes or less, and everything else is zeroes. So that remainder could be reserved for longer filename, but we don't know that for sure. The first part would have to identify where in the upgrade.bin it is, and how long it is. So looking at the easiest one: ChangeNote.txt. This is the easiest because it is searchable text. So we look through the file and find the text at the end of the file. Going back from the end, we find that the text likely starts at position 0x024a2ff8 in the file. Looking at the bytes before the filename we have f8 2f 4a 02 f9 08 00 00. At this point, it's pretty obvious to me. That's a simple lo-byte/hi-byte storage of the position first as a dword (32 bit), and if we apply that same thing to the second dword it's 0x000008f9, or 2297 bytes. That appears to be the length of the file.
So now to look at the header bytes. Based on the format of the file size and location, let's look at this as a group of dwords.
There a dword for 8. There's 8 files. Probably the number of files.
Nothing else seems familiar.
Looking at the differences in hex between the R1 and R1.1 upgrade.bin files, I see a change in offset 0x08-0x0b and another one at 0x10. Nothing else in that header changes. So those could easily be two different checksums. So I use HxD to highlight from 0x220 to the end of the file and calculate the checksums. Nothing matches. Hmmm. The checksum might include the file names and sizes. So I highlight from 0x20 to the end of the file and select to calculate the checksums. Checksum-32 FB4B0c59, it's a match with the 3rd dword! Doublecheck with R1.1 and it's a match! Ok, that solves part of the problem. Now, what about this one byte change at 0x10...
I change it in HxD and start DataInstaller.... The firmware package version number changed. So there we have it! Appears to be one word long that represents the number to the right of the decimal. Playing with the word at 0x0c, that appears to change the version to the left of the decimal.
Change the first dword and try to run. It says "Upgrade.bin not firmware update package, please check it then try again!" Ok, so this is a magic number for identifying the file. Tried it with the second dword. Same thing. Tried it with the other unknowns dwords. No change. Hmmm, well that's all I can research for now. So this is the structure as I've decoded it so far. I've written a small C program to extract out the individual files.
struct Header {
dword magic1 = 0x075bcd15
dword magic2 = 0x00002710
dword checksum
dword majorversion
dword minorversion
dword unknown1 = 0x00080001
dword unknown2 = 0x00000003
dword NumberOfFiles
}
struct FileList[8]
{
dword offset
dword FileSize
char FileName[24]
char Unknown[32] // this may be part of the filename, but none of the upgrades use it yet so it's not guaranteed.
}
Checksum is calculated by adding all of the bytes together, tracking up to 32 bits (ignoring overflow).
Super has indicated in the comments of "fun with player" that inside the upgrade.bin file is a tarball of the first partition. This is actually embedded in the "install.img" file that comes out of the upgrade.bin. You can find the start of the tarball by looking for it's magic number "BZh9" which is at position 0x0854216 of the upgrade.bin file for R1 firmware, or 0x0674cc6 in the install.img file.
Here's the source code & executable for extracting out the 8 files in the upgrade.bin file. http://www.box.net/shared/3dn0szidjs
Whatever directory your current directory is when you run the executable is where the extracted files will end up. You specify the location of the upgrade.bin file on the command line.
For example:
split c:\upgrade.bin
Edit: Something else I figured I'd mention. When you run the firmware installer, it extracts those 8 files to c:\documents and settings\yourlogin\Local Settings\Temp\DATA and so there is another easy way to get that. When it's done or you click cancel, it automatically delete those files.
For hacking this, HxD is one of the best programs in the world. And free, too!!
I set it to view 16 bytes at a time, both ascii and hex. Programmers like alignment on powers of two, and this is a very common one.
Right away, I see filenames near the beginning. And appearing in a fixed pattern too. The pattern repeats itself every 0x40 (64) bytes. It appears to start at 0x20, so there's some sort of header we'll have to decipher before that. But lets finish with the file structure.
