Thursday, January 1st, 2009 (2009\/01\/01)<\/p>\n
Drew Scott Daniels<\/p>\n
\nI recently got a new LG TV. It has an “Open Source Software Notice” with the caviet “This feature is not available for all models.” It notes that it may be running Linux kernel 2.6.12, busybox, uclibc, and Nanox. To get a CD (for a charge of distribution and media), within 3 years of distribution, I have to write to Opensource@lge.com which I think I’ll give a try. There’s a USB port and RS-232C in port on the back of the TV for “service only” which have the note “Used for software updates.”. I can’t find any other details so I guess it’s time to make some inquiries, and make sure I’ve got a nice null modem cable which I can use for lots of other projects.\n<\/p>\n
\nI’d like to find a way to make use of the MPEG decoder that’s on my TV. A cheap encoder that I got the link for went for several hundered
\ndollars. I don’t know of any easily accessible digital television (DTV)
\nsignals in my area. I’m wondering if Shaw offers free to air (FTA) DTV
\nthat my TV will accept as CADTV (cable DTV?). I know PBS in Minnesota, and FOX in Pembina, ND may theoretically be accessible, but I don’t have time for that until it’s warm enough outside.\n<\/p>\n
\nSince the TV has a nice “SVGA” input plug (that they call “RGB(PC)”) in
\nthe form of a “D-sub 15 pin cable (VGA cable)”, I may try and hook up a computer to it. I’m conserned about the noise of the fans which seem to fail fast. I also would like to run another circut so I don’t have to stretch to the next circut’s plug. I’m thinking this could replace my Netgear EVA8000 – Digital Entertainer HD.\n<\/p>\n
\nNetgear’s EVA8000 has a support page here<\/a>, but the main forum<\/a> and a restricted beta forum seem to have quite a bit of information not in their support site.\n<\/p>\n \nMy Netgear EVA8000 runs Linux, and has several open ports on it. It \nAlthough for what they call GPL compliance, they offer to let you \nI just found a forum thread<\/a> about how to edit the firmware images, and I’ve seen they’ve updated the source code to the latest non-beta release. Versions in between don’t seem to be available nor do beta versions. Unfortunately it seems you have to register to see this.\n<\/p>\n \nAnother use for a null modem cable is connecting to the EVA8000 during boot and after interrupting the boot (by sending a few escape’s?), typing:<\/p>\n All at the boot prompts.\n<\/p>\n \nI see that it runs a 2.4 kernel which bothers me (2.4.22-uc0-sigma-20051018-nm). When I worked with embedded systems, I saw a few that updated 2.4 kernels to run with their reference boards as opposed to 2.6 kernels.\n<\/p>\n \nThe EVA8000’s PC software called Digital Entertainer for Windows (DEW) seems to have at least one Windows audio driver which would be nice to learn how to use. I’m pretty sure that is what it is using to play iTunes music.\n<\/p>\n \nThe DEW software comes with receiver.exe which seems to be what’s used to play things like YouTube videos. This makes me wonder if there are other videos that the DEW software manipulates (re-encodes, or redirects?) prior to going to the EVA8000.\n<\/p>\n \nIt’s a bit frustrating to see the software upgrade path for wireless \nNow that I’m doing more with video, and I’m actively backing up many of the computers that I have, I’d like to get more storage. I evaluated \nI’ve decided that for home applications, I don’t need a RAID array. The \nOptical media (e.g. DVD’s) and other “removable” media seem to have a \nI’ve been trying to think of the common modes of failure to help come up of ways of recovering from future failures. Most of my past failures \nPower supply related failures causing hard drive failure has happened to me a few times. Drives failing to work after long periods of \nSome of the online data storage have a 1GB file size limit. This is Drew Scott Daniels’ resume: http:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/resume.html<\/a> Thursday, January 1st, 2009 (2009\/01\/01) Drew Scott Daniels Updated 2009\/01\/02, added links to build EVA8000 firmware. Open Source on my TV I recently got a new LG TV. It has an “Open Source Software Notice” with the caviet “This feature is not available for all models.” It notes that it may be running Linux kernel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31,"href":"http:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions\/31"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nseems like the firmware is encrypted though. I can’t find anyone posting information like even a port scan so I may do that later. I’m worried that the Netgear EVA9000 will\/has caused the developers to stop working on the EVA8000 which I hear ran out of memory.\n<\/p>\n
\ndownload source code for the EVA8000, it seemed to be the original
\nversion only (I later found the Feb 2008 release). It also seemed to be stripped of quite a bit of functionality. I also can’t easily figure out a way to upload the code which I think is intentional. I guessed it was a simple block device upload, but it didn’t mount in loopback. I should run testdisk on the file just in case. I think I remember reading somewhere about an encryption password being used to do updates, but it seems others have figured out how to dissect the image like this:<\/p>\ndd if=$FW of=crc bs=1 count=32\r\ndd if=$FW of=bootkernel bs=1 skip=32 count=$((0x210000))\r\ndd if=$FW of=jffsroot bs=1 skip=$((0x210020))<\/pre>\n
\r\nconfig cmd root=\/dev\/nfs ip=bootp\r\nboot net<\/pre>\n
Wireless network drivers<\/h3>\n
\nnetwork devices stop. On old versions of Windows it’s easy to see that
\nthe cost of maintaining the wireless network stacks for various
\nfamilies of cards complicates things. On Linux, it’s easy to see the
\nproblem is time and motivation. Now that there’s a standard wireless
\nstack on Windows Vista, and Linux, I hope that I can do things like
\nsetup a Wireless Access Point, mesh network, etc. all with just a
\nsoftware update and some configuration. I’ll have to be careful about
\nmaking sure my next devices work with the new standard wireless network stacks.\n<\/p>\nMass storage<\/h3>\n
\ngetting more drives, getting a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device
\nlike the D-Link DNS-321, but for the cost, I think I should look at
\nonline storage. I’ll likely still need a few extra drives, but not the
\nhigh capacity I was looking at.\n<\/p>\n
\ncosts of maintaining the drives, the controller etc. is extremely high. I
\nseem to currently get all the relevant benefits with Bacula backups
\nplus the bonus of a long retention period.\n<\/p>\n
\nvery high time cost. They also require manual intervention on a regular
\nbasis. Reloading any data requires finding the media and inserting it
\nwhich often doesn’t feel worth while for just verification.
\nAdditionally, one should periodically do full backups and manage the
\nremoval of old backups (AKA retention). Thus the removable media method of backup does not seem suitable for backups. Optical media seems less useful for movies too except that it’s so cheap.\n<\/p>\n
\nhave been due to hardware problems, though a few seem like they may have been software triggered. Software for managing files like NTFS and ext3 seem to be a lot more reliable as are the OS’s that run the software. Hard drives are also more reliable with various SMART and related features. CD-R’s however have become less reliable from what I’ve read.\n<\/p>\n
\ninactivity… Most failures have resulted in the loss of an entire data
\nset.\n<\/p>\n
\nprobably to prevent the storage of large amounts of data. The easy work around for me is to set bacula to 1GB volumes.\n<\/p>\n
\nOriginally from: http:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/notes\/20090101.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"