My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

Summary:

There seems to be tons of confusion about restoring a MBWE2. There's 4 or 5 HOWTOs, and from what I can tell, none of them are complete, the most common problem being that after restoring, the system doesn't boot. So here's my take on it, which I've tested with bare drives, and I know it boots....

My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

ETMegabyte 1245699117|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

First of all, let me start by saying that I'm NOT going to be providing my boot sector to the group. At least not right away. The reason for this is that the boot sector contains the MAC address of MY MBWE2. It's hardcoded, and until I figure out a way to change it, I don't feel comfortable spreading it around. What I will do is let you know how to extract your own boot sector the same way that I did, which everyone should do anyway, and keep it safe until you need it.

Second. I've read through the forums, and used the information contained in it, as well as my own linux knowledge, to restore a bricked MBWE2. Foolish me, when I first got my first MBWE2, I decided to upgrade the firmware, not knowing any better, and it bricked my system, so in my search, I found this site. Anyway, now that I'm older and wiser, I know that I should not upgrade to the 2.x firmware, since it sux.

That being said, most of the data that I have used to restore my MBWE was acquired on this site. If you don't have it, download christof4444's restore images. Though his boot sector is flawed in my opinion, the partition backups are top-notch. Those restore images will be 99% of all that you will need to restore your MBWE2.

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OK, now that that's out of the way, let me explain how I made the files that I use that differ from the ones that are in christoff4444's images… First of all, in looking at the partition table, it seems that the first partition starts at sector 48195. This seemed strange to me. The howto that christoff4444 put together only backs up the first sector. If that were all that's needed, then WD wasted 48193 sectors of blank space? Not likely…

There's another howto that backs up about 12 megabytes of the beginning of the disk. That breaks out to about 24000 sectors. Closer, but still not quite. That would mean that WD wasted 13-14 megabytes of space for nothing. Again, not likely.

So, being who I am, it seemed to me that to do it properly, I would want to have a backup of the ENTIRE drive. This would include the ENTIRE area that's between the beginning of the disk, and the beginning of the first partition. So, that being the case, I issued the following command on my working MBWE:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/root/fullbootsect.sda bs=512 count=48194

This gave me a file of approximately 26 megabytes, and WILL contain ALL of the data (whatever it may be) between the beginning of the disk and the first partition. This will include the boot sector, the boot loader, and any other extra information that may be present there…

Needless to say, I did this on both drives, substituting sda with sdb… So, now my boot sector files equal about 52 megabytes total. A little larger than the 1kb that the other howto's use, but guaranteed to contain all the information needed.

dd if=/dev/sdb of=/root/fullbootsect.sdb bs=512 count=48194

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Next is the issue that I see of partition tables. They differ depending on what sized drive you have. However, they only differ in the last partition. So, I thought, why do we need the data partition to restore the system? We, theoretically could restore the system on both drives, configure the redundancy, boot it, and manually create the data partition later, right? That would completely eliminate any possible problems of worrying about what sized drive you have…

So, my ptable files are as follows:

# partition table of /dev/sda
unit: sectors

/dev/sda1 : start=    48195, size=  5879790, Id=fd
/dev/sda2 : start=  5927985, size=   208845, Id=fd
/dev/sda3 : start=  6136830, size=  1975995, Id=fd

and

# partition table of /dev/sdb
unit: sectors

/dev/sdb1 : start=    48195, size=  5879790, Id=fd
/dev/sdb2 : start=  5927985, size=   208845, Id=fd
/dev/sdb3 : start=  6136830, size=  1975995, Id=fd

note the lack of the 4th partitions. What this does is creates the system partitions only, and leaves the end of the disk empty, so we can create the data partitions whenever we're good and ready to… This makes streamlining the restore process easier, since you don't have to worry at all what sized data drives you're using. You'll just be telling it to use all of the remaining space when you do finally get around to making that partition…