Obviously the filename starts at offset 0x8 in that file structure. All of them are 24 bytes or less, and everything else is zeroes. So that remainder could be reserved for longer filename, but we don't know that for sure. The first part would have to identify where in the upgrade.bin it is, and how long it is. So looking at the easiest one: ChangeNote.txt. This is the easiest because it is searchable text. So we look through the file and find the text at the end of the file. Going back from the end, we find that the text likely starts at position 0x024a2ff8 in the file. Looking at the bytes before the filename we have f8 2f 4a 02 f9 08 00 00. At this point, it's pretty obvious to me. That's a simple lo-byte/hi-byte storage of the position first as a dword (32 bit), and if we apply that same thing to the second dword it's 0x000008f9, or 2297 bytes. That appears to be the length of the file.
So now to look at the header bytes. Based on the format of the file size and location, let's look at this as a group of dwords.
There a dword for 8. There's 8 files. Probably the number of files.
Nothing else seems familiar.
Looking at the differences in hex between the R1 and R1.1 upgrade.bin files, I see a change in offset 0x08-0x0b and another one at 0x10. Nothing else in that header changes. So those could easily be two different checksums. So I use HxD to highlight from 0x220 to the end of the file and calculate the checksums. Nothing matches. Hmmm. The checksum might include the file names and sizes. So I highlight from 0x20 to the end of the file and select to calculate the checksums. Checksum-32 FB4B0c59, it's a match with the 3rd dword! Doublecheck with R1.1 and it's a match! Ok, that solves part of the problem. Now, what about this one byte change at 0x10...
I change it in HxD and start DataInstaller.... The firmware package version number changed. So there we have it! Appears to be one word long that represents the number to the right of the decimal. Playing with the word at 0x0c, that appears to change the version to the left of the decimal.
Change the first dword and try to run. It says "Upgrade.bin not firmware update package, please check it then try again!" Ok, so this is a magic number for identifying the file. Tried it with the second dword. Same thing. Tried it with the other unknowns dwords. No change. Hmmm, well that's all I can research for now. So this is the structure as I've decoded it so far. I've written a small C program to extract out the individual files.
struct Header {
dword magic1 = 0x075bcd15
dword magic2 = 0x00002710
dword checksum
dword majorversion
dword minorversion
dword unknown1 = 0x00080001
dword unknown2 = 0x00000003
dword NumberOfFiles
}
struct FileList[8]
{
dword offset
dword FileSize
char FileName[24]
char Unknown[32] // this may be part of the filename, but none of the upgrades use it yet so it's not guaranteed.
}
Checksum is calculated by adding all of the bytes together, tracking up to 32 bits (ignoring overflow).
Super has indicated in the comments of "fun with player" that inside the upgrade.bin file is a tarball of the first partition. This is actually embedded in the "install.img" file that comes out of the upgrade.bin. You can find the start of the tarball by looking for it's magic number "BZh9" which is at position 0x0854216 of the upgrade.bin file for R1 firmware, or 0x0674cc6 in the install.img file.
Here's the source code & executable for extracting out the 8 files in the upgrade.bin file. http://www.box.net/shared/3dn0szidjs
Whatever directory your current directory is when you run the executable is where the extracted files will end up. You specify the location of the upgrade.bin file on the command line.
For example:
split c:\upgrade.bin
Edit: Something else I figured I'd mention. When you run the firmware installer, it extracts those 8 files to c:\documents and settings\yourlogin\Local Settings\Temp\DATA and so there is another easy way to get that. When it's done or you click cancel, it automatically delete those files.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
PROFTP
Just a quick note that I didn't mention. In that recently posted toolchain, I have the PROFTPD file compiled. It does run, and even starts up the way it is supposed to. I haven't taken the time to figure out all of the configuration requirements. But here are some:
1) addgroup nogroup
2) adduser ftp
3) move proftpd.conf file to /etc directory
4) make directory /home/ftp
5) make directory /var/ftp (this might not be right. I'm doing this from memory. And I was equipped with fuzzy memory. Oh, wait, that's fuzzy logic. Nevermind. There was some directory here that needed to be created).
