QWORQS – A blog by Yazeed Almadaeen
If you were on a linux machine, it would be as simple as
ssh -L 5901:localhost:5901 root@192.168.7.119
Just kidding, don’t login as root, it is all just for tunneling, replace root and the IP of my super top secret server with something suitable
On windows, the most popular SSH client is putty, and to do that in putty, follow the following steps
Open putty, then enter the IP address or hostname of the remote machine
If you have a 3G/4G USB dongle, which is not battery operated, just a USB stick, you might want to check out the instructions here
The device I am using at the minute is the ZTE MF920U, I have also used a bunch of similar Huawei devices, they all work in exactly the same way
Start by installing a few packaged, hopefully you are familiar with loggin in with SSH, if not, you can get those packages from within the software section of the luci interface
opkg update && opkg install kmod-usb-net-rndis kmod-usb-net kmod-usb2 usb-modeswitch kmod-usb-net-cdc-ether
Once those are installed, reboot, then login to luci
Connect the 4G modem via USB, then Go to interfaces, then add a new interface, select the new eth device that appeared, give it a name, and you are all good to go
The WD My Book Live is a NAS device based on Debian Linux, Since Debian stopped supporting this processor (APM82181), the device has received no updates and will probably never, so the next best thing to do in my opinion is to install openWRT.
WARNING: I recently got a second MyBook Live device, tried installing 23.05.0 but for some reason, i could not get networking to work, So i simply installed V21, then upgraded to 23… there was probably just something I was missing, but i could not be bothered figuring it out, this was a faster way…
1- Only the first few paragraphs of this tutorial (STEPS 1 THROUGH 6) are the instructions you need, the remaining is just for extra reference and in short you don’t need to read it to have your device running, but I do recommend YOU SKIM THE WHOLE THING BEFORE YOU START.
2- This procedure requires you to take the disk out and install it on a PC to switch the firmware, then put it back
3- The upgrade will delete all your data, You will need to move your data that is already on your WD NAS drive somewhere else while the upgrade is ready.
Move any data you may have on the drive to a temporary location outside the NAS drive. this has to be done before taking the drive apart as the unconventional 64 kB block size of the disk will be nothing but trouble if you want to extract the data while mounting the disk to a linux PC for example.
I have included photos to help you do that, it is not rocket science.
and mount it to a linux PC (Windows might work with software such as etcher, but i have no guarantees).
Go to the drive’s page on the openwrt website (Here), and download it to your Linux (Or windows) PC
Decompress the file, then copy it to the drive with a command similar to the command below, but make 100% sure to replace sdx with your own drive designation
dd if=/root/wdsata.img of=/dev/sdx bs=64k
Write the firmware to the disk, overwriting it, and effectively loosing any data you did not backup in step 1
Nothing to say here, this is the reverse of step 2
Once it is in the enclosure, you can not just connect it to your router as it in itself has this port defined as 192.168.1.1 and is serving dhcp !
At this stage, your device will boot, but you will need to create/expand the data partition, the partition that should not be overwritten when you upgrade the firmware for example.