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And finally, the hardware I used to restore the system. I use a standard PC, with two CD-ROMs in it, and NO HARD DRIVES! I can't tell you how many people I've talked with over PM or seen in the forums that screwed up their whole system because they were confused about what drives were in the system. Keep it SIMPLE! Remove all hard drives from the system except for the two drives from your MBWE2. You have to open the machine already anyway to hook up the MBWE2 drives, why is it so difficult to grasp the concept of disconnecting all the other hard drives? This will stop you from doing something stupid!!! It's the same idea as "measure twice, cut once…" COMMON SENSE, folks…

Now, the reason I use a system with two CD-ROMs is because I use a live cd to do the restore. Yes, the machine that I use normally runs linux anyway, but to make sure that I NEVER screw up my main linux install, I remove the drive, and do the restore using a live CD. It eliminates oops's. So, the first CD has an Ubuntu Install CD (A Live CD), and the second contains a burned CD with the data files I will need to restore my MBWE2.

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OK, now that I have that out of my system, I will post a copy of the file that I put together while I was restoring a bricked MBWE2 that another user on this forum sent me because he was unable to get it running himself, and had given up on it. I offered to see what I could do with it, fully expecting him to tell me to go pound sand, but surprisingly enough, he had a little faith and sent me his MBWE2. So while I was restoring his machine, I made notes of every command I used to restore his system. And here it is…

Once the Live CD was booted, I opened a terminal window.

# Change to the ROOT user and change the current directory to the MBWE2 Data Files CD directory
su
cd /media/xxxxxx

# Now I restore the boot sector and the boot loader
dd if=fullbootsect.sda of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=48194
dd if=fullbootsect.sdb of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=48194

# Next recreate the system partitions
sfdisk /dev/sda <part.sda
sfdisk /dev/sdb <part.sdb

# Then restore the data to the system partitions
bzip2 -cd sda1_image.bz2 | dd of=/dev/sda1
bzip2 -cd sdb1_image.bz2 | dd of=/dev/sdb1
bzip2 -cd sda2_image.bz2 | dd of=/dev/sda2
bzip2 -cd sdb2_image.bz2 | dd of=/dev/sdb2
bzip2 -cd sda3_image.bz2 | dd of=/dev/sda3
bzip2 -cd sdb3_image.bz2 | dd of=/dev/sdb3

# The Live CD doesn't come with the RAID tools, so install them
apt-get install mdadm

# Now reassemble the system RAID partitions
mdadm --assemble /dev/md1 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
mdadm --assemble /dev/md2 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2
mdadm --assemble /dev/md3 /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb3

# We're going to mount the boot partition and go to the config directory
mkdir /media/md1
mount /dev/md1 /media/md1
cd /media/md1/etc

# Now edit the inetd.conf file to enable SSH logins
vi inetd.conf
  ##use arrows to move down to the line that starts with #ssh
  once the cursor is on the # sign at that line, hit the "x" key to remove the #
  Hit escape.  Then type in ":wq" without the quotes.
  This will drop you back to the command prompt.  SSH is now permanently enabled.

# I disable mionet, since I don't use it, and it's a resource hog
mv init.d/mionet.sh init.d/mionet.sh.disabled

# Confirm that the UUIDs of the system partitions are correct.
mdadm -Es
  This will output 3 lines of what looks like gibberish.  Note the characters after UUID=
cat mdadm.conf
  compare the UUIDs of md1, md2, and md3.  Ignore md4 for the moment.
  if they match, then that's good.  if they don't (they should, but check anyway), then use
    vi to edit the mdadm.conf file and change the UUIDs in that file to match the output from
    the first command in this section (mdadm -Es)

# Now we're going to copy the .tar.gz file to a location on the system in case we need it later
# I don't expect to need it, but good to have it just in case...
cp /media/xxxxx/SDA4FILES.TAR.GZ /media/md1/root

# We're done for now.  Unmount all the filesystems and shut down the PC.
cd /
umount /dev/md1
/sbin/poweroff

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Pause and take a breath...
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------

# Remove drives from PC and reinstall into the MBWE2 box.  Turn it on.
# NOTE:  System should boot, but will give inner-ring outer-ring failure.  This is expected!
#        This is because the data partition isn't created yet.  System should be fine otherwise.

