Print

[scullc]

QUOTE(ldotsfan @ May 14 2009, 02:33 PM)

You are a great tester  

Cheers   All down to your great coding/compiling skills!

update..

hdparm worked flawlessly on a Slayers locked HDD (password being TEAMASSEMBLY). I then immediately & successfully rebuilt the (temporarily) locked HDD with a base MSDash (but encountered the familiar path issue again) - at least i know a reboot isnt necessary. I am definitely using updated ltools21.lzm. Great not having to lock HDD again - just plugged it back into XBOX & all systems go!!

I dont have access to stock/unmodded drives. So no testing there i'm afraid - but i am pretty confident the tool will unlock a stock drive. Can anyone else help with this?

[Bomb Bloke]

Ok, so I'm finally making a start to my tests...

Got a new (read: old) victim (read: console) to work on. Seagate drive. Used Krazie's NDure installer to rip the EEPROM (in case I accidentally take the unlocking process a bit too far), but otherwise the initial file system should be intact (If you discount the ton of old save games I had to delete. Why is it that every second-hand system I come across has Playboy Mansion saves on it?).

Constructed the bootable flashdrive, hooked the HDD up to a spare computer system and away it went.

The early boot process succesfully detected the Seagate, then launched into a few million HDA related errors because it couldn't read it. Eventually it decided to look for "livecd.sgn". This took about ten to fifteen minutes (plenty of time for me to note down that the USB drive was SDA1). Eventually the Slax GUI loaded up.

Attempted to go into the System thing (to be on the safe side re the USB drive path) but the screen just blacks out, the Slax loading screen appears again and I'm presented with a fresh desktop...

Booted the terminal thingy, ran HDTool and told it to do an unlock (you put one too many 20s in your sample incedently). Dunno if it worked or not, it didn't give me any errors at least. I suppose I coulda rebooted and tried again with a code I knew was wrong to see if that gave the same result, but seriously, rebooting with this locked drive takes an age and I figured someone here would already know.  

Figured I couldn't try HDPArm with this drive due to the spaces in the passcode.

Ran XBoxHD2, gave it the Linux image path and took option one (drive on primary master). Confirmed the "Are you sure to use Primary Master [yes/no]?" thing and got told I was out of RAM.

It gave me some commands to unmount then remount "tmpfs" or "/mnt/shm" or... something... to 144mb. I entered them, re-ran XboxHD2 and this time a black QEMU window appeared briefly before the screen blacked out once more and a clean desktop came back up...

I tried playing with the various other shiny buttons around the place, about the only thing I could get to load was that terminal window. The other buttons (eg for the paint program) seemed to either do nothing or make the desktop reload again.

Rebooted, told the initial loading screen thingy I wanted text mode instead of the Slax GUI. After the "Are you sure to use Primary Master [yes/no]?" question it'd tell me that "svgalib" couldn't find "/etc/vga/libvga.config" (which if I was to guess means I need to be in a GUI environment).

So I dunno. Maybe I need a testing rig with more then 256mb RAM. The startup screens seemed to indicate I'd want at least 300mb. Unfortunately, my usual system is somewhat... dysfunctional... so I'm hesitant to turn that off in order to play with it's IDE cables (It can take about twenty minutes to boot under normal circumstances, and that entire time has to be spent rebooting it until it finally fires up correctly. That + extended boot time due to the locked drive might well finally drive me mad).

[scullc]

@bomb bloke
sounds like mem issue there - i think you need more ram.
for the record i have been testing on 2gb ram on my media centre - can be brain melting having to change inputs etc...and the wait for the locked xbox to boot is a right pain...but it works  

@ldotsfan,
the 'fix' that you did in ltools21.lzm seems to be 'broken' on my set up here. i have been seeing that missing path too often (thought it was something i had done). so i downloaded everything again, wiped the stick (expect the eeprom), installed as required & tried a rebuild on an unlocked HDD. still asked me for the path...i know previously that part worked...but not this time! any suggestions..? went to the full hdm screen with the usual (full) input path.

