Weird rocketry

Dune company has given us a miryad of excellent media players, especially by producing high quality software. In this article I’ll give you step-by-step instructions on how to convert your media player into full-fledged NAS with ability to download torrents and perform any task a generic linux box could do.

Root access

First off, you need to obtain a retail model Dune HD-TV 102w (with ‘w’ postfix), this is the only model which has appropriate firmware for getting root access.

Download dune_service_telnetd.dsf, copy it to usb-flash drive and insert into Dune. Power on device, go to Sources, find that file and press OK to execute it. Once this is done, telnetd service will be available until next reboot. To make it permanent, run the following:

telnet root@dune_ip
login: root
password: <empty>

tangox[~] touch /config/telnetd
tangox[~] sync

HDD Partition

Connect USB-HDD disk drive to Dune to be able to install Optware and store torrents media. We’re going to re-format the disk and create 3 partitions. Here’s a sample list:

tangox[~] fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks  Id System
/dev/sda1               1         499     4008186  83 Linux
/dev/sda2             500         624     1004062+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/sda3             625       19457   151276072+ 83 Linux

As you can see we’re going to use sda1 to store Optware, sda2 for swap and sda3 for video content.
To do that you may use fdisk, mkfs.ext3 and mkswap commands like this:

# after fdisk partitioning
tangox[~] mkswap /dev/sda2
tangox[~] mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1
tangox[~] mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda3

Initialize swap

Dune a has special mechanism to autostart some services during initial boot. We’re going to put some preliminary startup work there.
Create file /mnt/config/boot/bootstrap.sh and put following contents inside:

#!/bin/sh
# Turn on swap partition
swapon /dev/sda2

Then, make sure that file is executable:

tangox[~] chmod +x /mnt/config/boot/bootstrap.sh

Give nice names to HDD partitions

In order for HDD partitions to look nice in Dune GUI (sources menu section), will do some more tuning.
First off, issue df command:

tangox[~] df
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs                    92.7M      3.1M     89.6M   3% /tmp
/dev/sda3               142.0G     57.8G     77.0G  43% /D
/dev/mtdblock4          105.2M     75.6M     29.5M  72% /app
/dev/loop0              262.3M    262.3M         0 100% /tango3
/dev/mtdblock5          100.0M      8.1M     91.9M   8% /mnt
/dev/sda1                 3.8G    132.3M      3.4G   4% /tmp/mnt/storage/34611c58-ba35-4256-b546-8038078575ab
/dev/sda3               142.0G     57.8G     77.0G  43% /tmp/mnt/storage/566c9eb8-8239-4af5-9ea5-609ddc035e6f

You’ll see those ugly long directory names, which we want to change. Go to /tmp/mnt/storage/34611c58-ba35-4256-b546-8038078575ab and create the file dune_folder.txt with the following contents:

storage_name=opt
system_files=*

Because this is a system partition for our Optware we’re going to hide every file from being visible by end-user. Go to next directory and create similar file:

tangox[~] cd /tmp/mnt/storage/566c9eb8-8239-4af5-9ea5-609ddc035e6f
tangox[~] echo "storage_name=media" >> dune_folder.txt
tangox[~] echo "system_files=*.part" >> dune_folder.txt

This set of folder settings will make uncompleted torrent files hidden from Dune menus. Once you’re done, reboot, telnet again and run df command one more time:

tangox[~] df
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs                    92.7M      3.1M     89.6M   3% /tmp
/dev/sda3               142.0G     57.8G     77.0G  43% /D
/dev/mtdblock4          105.2M     75.6M     29.5M  72% /app
/dev/loop0              262.3M    262.3M         0 100% /tango3
/dev/mtdblock5          100.0M      8.1M     91.9M   8% /mnt
/dev/sda1                 3.8G    132.3M      3.4G   4% /tmp/mnt/storage/opt
/dev/sda3               142.0G     57.8G     77.0G  43% /tmp/mnt/storage/media

Things will look more nicer! Now, let’s make aliases for opt and media folders by symlinking them to root. Make sure your system don’t have any important data at /opt as we’re going to delete it. Now, open /mnt/config/boot/bootstrap.sh file and modify it to look as following:

#!/bin/sh
# Turn on swap partition
swapon /dev/sda2

# symlink optware and media folders
rm -rf /opt
ln -s /tmp/mnt/storage/opt /opt
ln -s /tmp/mnt/storage/media /media

Now reboot, and ensure that there are valid /opt and /media symlinks at root path.