# After about a minute or so from when you power on the MBWE2, open a browser on any PC on the 
# network and go to:
#        http://mybookworld

# Setup regular user account
Click the "File Sharing" tab
  When it asks you for username/password, use "admin" and "123456"
Click "User Management"
Click "Create User"
  Follow the steps to create a regular user

# Now we login via SSH to the box.  You can use your favorite SSH client for this.  I personally use PuTTY.
# Login using your "regular user" account you created above.  username/password all lowercase!

# Change to root.  The root password should be "root" (without the quotes)
su

# use FDisk to create your data partitions.  This works on ANY SIZED drive!!
fdisk /dev/sda
  "u" to change to sectors instead of cylinders
  "n" to create a new partition
    "p" to make a primary partition
    "8112825" for the starting sector
    Use the default for the last sector
  "t" to change the partition type
    "4" to change partition 4
    "fd" to change it to a Linux RAID Autodetect
  "w" to write the changes to disk

fdisk /dev/sdb
  Do the same steps exactly as done above with /dev/sda

# IMPORTANT!  Now you have to reboot!  When it comes back up, re-login via SSH, and change to root...
/sbin/reboot

# Create the data partition and format it (yes, this creates Raid-1.  You can change it later!)
#     NOTE:  This didn't work for me when I tried to make a RAID-0 this way.  So I do it Raid-1...
mdadm -Cv /dev/md4 -l1 -n2 -c64 /dev/sda4 /dev/sdb4
mkfs.ext3 /dev/md4

# And Mount it.  As soon as you mount it, the inner-ring outer-ring problem should stop immediately
mount /dev/md4

# Change to the configuration directory
cd /etc

# Confirm that the UUID of the DATA partition is correct.
mdadm -Es
  This will output 4 lines of what looks like gibberish.  Note the characters after UUID=
cat mdadm.conf
  compare the UUIDs of md4.
  if they match, then that's good.  if they don't (these PROBABLY DON'T!!), then use
    vi to edit the mdadm.conf file and change the UUIDs in that file to match the output from
    the first command in this section (mdadm -Es)

# If you plan on using one large drive instead of mirrored drives, now would be the time to change it
#
# To do so, go back to http://mybookworld
Click the "Drive Management" tab
Click "Change Drive Type"
Follow the instructions to change it to "linear"  This will take 15-20 mins.
  Once it says "Format Complete", restart the MBWE2 
    From ssh, type in "/sbin/reboot"
    Or you can push-and-hold the front button on the MBWE2 until the outer ring starts to spin

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
# That's it!  You're DONE!!  You've now got an MBWE2 restored, with the drive configured the way you
# want it.  Mionet's disabled, and SSH login is enabled.
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Now, once it was up and running, that was when I noticed that the MAC address of the now-unbricked MBWE2 matched the MAC address of my MBWE2. Curious, I looked into it, and found that the MAC address is one of those things that is stored in the "empty" space between the beginning of the disk and the first partition, so, to fix it, I put together a quick script that will change the mac address to the proper one on every boot… NOTE: You will not have to do this if you have made a boot sector from your own MBWE2 beforehand! You will only need to do this if you're using the boot sector from another MBWE2….

vi /root/macaddr.sh
  Once it's up, hit the letter "i" for insert and enter in the following 3 lines
    ip link set eth0 down
    ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:90:A9:XX:XX:XX
    ip link set eth0 up
  Then hit Escape, then type in :wq (to write the file and quit out of vi)
chmod 755 /root/macaddr.sh
ln -s /root/macaddr.sh /etc/init.d/S11macaddr.sh

Obviously you will need to change the XX:XX:XX at the end of the MAC address above to match the one that's on the sticker on the back of your MBWE2…