[Bomb Bloke]

Scavenged an extra 512mb chip, Slax became far more stable/responsive - no more random resets with 768mb, nor did it bug me about tmpfs.

Couldn't get a few things to work once QEMU was loaded though (eg xboxhd). It just gives the message "Looking for CD-ROM in /dev/hda..." (which is where my locked HDD was attached) and hung indefinitely. Longest I let it sit there was five minutes before closing the window. I assume that just means I didn't manage to deal with the lock on the drive.

(I also timed the boot sequence to be just over twelve minutes).

I tried a few variations of the capitalisation of "Seagate" with HDTool, then tried codes I knew to be outright wrong. It gives the same feedback regardless of what you use, so there's no way of knowing whether you get the code right or not (or even if it's attempting to do it's job). Is there a way to get HDTool/HDPArm to give some info on the locking status? I checked the parameter listings but couldn't see anything I thought relevant to try.

I guess I should use a standard XBoxHDM disc to try ATAPWD on the drive, see what that lets me do.

At one stage the QEMU window gained a "Press Ctrl-Alt to exit grab" tag in the title text. When this happened, the mouse cursor went bye-bye and I couldn't seem to get it back. The system hadn't frozen (the clock was still updating itself in the lower right corner), I just couldn't seem to do anything. Not sure what I did to cause that (I'd been clicking on something at the time), but even pressing "Ctrl" + "-" + "Alt" wouldn't get me out of it...

[ldotsfan]

QUOTE(lordcukraz @ May 17 2009, 12:52 AM)

 http://pastebin.com/m6f8ee52e

This is my only way to be able to do this cuz I am out of cd-r's and dvd-r's to use linux.iso and I tried the chimps way and I could never telnet to my console.

Sorry couldn't find anything obvious - have you tried wiping the usb stick clean , start afresh and run bootinst.bat again?

You could always describe your problem with chimp and telnet in another thread and I'm sure others will step in to help.

QUOTE(Bomb Bloke @ May 18 2009, 06:00 PM)

Scavenged an extra 512mb chip, Slax became far more stable/responsive - no more random resets with 768mb, nor did it bug me about tmpfs.

Couldn't get a few things to work once QEMU was loaded though (eg xboxhd). It just gives the message "Looking for CD-ROM in /dev/hda..." (which is where my locked HDD was attached) and hung indefinitely. Longest I let it sit there was five minutes before closing the window. I assume that just means I didn't manage to deal with the lock on the drive.

(I also timed the boot sequence to be just over twelve minutes).

I tried a few variations of the capitalisation of "Seagate" with HDTool, then tried codes I knew to be outright wrong. It gives the same feedback regardless of what you use, so there's no way of knowing whether you get the code right or not (or even if it's attempting to do it's job). Is there a way to get HDTool/HDPArm to give some info on the locking status? I checked the parameter listings but couldn't see anything I thought relevant to try.

1. I have some ideas on a mini edition of xboxhdm2 with less memory requirements, but need some time to test it out.. will have tighter integration between the xboxhdm portions and xboxhdm2 portions and hence avoid the qemu problems and have other benefits like drop-in C and E folders. Let' see if I can sort it out.

2. Try pressing tab key at the SLAX boot prompt and type the parameter nohd in additional to the boot parameters and see if it helps with the long boot time for a locked hdd.

3. hdparm supports this syntax:

CODE

hdparm --user-master m --security-unlock "Seagate                          " /dev/hda

Don't think hdtool will work the master password side of security.

4. hdsecinfo gives you the security status of the hdd:

CODE

hdsecinfo /dev/hda

QUOTE(scullc @ May 18 2009, 06:59 PM)

i am winding down the testing. it's seems complete to me and it runs bug free. great work ldotsfan  
hope you have more success bomb bloke.
will keep checking your progress

Will you be interested to write a tutorial-style thread complete with pictures scullc? Many thanks in advance.

[ldotsfan]

QUOTE(scullc @ May 19 2009, 08:23 PM)

the syntax nohd made no difference at all. in fact - it can make it slower.
best stick with the delayed boot for now - unless there are other ingenious solutions.

