/var/hack/bin gone

[brendag4]

A long time ago I installed hacks on my Series 1 Philips Tivo. I can't remember which DVRupgrade products I used. (At the time it was called ptvupgrade)

My /var/hack/bin directory is gone, but I can still telnet into the Tivo.

What happened was that we were having problems with the phone line so the daily call was not able to complete. I took the Tivo to my sisters so I could make the daily call. It kept getting part way through and then failing. I think this might have caused something to be deleted... var/hack/bin is no longer there but partition 9 is still mounted. I can use telnet and see that tivoweb from ptvupgrade is still on the system. (I know it is from them because I remember they had the regular one included and I had to install the plus one myself.)

I am trying to find the utilities I might have used when I originally upgraded the Tivo... but I have done a lot of mods so I am not sure what mods were done on what Tivos. This Tivo says ptvupgrade on it when it reboots.

Are the hacks hiding somewhere because something is not mounted or whatever, or are they gone?

Is there a way to get my hacks back without losing the programs that are currently saved?

I am sure there must be other posts on people losing their var/hack/bin.. if so could you point me to them?

Thanks,

BrendaG4

[Lou Jacob]

A very long time ago we established the best practice of not using /var to install hacks, although many other folks went and did so.

Nowadays, people seem to agree that /var isn't a good place to install stuff because certain situations can trigger /var to be rebuilt and any changes you've made will disappear.

So, with that said... none of our stuff was in there!

Look in /ptvupgrade as that is where we put almost all of our stuff.

[brendag4]

Yes, when I did the mod people were disagreeing as to the best way to install hacks. I wanted to do it differently but did not understand how to.

In /ptvupgrade there is bin, terminfo, and tivoweb194. There is a bunch of stuff I don't recognize in bin.

I can see Hackman running with TivoWeb. It shows telnet, tivoweb, and ftp are running. I assume the ptvupgrade stuff is still working and is what is running these things. Maybe it is only additional hacks that I added afterwards that are not working.

I guess the other stuff must have all gotten deleted because it must have been in var/hack/bin. (I guess I should have kept notes somewhere on exactly what I did... well and also a backup of the directory when I knew it could get wiped.)

So I guess this means I have to go round up all those other hacks... or has someone already done this somewhere? In my case it might not be a bad idea because there are probably newer versions out there or even something else entirely that maybe I don't know about yet. (I have not kept up with newer utilities.)

I was using TivoWeb Plus, mfs_ftp, and tivovbi (for closed captioning)

Is there a good place to look to get up to date on this stuff or to find out if there are other options out there now?

If I put other hacks in ptvupgrade, will they survive getting wiped or is there some other place that is recommended? it seems I remember reading that some hacks will not work if they are put somewhere besides var/hack/bin... but maybe people have updated their stuff to work since then.)