And that's it. You should now have a completely restored, factory fresh MBWE2, with SSH enabled the proper way, and MioNet disabled, and having the proper MAC address… As I said, I wrote this as I was restoring a dead MBWE2, with blank drives, so I know this works. And the good part is that this will work with any sized drives!!! No need for any specific files for differing sized drives…

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Now, for the summary of the files that I have on my MBWE2 Restore CD, and where they came from:

fullbootsect.sda and fullbootsect.sdb -- Approx 26MB each -- I made from my own MBWE2
part.sda and part.sdb -- 202 bytes each -- These are the files whose contents I listed out at the beginning of this message
sda1-3_image.bz2 and sdb1-3_image.bz2 --  all 6 files together = about 126MB - from christoff4444's images
SDA4FILES.TAR.gz -- 219 bytes -- also from christoff4444's images (though I don't actually use this file in my restore)

That's it.  11 files and my step-by-step is all I need on my Restore CD.

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One other thing of note. I've read somewhere that the SMART monitoring on the MBWE2 looks for specific answers from the drives, and one of the things it looks for is something that only WD drives give out. I don't remember what it was, but if you're planning on using non-western-digital drives in your MBWE2, you might want to look into this. There is a fix, but it looked like a huge hassle. It'd probably be much easier just to use WD drives…

I know this is a little different than the other HOWTOs, but this is the way that felt most comfortable for me. If nothing else, those who are comfortable in linux can decipher what I did when, and why, and maybe use that knowledge to make their own way…

Either way, I hope this helps…

-ET

Edit: Bootloader Findings:

Going through my 26 Megabyte boot loader files, it appears that only the first 5.5 Megabytes of that space is used for actual data. Specifically, the first 5,527,115 bytes. So, theoretically, you could create your boot loader files using the following command:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/root/fullbootloader.sda bs=512 count=10796
   and
dd if=/dev/sdb of=/root/fullbootloader.sdb bs=512 count=10796

Then, when putting your boot areas on the new drive, you could do it with the following commands:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=48194
dd if=fullbootloader.sda of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=10796
   and
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=48194
dd if=fullbootloader.sdb of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=10796

This would ensure that the drive is zeroed out through the entire area between the beginning of the disk and where the first partition starts, then restores only the data portions of that area, keeping the boot loader files smaller (5MB rather than the 26MB each that my original files were)…

Edit: Further/Final Bootloader Findings:

As you will probably see if you scroll down to the end of this topic, a proper solution has been found for fixing the mac address in the bootloader… I have tested this system, and it works on all of the mac addresses I have the ability to test with. So I'm confident it will work with all mac addresses.

I will be creating another topic in this forum titled "MAC Addresses - Bootloader - Checksums". Search for it. It will give a brief overview of what was found in this thread, and will include a list of MAC addresses, and their corresponding checksums. This will provide a list of known working checksums you can use. If you would like your MAC's checksum (if you've lost it), post there, and I will post the checksum bytes for it in reply…

Last edited on 1246309751|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover By ETMegabyte + Show more

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

alllexx 1245726060|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Just a tip: you can easily change the hardcoded MAC-address using u-boot utility:
http://www.ismprofessional.net/pascucci/documenti/mybook/mybook-hacking-en.html#id2928887

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

ETMegabyte 1245726942|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I looked through that page, and couldn't see an easy way to change the hardcoded MAC. That site seems to replace the default OS with Debian, and explains the steps needed to install the MBWE fresh using a serial cable. Unless I missed something….

What I need is a good hex editor, and to take the time to go through my boot sector files, and figure out where the MAC is stored… I'll get to it, I just don't have the time right now…

-ET

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

alllexx 1245727411|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Maybe you should look again ;)

The third and fourth parameter in netdev variable are the MAC address we want to assign to ethernet interface.