Not sure what happened but sourceforge removed the project hosting   Have to look for another place to host the project/files. Maybe code.google.com? In the meantime , you can find the files at sourceforge mirror sites.
EDIT: sourceforge hosting seems back to normal..

On a side note, I'm seriously thinking of moving away from SLAX due to the memory requirements and boot time issues:
xboxhdm2 = SLAX + xboxhdm.iso + a couple of shell scripts + hdtool from xboxhdm + hdparm

xboxhdm2.1 = SliTaz / TinyCore Linux and the rest of the recipe. Stay tuned..
 

QUOTE(scullc @ May 19 2009, 08:23 PM)

dont want to commit myself to that tutorial but it does sound interesting. wait & see...as it will definitely be a while...maybe when i get time  

I'm also struggling on the "time to work on this" part

QUOTE(scullc @ May 19 2009, 08:23 PM)

one thing - i cannot seem to get internet access booting off the USB. does it work for anyone else? would make my (testing) life easier. lol

What is your NIC /wifi card?

[ldotsfan]

QUOTE(scullc @ May 20 2009, 03:59 AM)

i will watch your adventures on this one...where will you post any news on that?

My ethernet is definitely working on my (SLAX 6.0.2) bootable/rescue USB stick.

I will post it in this thread  

Maybe my kernel compiling adventure to enable hdd locking in SLAX broke other things or things changed between SLAX 6.0.1 and SLAX 6.1.1 (unlikely)

Do you have the chipset for the Ethernet connection? That will help to narrow things down.

[Bomb Bloke]

Righto, with those new commands in hand I gave it another go... Unfortunately HDPArm threw back "Security-Unlock: Input/Output Error" for every code combination I tried (had to reboot once I first exceeded the security attempt counter). So I guess this particular drive just doesn't have a master code on it. Ah well.

But XboxHDM2 itself seems to be working ok. Other then the "looking for CDROM in /dev/hda" thing I mentioned, which I'm sure is down to the drive being locked.

The one other thing I was thinking of would be to include any relevant documentation/tutorials (both for XBoxHDM 1 and 2) on the Slax desktop. Would be convenient to just be able to pull them up from there as required.

[ldotsfan]

QUOTE(Bomb Bloke @ May 21 2009, 01:01 PM)

Righto, with those new commands in hand I gave it another go... Unfortunately HDPArm threw back "Security-Unlock: Input/Output Error" for every code combination I tried (had to reboot once I first exceeded the security attempt counter). So I guess this particular drive just doesn't have a master code on it. Ah well.

CODE

hdparm -I /dev/hda

will tell you via the 0xFFFE value if the master password from factory was changed.

I also went to get a used xbox - which turns out to be a 1.6 with a WDC hdd. Have already backup the eeprom with Krayzie's Ndure - will taste my own medicine very soon. Need to find more memory for my testing PC or come up with the next version first.

QUOTE(Bomb Bloke @ May 21 2009, 01:01 PM)

The one other thing I was thinking of would be to include any relevant documentation/tutorials (both for XBoxHDM 1 and 2) on the Slax desktop. Would be convenient to just be able to pull them up from there as required.

Great idea - will do that in the next release. The xboxhdm for dummies thread can be converted via the scene's download thread tool, as for xboxhdm2, still need somebody to pen down the equivalent.

QUOTE(scullc @ May 21 2009, 01:51 AM)

the ethernet chipset is Intel® 82562V-2 - does that help?

Could you do a lsmod in SLAX 6.0.2 and see if you find a e100 module?

[scullc]

QUOTE(ldotsfan @ May 21 2009, 03:08 PM)

Could you do a lsmod in SLAX 6.0.2 and see if you find a e100 module?

no e100 module listed after typing lsmod in the console. want to see the full lsmod output?
i tried insmod e100 (?dont know if that right) but error popped up (directory doesn't exist) and I can't acess etc/rc.d/rc.modules.
in the scheme of things networking not that important to me in this build.  would have been useful during  testing, but we got there.
funnily enough SliTaz's network is working fine. another reason to jump ship there?  
prob best if i hold off with that FAQ until/if that's done.