opkg update opkg install gdisk blkid openssh-sftp-server block-mount gdisk -i /dev/sda
As soon as gdisk opens, you may be presented with the following message, if so
Found valid MBR and corrupt GPT. Which do you want to use? (Using the GPT MAY permit recovery of GPT data.) 1 - MBR 2 - GPT 3 - Create blank GPT
Chose 1 to maintain the 2 partitions we have, Now hit the command (w) to write and confirm, then quit, gdisk has just switched your disk to GPT from MBR, now run gdisk again the same way (gdisk -i /dev/sda)
n for new partition, accept the (3) for partition number, use the number (2097152) for alignment with 4K sector advanced format nearest to the 1GB mark
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3 mkdir /share blkid /dev/sda3
You might find a file named fstab in /etc, this is not the file that needs to be edited, the one you are seeking is in /etc/config/fstab in my case, the UUID was as follows UUID=”9643bd00-f117-4074-a252-7ea30a5174e2″ yours will certainly be different, so in my fstab i added the following lines near the end
config mount option target '/share' option uuid '9643bd00-f117-4074-a252-7ea30a5174e2' option enabled '1'
Now, network sharing is what i was originally interested in when i got this unit, and it is why I am replacing it’s firmware, so to installing samba
opkg update && opkg install samba4-server luci-app-samba4
Now, add the following line to /etc/passwd to add me as a user to the system
yazeed:*:1000:65534:yazeed:/var:/bin/false
Or, if you do not want to add the user manually, you can install the adduser package, and add the users through it like so
opkg install shadow-useradd useradd yazeed Unfortunately, this command won't do and you will have to edit it in the passwords file
Now, for either method from the above, run the command
passwd yazeed smbpasswd -a yazeed
Now, since this is a NAS device, disk tools may be a good idea
opkg install hd-idle luci-app-hd-idle hdparm To check if disk is spinning, try the command hdparm -C /dev/sda The responce active/idle means it is spinning
Yes it is, I have found many people asking if the hardware supports drives over 2TB, the answer is yes, but you will have to use the GPT rather than the MBR (See steps above)
it comes from WDs cloud service, bottom line is that many devices were completely wiped remotely by malicious users and it is unknown if the data itself leaked, so yes, it is very serious
Quick factory restore is probably what you are looking for, the later seems to do a zero fill on the hard drive after performing a factory restore to disallow data retrieval (For example before you sell it), you can verify this by logging in using SSH, and by the fact that the tool tips state something to that effect.
To begin with, I logged in via SSH and inspected some stuff, to enable SSH access on the My Book Live original firmware, you will need to visit a page at a URL such as http://mybooklive/UI/ssh or http://192.168.2.116/UI/ssh (Replace the IP with your own)
the system is based on the following CPU
CPU processor : 0 cpu : APM82181 clock : 800.000008MHz revision : 28.130 (pvr 12c4 1c82) bogomips : 1600.00 timebase : 800000008 platform : PowerPC 44x Platform model : amcc,apollo3g Memory : 256 MB
With that out of the way, A look at /etc/apt/sources.list revealed that it is a Debian Distro, the only problem with this is that debian stopped supporting this CPU some time ago, so you can’t go past Debian 8 (Jessie)
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main #deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main #deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ sid main
Checking the disk info with hdparm revealed that the disk is a WDC WD20EARX-00PASB0, which is as i expected a Caviar Green (SMR disk)
parted (The new fdisk so to speak) shows the following partition scheme for the existing system.
Model: ATA WDC WD20EARX-00P (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 2000GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: gpt Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 3 15.7MB 528MB 513MB linux-swap(v1) primary 1 528MB 2576MB 2048MB ext3 primary raid 2 2576MB 4624MB 2048MB ext3 primary raid 4 4624MB 2000GB 1996GB ext4 primary
And a “df -h” reveals
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/md0 1.9G 555M 1.3G 31% / tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /lib/init/rw udev 10M 6.7M 3.4M 67% /dev tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 100M 4.6M 96M 5% /tmp ramlog-tmpfs 20M 4.5M 16M 23% /var/log /dev/sda4 1.9T 2.1G 1.9T 1% /DataVolume
A good alternative for this Gigabit Lan network attached storage might be openWRT, the same firmware I use for my routers !
there are things you need to know in advance though, first of which is that changing the firmware will require you to delete everything on the drive ! as Western Digital have used an unconventional bunch of things such as a 64 kB block size !
With that out of the way, you can skip down to the installing openWRT about the upgrade process step by step (Including backing up your system), then come back to why etc…
That is indeed a good question, and to make it easy to do that, I have already backed up the entire disk to another while I am sure that i don’t want to go back. Also worth mentioning that the latest firmware on the WD website dates back to 2015 ! which is at the time of writing 6 years ago !
OpenWRT has a page dedicated to this drive, both the single and the Duo here (https://openwrt.org/toh/western_digital/mybooklive)
The Western Digital My Book Live has a super low power CPU, and when the disk is spun down, it consumes very little energy (Not a significant load to your UPS for example), It is also fan-less, so it is with the exception of the spinning drive when it is spinning silent, which is also a nice thing, So i would argue that keeping it by updating it’s software is a good idea
Another reason is the amount of relevant software provided through openWRT packages, covering many more things than the original firmware (miniDLNA included).