You don't need to install Debian for that. Just build the toolchain, remove "examples \" from u-boot makefile, change "mem=32M console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/md1 netdev=0,0,0x0030e000,0x0001,eth0 elevator=cfq" to "mem=32M console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/md1 netdev=0,0,<YOUR_MAC>,eth0 elevator=cfq" and build with

# make oxnas_config
# make

BTW, since I automated the process, building the toolchain is trivial:

# svn co http://svn.nslu2-linux.org/svnroot/optware/trunk optware
# cd optware
# make mbwe-bluering-target
# cd mbwe-bluering
# make directories ipkg-utils
# make toolchain

Regards,
Alex

P.S. Obviously , you'll need to build stage1 bootloader and write resulting u-boot.img on both drives, just follow the page instructions to do this.

Last edited on 1245727706|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover By alllexx + Show more

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

ETMegabyte 1245728151|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

The goal was to make this as simple and painless as possible. Rebuilding the bootloader is not something a n00b can do. My process is intended to be a no-brainer. A list of commands to simply restore an MBWE2 back to factory. If I'm recompiling a boot loader and replacing a boot image, that's not streamlined…

-ET

Last edited on 1245728177|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover By ETMegabyte + Show more

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

alllexx 1245735978|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

In case someone gives it a go, I forgot to mention that you also have to comment out a line in the u-boot/include/configs/oxnas.h:

//#define CONFIG_ETHADDR      00:30:e0:00:00:01

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

alllexx 1245789798|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

After investigating a bit, I can tell that what you need is not rebuilding the bootloader, but changing u-boot env variables that are stored on address 0x5E00. The problem, though, is the first 4 bites - it's a checksum used by u-boot for varifying.
So, we just need to scan u-boot source code and see how it's generated.

Last edited on 1245789956|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover By alllexx + Show more

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

ETMegabyte 1245820463|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Sadly, though I'm comfortable in Linux on the desktop and as a server, I'm not a programmer. Most source code doesn't mean too much to me, so I'd be unable to determine how that 4 byte checksum is generated…

That being said, I understand the fundamentals of it, and it would seem that if we had a setup where we could generate the boot loader, we could then look at the resulting data and determine what the checksum for any particular mac address should be.

Have you managed to generate a boot loader, with your mac address, and have the checksum match your original checksum on your stock MBWE2? It seems if this could be done, then we can then directly manipulate the mac address stored on the various rescue images, putting the proper checksum in place…

-ET

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

ETMegabyte 1245728067|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Alright, I believe I've found where the MAC address is stored in my boot sector files.

I downloaded the "Cygnus Hex Editor" Free edition, and opened my bootsector files, and found my MAC address starts at address 00005F90. It appears to only be in that boot sector file once, so theoretically I should be able to change it. So, now I'm able to change the MAC address that's hardcoded into the boot sector.

Since I no longer have an MBWE2 that I can play with, anyone want to test out my theory? I can provide my boot sector files, with an updated MAC address to match your sticker, and you try it to see if it works for you?

-ET

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

alllexx 1245728214|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

It's already been tested before and it won't work, I'm afraid. Apart from MAC address itself, some sort of checksum is stored there as well, so it's not that transparent.

Alex

Last edited on 1245728241|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover By alllexx + Show more

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

frater 1245739924|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

First of all, let me start by saying that I'm NOT going to be providing my boot sector to the group. At least not right away. The reason for this is that the boot sector contains the MAC address of MY MBWE2. It's hardcoded, and until I figure out a way to change it, I don't feel comfortable spreading it around.

Why is everyone so paranoid about their MACs?
It's as if someone has been secretive about it and then all others just copied this behaviour. A MAC only travels over layer2 and can't go beyond your ISP. The ones that can (secret services) are able to get so much information making that MAC quite unimportant…
They are not even that unique as they appear.

The first 3-bytes are vendor specific (00:90:a9 = Western Digital)

Someone on this thread (can't remember… have to look) proposed to gather some "fingerprints" which could be used to make them unique within your own network (if you have more than 1 worldbook).