[ldotsfan]

QUOTE(wer2 @ May 22 2009, 12:45 AM)

Man, I cant wait for the 2.1 to be up and going!

I just got a new HDD and I was about to set it up with XBHDM and now I see this so.... I must wait!

Don't wait , no definite time frame for the next version, I took over a year to complete 2.0  

Seriously xboxhdm2 is quite usable already - unless you have low memory in your PC or other specific problems.
xboxhdm2.1 is addressing the coldswapping scenario - which is still theoretical at the moment , the long boot time with a locked disk and low memory issues. I don't even know if my approach really solves those issues or if they can be resolved in a reasonable time. So don't put it off - using xboxhdm2 as it is  

QUOTE(scullc @ May 22 2009, 03:52 AM)

funnily enough SliTaz's network is working fine. another reason to jump ship there?  
prob best if i hold off with that FAQ until/if that's done.

I'm now fairly certain my kernel compilation broke the ethernet driver support as I took some shortcuts there - only updated the vmlinuz and didn't rebuild the initrd.gz with the updated kernel modules.

Anyway might not want to hold back the FAQ too long - I don't know when the next version will be done.

[scullc]

For my own benefit mainly, i kinda solved the network access problem. Its not pretty but it (mainly) works.
I also noticed that your compiled version of Slax didn't run much of the included programs.
I have my own rescue USB stick with Slax 6.0.9 on it.
I moved the files from your build into my Slax build and after a few tweaks (i.e moving eeprom to root etc..) its up & running.
Network/screen capture is working fine.
This should allow me now to start work on the FAQ.

For the record my new build will allow rebuilds of a HDD but cannot seem to lock it at all, although it goes through the motions. It will not boot with a Slax GUI if the HDD is locked. I did not test hdparm.

[ldotsfan]

QUOTE(ldotsfan @ May 21 2009, 10:08 PM)

I also went to get a used xbox - which turns out to be a 1.6 with a WDC hdd. Have already backup the eeprom with Krayzie's Ndure - will taste my own medicine very soon.

For the record, the WDC stock hdd was locked at maximum security mode so master password was useless.

QUOTE(scullc @ May 27 2009, 04:15 AM)

This should allow me now to start work on the FAQ.

For the record my new build will allow rebuilds of a HDD but cannot seem to lock it at all, although it goes through the motions. It will not boot with a Slax GUI if the HDD is locked. I did not test hdparm.

Good to hear that and looking forward to that FAQ.

This post: http://forums.xbox-s...&...t&p=4477390 should help if you want to get hdd locking in SLAX 6.0.9.

[ldotsfan]

QUOTE(scullc @ May 30 2009, 03:18 PM)

Never got to say - but just before the downtime - I had a brainwave.
I put the core from my slax build into yours, added kde apps & open office modules and guess what...all working
The network is working fine. kds apps (with screen capture) works great but the real success is that all features of xboxhd2 seem to be working. I have successfully un/locked using both xboxhd2 & hdparm methods. Rebuilds too have been successful.

Does it make sense to release this as a mega edition of xboxhdm2? Not sure if anybody else needs network access.. How's the boot time for the locked hdd for your edition of xboxhdm2?

QUOTE(scullc @ May 30 2009, 03:18 PM)

The FAQ (prob .pdf format) may take some time...but i will try & keep working on it. Like you, no firm date yet for it

I've given up on Slitaz - not having much luck with it as the design is too different from SLAX and usb booting is difficult to achieve for the non-Linux savvy user.

[ldotsfan]

scullc has completed the quick user's guide for xboxhdm2: xboxhdm2 tutorial, credit to be given for the effort, thanks. Hope users of xboxhdm2 find this useful.

Could a mod update post #1 to reflect the link to the tutorial - thanks.

The forum's javascript functions seem to be broken still...wanted to create a persistence copy of http://forums.xbox-s...howtopic=244043 to upload to sourceforge... oh well...have to wait then.