1- I have this error that i have not resolved yet
mv: setting attribute 'user.DOSATTRIB' for 'user.DOSATTRIB': Permission denied
2- The NAS box will not accept many files that windows creates such as Thumbs.db, to allow such files to be stored, This can easily be resolved by editing the samba template and commenting the “veto” files line, then make sure the config is regenerated from the template
If you come from a debian background, you would normally apt-get update then apt-get upgrade and that is that, in OpenWRT, there is no such upgrade command, the upgrade command in openWRT is meant to upgrade 1 package specified by name, so the solution is the following line
opkg list-upgradable | cut -f 1 -d ' ' | xargs -r opkg upgrade
As soon as you enter the LUCI interface of openwrt, you are presented with a bunch of DHCP leases corresponding to all the machines that got their IP from DHCP, but what about the computers that have static IPs ?
The answer to that is that there is no place where all this data is stored on the router, and you must scan for all machines
a tool to help you do that is arp-scan, just go into packages and install it, or simply run the command “opkg install arp-scan” from the ssh session, right after, you should be able to run the command as follows
arp-scan –interface br-lan –localnet
but this will not necessarily be the correct command, you will need to find the name of your LAN interface which is simple from interfaces in LUCI
As of now, the current version of arp-scan has a bug, where it displays the following error
arp-scan -I br-lan -l
Interface: br-lan, datalink type: EN10MB (Ethernet)
WARNING: Cannot open MAC/Vendor file /usr/share/arp-scan/ieee-oui.txt: No such file or directory
WARNING: Cannot open MAC/Vendor file /usr/share/arp-scan/ieee-iab.txt: No such file or directory
WARNING: Cannot open MAC/Vendor file /usr/share/arp-scan/mac-vendor.txt: No such file or directory
Starting arp-scan 1.9.5 with 256 hosts (https://github.com/royhills/arp-scan)
15 packets received by filter, 0 packets dropped by kernel
Ending arp-scan 1.9.5: 256 hosts scanned in 1.852 seconds (138.23 hosts/sec). 0 responded
The solution to that is by manually installing the newer arp-scan package
Usually, i go with a serial cable, these days, people have found simpler ways
Start by downloading lede-17.01.5-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3220-v2-squashfs-factory.bin from the openwrt website (Don’t use the original, it needs trimming 😉 and you can install it after using the post after this one
rename the file you downloaded to mr3220v2_tp_recovery.bin and put it in your tftp client folder
Setup your computer’s LAN settings to the IP address 192.168.0.66
Connect the eithernet cable to the yellow LAN port farthest away from the blue wan port (Not the one next to it, only this port works)
start your TFTP client, pick your eithernet LAN and connect the lan cable
Hold the WPS/Reset button, and while holding it, start the router, then wait 4 seconds and release it
On your screen, you should see your TFTP client sending a file (on tftpd32 you see a download progress bar)
Wait for the router to reboot, now you have hte openwrt firmware, go ahead and read the previous post on going back to factory 😉
Have a great day
If you are on openwrt and want to revert back to factory firmware, you need to do the following easy steps
Download the file from the tp-link website, this should be straight forward, you go to the website, search for your router by model, on the firmware download page, select the version of your router and download the file
If it is a zip file, extract it, we are looking for a bin file that should be inside the zip file (Make sure it has up_boot in the file name)
Use an application such as putty to connect to the router as root, and an application such as winSCP to connect to the router (Also as root) to upload the file
upload the file to the /tmp folder, this folder is in RAM not on the flash of the router, so it has more space that can accommodate the procedure
Using Putty, execute the following commands
cd /tmp
On this command here, you will need to replace the name of the file with the name of the file you have uploaded to the router
This command (That starts with DD), trims the first 257*512 = 131,584 bytes from the file which are the boot loader
dd if=yourfilename.bin of=flash.bin skip=257 bs=512
Now you would want to remove the old file after we have trimmed it with DD
rm yourfilename.bin
Now, to the final step, which is actually writing the trimmed firmware to the router
mtd -r write /tmp/flash.bin firmware
Now all you need to do is wait for the router to write the firmware, right after it will reboot and you are done
Let me start with the warning, DO NOT FLASH THE ORIGINAL TPLINK FIRMWARE BACK BEFORE FINDING OUT IF YOU NEED TO STRIP THE FIRST NUMBER OF BYTES OUT, YOU WILL BRICK YOUR ROUTER, IF YOU SEE
Failed to erase block
IF YOU DO, YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE YOU GET IT right after that, or you will start to get.
segmentation fault
on every and any command you run, at this stage, when you see this error after the failed to erase block error, your router is bricked, reboot it and it will not boot back up. if this happens, you might (depending on the model you have) have to connect your router to a com port and debrick it.