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

alllexx 1245747729|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

There're some cases when you don't want to share your MAC (like using mac-filter in a router's wireless access control), but I don't see how any of them apply to WD MyBook (unless you attach a wifi card to it :) )

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

frater 1245752461|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Yes…. and this info is only useful for your neighbour…

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

ETMegabyte 1245821525|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

It's not really paranoia… I suppose it's more a matter of principle than anything else. My MAC address is unique, and if I post my boot loader, then it will no longer be unique, as someone else's MBWE2 will now have the same MAC address as I do. Somehow that just sits wrong with me.

I posted my howto for it's information value. I don't want to get the 1.5 million PM's that I'm destined to get requesting copies of the files when the download links disappear. I just don't want to be that involved. My original post has all the information that anyone should need to get what they need to restore their MBWE2…

Despite the fact that I found this site originally because I bricked my MBWE2, I would have come looking for this kind of information anyway. I'm huge on disaster recovery, and knowing that it's based on linux, I would have wanted to figure out how to back it up regardless. So, to someone who has not yet bricked their MBWE2, this howto is perfect, as it gives them the steps needed (and the locations of other stuff needed) for a complete backup of their system.

-ET

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

frater 1245824844|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I wasn't targeting you personally, I see it all the time. Please don't be offended it isn't meant to be. As I already wrote…. the MAC isn't that unique. I can assure you… Someone already has a Western Digital device with the same MAC as you… It's only 3 bytes (still 16 million… but probably each product-line only has 1 or 2 bytes) I've heard of people having 2 NICs with the same MAC.

Normally this would be a useless discussion. Each have their own mind. But in this case it's relevant. Someone on this forum already wrote a disaster-recovery howto and he proposed to gather different MACs of people so people with 2 worldbooks can have them both recovered…
He also wanted to try and find out how this checksum was working….

Last edited on 1245825229|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover By frater + Show more

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

ETMegabyte 1245853440|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Yeah, I read that thread and it's a good idea… It had some good information, but never went anywhere… It seemed to die out sometime around March of this year…

I actually used that thread to collect some mac addresses and checksums to use in case I needed them. There are 2 or 3 of them on that thread that could be used.

It was the information in that thread that prompted me to ask Alllexx if he had been able to recreate the proper boot loader with the proper checksum…

Man I really wish I could find someone who pulled their drives out of their MBWE and wants to get rid of their shell… I found one on eBay like 6 months ago, and the guy wanted like $100 for the starting bid! With no drives! He's cracked!

-ET

Last edited on 1245863221|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover By ETMegabyte + Show more

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

alllexx 1245855881|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I actually found a way to get this damn CRC32 checksum
Well, after trying various stuff and scanning the sourcecode a bit to no avail, I just used a little trick: slightly modified u-boot fw_printenv tool to print the valid checksum.I'll write a little howto and share the patched sources sometime soon.

Cheers,
Alex

Man I really wish I could find someone who pulled their drives out of their MBWE and wants to get rid of their shell… I found one on eBay like 6 months ago, and the guy wanted like $100 for the starting bid! With no drives! He's cracked!

Yeah, you've got that right… I especially miss a one-drive box, since it's such a hassle to work on a Debian armel (that's arm EABI, unlike original Mario's arm OABI) rootfs and kernel on a two-drive one.

Last edited on 1245856305|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover By alllexx + Show more

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

ETMegabyte 1245863318|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I was under the impression that a one drive unit is the same as the two drive unit, except the one drive unit only has one drive attached to it. From what I had read and understood, if you take a 2 drive system, and only attach one drive, it should act and run the same as a single drive unit.

Am I mistaken?

-ET

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

boondoklife 1245867398|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

This would depend on how the raid on the two drive unit was setup, if the data was in a stripe then your data would not be accessible. If the data was i a mirror then the data would be there and it will function fine.