Optware installation

Finally we’re ready to install additional software. Create optware installation script at /opt/install.sh:

#!/bin/sh
# Source code: http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/Optware/HomePage
feed=http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/feeds/optware/oleg/cross/unstable/
# install ipkg
ipk_name=`wget -qO- $feed/Packages | awk '/^Filename: ipkg-opt/ {print $2}'`
/usr/bin/wget "$feed/$ipk_name"
/bin/tar -xOvzf $ipk_name ./data.tar.gz | tar -C / -xzvf -
mkdir -p /opt/etc/ipkg
echo "src cross $feed" > /opt/etc/ipkg/feeds.conf

# install uc-libC
ipk_name=`wget -qO- $feed/Packages | awk '/^Filename: uclibc-opt/ {print $2}'`
/usr/bin/wget "$feed/$ipk_name"
/bin/tar -xOvzf $ipk_name ./data.tar.gz | tar -C / -xzvf -

To do that you may should use vi editor which is available by default. Ensure that the file is executable and run it:

tangox[~] chmod +x /opt/install.sh
# run it
tangox[opt] ./install.sh

Connecting to ipkg.nslu2-linux.org (140.211.169.161:80)
ipkg-opt_0.99.163-10 100% |*************************************************************************************************************| 75831  00:00:00 ETA
./
./opt/
./opt/bin/
./opt/bin/ipkg
./opt/bin/ipkg-opt
./opt/bin/update-alternatives
./opt/etc/
./opt/etc/ipkg.conf

.....................................

Connecting to ipkg.nslu2-linux.org (140.211.169.161:80)
uclibc-opt_0.9.28-13 100% |*************************************************************************************************************|   832k 00:00:00 ETA
./
./opt/
./opt/etc/
./opt/lib/
./opt/lib/ld-uClibc-0.9.28.so
./opt/lib/ld-uClibc.so.0
./opt/lib/libc.so

......................................................

If you’ve been observing messages above chances are high that you now have a working skeleton of optware system.
Let’s check this by typing:

tangox[opt] /opt/bin/ipkg --version
ipkg version 0.99.163

This means that package management system has been installed and works fine. From this time on you have the ability to install tons of additional linux software precompiled for MIPS architecture! You may get the list of available software by typing ipkg --list, and we’ll continue our tuning process.

Fix PATH variable

Let’s make using optware more convenient, open /mnt/config/boot/bootstrap.sh and add following lines:

# fix PATH for new packages
echo "export PATH=/opt/bin:/opt/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/local/bin" >> /root/.bashrc
echo "export PATH=/opt/bin:/opt/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/local/bin" >> /etc/profile

Optware autostart hack

In order to autostart all neccessary services we’re going to do some additional hacking. At first, it seems that adding call of autostart script to /mnt/config/boot/bootstrap.sh will do the trick, but after numeruos attempts to do just that things didn’t work. My guess is that at /mnt/config/boot/ stage external storage is not mounted yet, so everything under /opt is not available.

To overcome that, I’ve managed to create a bit ugly, but working solution, i.e. to autostart services using crond, which is available by default on device. The idea is simple: start optware only once, and if it is started already just do nothing. Let’s write some scripts to achieve that.