Now that you know, let’s see how to deal with this
If your firmware download file name has the word boot in it’s file name, you will need to strip out the first 0x20200 bytes (131584 bytes), if you fail to do this, meaning you fail to either identify if you need to do this, or fail to trim them, you will brick your router in the next step, to make matters both, TP-LINK is no longer including the word boot in firmwares with boot.
so to trim
dd if=orig.bin of=tplink.bin skip=257 bs=512
this command means read the file into another, skipping the first 257×512 = 131584 bytes (Which is the number you find above)
Now, you can flash it with the following command
mtd -r write /tmp/tplink.bin firmware
And if it says all is ok, you can now reboot your router into the new firmware
NOTE: this is not about battery operated 4G modems (such as the huwawei E5577 for example), see here for instructions to connect 4G modems via USB to openwrt
This is a 4MB space tp-link router, here are the steps
opkg install kmod-usb-serial kmod-usb2 luci-proto-3g kmod-usb-serial-option usb-modeswitch kmod-usb2 kmod-usb-serial-wwan kmod-usb-serial ppp comgt
A package required for older releases of openwrt
opkg install sdparm
And the optional package
opkg install usbutils
Now, reboot the router, then go to the routers LUCI interfaces page, then add an interface
From the drop down, chose UMTS/GPRS
On the next page, you should see one of the devices names /dev/ttyUSB0, in my case there are 2 since the device provides a storage controller, the modem was on USB0 not USB1, your might be different (try both if you have 2)
Now i chose UMTS only so that the modem will always use 3G because edge is good for nothing
Then your APN and username/password as you would on a phone or anywhere else… then save and apply
Since this router has around 600 to 700 KBs of free space, running the hi link USB dongle modem should be done with the bare minimum packages
Here are the ones i installed to get mine running
opkg install kmod-usb-net kmod-usb-net-rndis kmod-usb-net-cdc-ether udev usb-modeswitch kmod-usb-serial-option kmod-usb-net
Right after, i rebooted, then running the command,
ifconfig -a
I got a new eithernet device (USB0), on another older hi link dongle it was called eth2.
Then, from within LUCI, you can simply add a new interface using this hardware interface, and set that to DHCP and add it to the WAN segment, You are done, it should be connected now
Please be aware that once you have it running, you might want to get into the dongle’s interface settings, and instruct the dongle to only use 3G (Not GSM/EDGE), i do that by visiting 192.168.8.1 (Hard coded, can not be changed, but depending on the model yours might be different).
In my case, i was switching to the openwrt from dd-wrt.
I got my netgear WNDR3700 V3 (which is broadcom not atherios) used from ebay, Switching from dd-wrt to openwrt
First of all, there is a bug in the dd-wrt 21061 that makes it not possible to use SSH, so i logged in with telnet
Now,
wget http://theplacewhereyouputthefile/filename.bin (the original firmware is .chk not .bin)
Then
mtd -e linux -r write /tmp/x.bin linux
And the router showed things like
Unlocking Linux …
Erasing Linux
Writing from x.bin to Linux … [e]
Writing from x.bin to Linux … [w]
Then, connection to the host was lost
Then the router was bricked
I did get ping replies from the router, but that did not mean it is working
So, my next thing to do was this, the router booted itself into recovery mode, so i got the original firmware.
tftp -i 192.168.1.1 put x.chk
Transfer successful: 7258170 bytes in 29 second(s), 250281 bytes/s
Where X is simply the factory firmware .chk file, now leave the router for more than 5 minutes while it digests the update, then use the web interface to update to the openwrt chk file