---

while ( love & passion ) {
for( fight = 0 ; rights < freedom ; rights++ )
fight = standup( rights );
free( babylon ); }

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

alllexx 1245898083|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

That's the gist of it.
With all these experementing I've been doing recently I managed to screw my raid0 array, and 1,5T of data's gone bye-bye… sux

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

ETMegabyte 1246040710|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Aw, man. That sux…

That's why I don't dare do any experimenting on my live box(es)… I've got too much data that's not otherwise backed up on those boxes, so I don't dare mess with them until I can get the time to at least back them up…

That's also why I wish I could find a shell. I love to tinker, and having one right here on my desk that I can't tinker with is driving me crazy!

-ET

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

alllexx 1246251938|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Ok, I'm done with the how-to:
http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/how-to-change-your-mbwe-bluering-mac-address

Cheers,

A simple way to change the hardcoded MAC address

alllexx 1246589875|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Now there's a simple way to change the address, that doesn't even require taking the drive(s) out of the cover:
http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/how-to-change-your-mbwe-bluering-mac-address
(Method 1)

Hope this helps,
Alex

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

mar1boro 1247046869|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Dear ETMegabyte, finaly could you share your fullbootsect.sda and fullbootsect.sdb cause i have no working MBWE2 to make it. All i have is an empty box with the new clean drives bought separately. If you found out how to change MAC-address may you now you will be able to post all the data in this topic… please!!!

Last edited on 1247051267|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover By mar1boro + Show more

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

ETMegabyte 1247056723|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I uploaded the bootsector files in the files area of the wiki referenced above. I apologize in advance for posting it in .ZIP format, but I happen to be in windows at the moment, and have too many apps going that I can't shut down right now to switch to linux… I believe the linux archiving programs can read and extract ZIP files, so it should still be usable.

The images I uploaded match the MAC and checksum of the rescue images available otherwise on this site.

-ET

Last edited on 1247057410|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover By ETMegabyte + Show more

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

mar1boro 1247099492|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Thank you a million! It Worked!!!!

The only difference was here:

1. use FDisk to create your data partitions. This works on ANY SIZED drive!!

fdisk /dev/sda
"u" to change to sectors instead of cylinders
"n" to create a new partition
"p" to make a primary partition
"8112825" for the starting sector
Use the default for the last sector
"t" to change the partition type
"4" to change partition 4
"fd" to change it to a Linux RAID Autodetect
"w" to write the changes to disk

those 4th partitions were already there… just in case i deleted them and created again as in your tutorial

By the way: I used two 750gb Seagate drives and everything seem to be Ok. I was afraid of that smart check after i found this topic )

And two more things:
- does this device have any protection from overheat? It seemed to be hot…. Does the cooler inside work all the time?
- should i upgrade to the Firmware 2.00.1X? Does it have any benefits?

Thank you for your time and help!

Last edited on 1247104011|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover By mar1boro + Show more

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

ETMegabyte 1247234950|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

By the way: I used two 750gb Seagate drives and everything seem to be Ok. I was afraid of that smart check after i found this topic )

I am told that your system log will be filled with SMART failures, and that the web interface may report failed drives. I have never tested this, since I have mostly WD drives here. I would start by checking the web interface and see if it reports 1 or 2 failed drives… If it works for you, great…

Either way, the system will continue to work, you just may get excessive entries in your logs about a failed SMART check…

And two more things:
- does this device have any protection from overheat? It seemed to be hot…. Does the cooler inside work all the time?
- should i upgrade to the Firmware 2.00.1X? Does it have any benefits?

Yes, if the drives get too hot, the fan will kick on. The fan is not on all the time (which seems silly to me), but the fan should kick in if you use it a bunch.

I would not recommend upgrading to the 2.xx firmware. They removed GCC which will limit what you can do with the box. Also, in my opinion, the 2.xx firmware screws up more than it fixes…

-ET

Last edited on 1247235298|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover By ETMegabyte + Show more

Re: My Procedure to restore an MBWE2 of any size....

Matt01 1247321393|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Will this process work on a Western Digital 1TB My Book World Edition (WDH1NC10000E)?

I still have my first one sitting there collecting dust since i tried the older method and it failed.

I eventually baught a 2nd my book (same one) so I have no problem collecting all info off it in order to fix my first one.