6) Copy the S50proftpd file to the /etc directory, switch to the etc directory and type ./S50proftpd start to get it started, stop to stop it, restart to stop and start it again.
There's more required, but I didn't get to it. I'll probably try again another day. Just ran out of time before I got it totally working. If you run syslogd you can capture more information about the error messages it runs into.
1) addgroup nogroup
2) adduser ftp
3) move proftpd.conf file to /etc directory
4) make directory /home/ftp
5) make directory /var/ftp (this might not be right. I'm doing this from memory. And I was equipped with fuzzy memory. Oh, wait, that's fuzzy logic. Nevermind. There was some directory here that needed to be created).
6) Copy the S50proftpd file to the /etc directory, switch to the etc directory and type ./S50proftpd start to get it started, stop to stop it, restart to stop and start it again.
There's more required, but I didn't get to it. I'll probably try again another day. Just ran out of time before I got it totally working. If you run syslogd you can capture more information about the error messages it runs into.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
G++ toolchain fixed
I finally found the headers I needed for g++. They were in the buildroot, but were not being copied to the root for inclusion in the toolchain. I had tried copying them before, but I must have copied the wrong ones. Tried again and this time it worked. So here's the new uclibc 2.6.12.6 toolchain for mipsel.
http://www.box.net/shared/cmtngtrfjn
One note on the g++ -- you need to make the libraries available before you can run anything you compile. Those libraries are in the usr/lib of the ext2. Create a symbolic link of that called /usr/lib and you won't have to copy it. Of course, if you want to distribute any g++ compiled program, you'll need to include that library as well or nobody else will be able to run it. You can probably link it in to the executable somehow.
edit: To get the compiled c++ programs to work, I had to copy libgcc_s.so.1 and libstdc++.so.6.0.9 to the /usr/lib directory, and also do the symbolic links of libgcc_s.so to libgcc_s.so.1 and libstdc++.so and libstdc++.so.6 to libstdc++.so.6.0.9.
I also got a chance to try out some stuff with an ext3 formatted hddmedia partition. And it was way worth it.
I used symbolic links to hook up folders from my USB drives. As a result, all of the information available on those drives appears under my main ScreenPlay Pro drive when I'm browsing. So I don't have to exit to the menu and go to the USB directory. And its allowed me to create simple categories for finding the movies by placing those categories at the root level.
This is something that I think would work really well as a web page, so I'm going to try to create something like that to make it easy to do symbolic links. And while I'm at it, I might as well make it intelligent enough to allow downloading those files and, in the case of a VIDEO_TS directory, automatically create a tarball of the entire directory for download when you click on it.
http://www.box.net/shared/cmtngtrfjn
One note on the g++ -- you need to make the libraries available before you can run anything you compile. Those libraries are in the usr/lib of the ext2. Create a symbolic link of that called /usr/lib and you won't have to copy it. Of course, if you want to distribute any g++ compiled program, you'll need to include that library as well or nobody else will be able to run it. You can probably link it in to the executable somehow.
edit: To get the compiled c++ programs to work, I had to copy libgcc_s.so.1 and libstdc++.so.6.0.9 to the /usr/lib directory, and also do the symbolic links of libgcc_s.so to libgcc_s.so.1 and libstdc++.so and libstdc++.so.6 to libstdc++.so.6.0.9.
I also got a chance to try out some stuff with an ext3 formatted hddmedia partition. And it was way worth it.
I used symbolic links to hook up folders from my USB drives. As a result, all of the information available on those drives appears under my main ScreenPlay Pro drive when I'm browsing. So I don't have to exit to the menu and go to the USB directory. And its allowed me to create simple categories for finding the movies by placing those categories at the root level.
This is something that I think would work really well as a web page, so I'm going to try to create something like that to make it easy to do symbolic links. And while I'm at it, I might as well make it intelligent enough to allow downloading those files and, in the case of a VIDEO_TS directory, automatically create a tarball of the entire directory for download when you click on it.
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