Create /opt/etc/rc.optware file with following contents:

#!/bin/sh
# Start all init scripts in /opt/etc/init.d
# executing them in numerical order.
for i in /opt/etc/init.d/* ;do

    # Ignore dangling symlinks (if any).
    [ ! -f "$i" ] && continue

    case "$i" in
       *.sh)
        # Source shell script for speed.
        (
            trap - INT QUIT TSTP
            set start
            . $i
        )
        ;;
       *)
        # No sh extension, so fork subprocess.
        $i start
        ;;
    esac
done

Create /opt/etc/optware-cron.sh with following contents:

#!/bin/sh
# After reboot this file will be absent!
FLAG_FILE=/var/run/optware.started

# if file not found, run optware
if [ ! -f $FLAG_FILE ]; then
 touch $FLAG_FILE
 /opt/etc/rc.optware
fi

Make sure both files are executable:

tangox[opt] chmod +x optware-cron.sh rc.optware

Open our /mnt/config/boot/bootstrap.sh file and add following lines:

killall crond
echo "*/1 * * * * /opt/etc/optware-cron.sh" >> /tmp/cron/crontabs/root
/usr/sbin/crond

This will modify crond config during startup and will make sure that optware-cron.sh file will be launched once per every minute.

Reboot your dune and ensure that everything works fine. Next, we’re going to add some useful software like transmission!

Install transmission

tangox[opt] ipkg install transmission

Let’s create startup script for Transmission daemon, open /opt/etc/init.d/S60transmission and type in:

#!/bin/sh
# Exit if the package is not installed
test -f /opt/bin/transmission-daemon || exit 0

function start_daemon() {
    /sbin/start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --exec /opt/bin/transmission-daemon  --auth --config-dir=/opt/etc/transmission/ --username="your_username" --password="your_password" --download-dir=/media/ --allowed=* --logfile=/opt/var/log/transmissiond.log
}

case "$1" in
  start)
    echo  "Starting transmission-daemon"
    start_daemon
    ;;
  stop)
    echo  "Stopping transmission-daemon"
    /sbin/start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --exec /opt/bin/transmission-daemon
    ;;
  restart)
    echo -n "Stopping transmission-daemon"
    /sbin/start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --exec /opt/bin/transmission-daemon
    for i in 1 2 3 ;
    do
        sleep 1
        echo -n "."
    done
    echo  "Restarting transmission-daemon"
    start_daemon
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: /opt/etc/init.d/S60transmission {start|stop|restart}"
    exit 1
esac

exit 0

Don’t forget to make this script executable and make sure you provide valid your_username and your_password. Verify that transmission daemon works by typing in the terminal:

tangox[opt] /opt/etc/init.d/S60transmission start
tangox[opt] ps -Af | grep trans
 1500 root       0:04 /opt/bin/transmission-daemon --auth --config-dir=/opt/etc/transmission/ --username="your_username" --password="your_password" --download-dir=/media/ --allowed=* --logfile=/opt/var/log/transmissiond.log 

If everything went fine the last command should output transmission process running in the background, you might also observe it by running top command.

Reboot your dune once again, open your favorite web browser and point it to http://dune_ip:9091 you should see basic auth dialog from your Transmission web interface. From this point you’re free to download any torrent media which will be instantly accessible for playback once completed.

Some useful tips

1) I would highly recommend desktop client for transmission called Transmission Remote GUI it has more control and features than default web interface.

2) Find out power management section in main dune menu and set sleep mode to never. You need your device to be online 7×24 don’t you?

3) Install openssh tools, setup public key based authentication and turn off passwordless telnet to increase security

Links

• http://files.dune-hd.com/partners/sdk/dune_devel_info.txt
• http://files.dune-hd.com/partners/sdk/dune_service_telnetd.dsf
• http://dune-hd.com/support/misc/dune_folder_howto.txt
• http://files.dune-hd.com/partners/sdk/dune_boot_process.txt
• https://code.google.com/p/transmisson-remote-gui/
• http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/ssh-public-key-based-authentication-how-to.html