Breathing new life into MBL (new disk/sleep monitoring/miniDLNA/openvpn)

WD Legacy Products My Book Live
2

NEW HARD DISK INSTALLATION

Basically I am following this guide (except using the updated firmware and add in my additional steps):

‘[GUIDE] How to unbrick a totally dead MBL’

Preparation

  1. Disassemble MBL
  2. Download Rescue CD http://www.system-rescue-cd.org/Download
  3. Download the debrick script from http://www.mediafire.com/?g2xexkaaya34a9r
  4. Download the current firmware http://download.wdc.com/nas/apnc-024310-048-20150507.deb
  5. Optional: backup data and backup the configuration in MBL

Install 7zip and point it to your MyBookLive firmware “apnc-024310-048-20150507.deb” and double click and you will see “data.tar” where you will again double click and be presented with a “.” Double click the “.” then double click “cache volume” then double click “upgrade” and then highlight “rootfs.img” and hit extract.

Next burn the SystemRescueCd ISO to a blank CD.

Use 7zip or WinRAR to extract the debricking script “debrick.sh” from the “debrick.rar” file downloaded from (3) above.

Format a thumbdrive to FAT32. Copy “debrick.sh” and “rootfs.img” to the thumbdrive.

Ready a new harddisk and delete all partitions from it.

Attach the Harddisk to PC with CD rom, USB and SATA

Make sure your thumbdrive containing the two files is plugged in, the only new hard drive is hooked up to the computer via sata cable and disconnect any other hard drives to ensure we don’t accidentally delete data on those drives.

Boot off the SystemRescue CD you burned above. When the system menu comes up select to “directly start the graphical environment”.

Type in the following commands:

mkdir /mnt/usb
mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb
cd /mnt/usb
mdadm -S /dev/md0
./debrick.sh rootfs.img /dev/sda destroy

Put the drive back in the enclosure and restart MBL. The system should boot up and we can get the MBL UI home screen.

SWAP creation

I am too excited on this point and I have forgotten to create SWAP for my MBL. I only discovered in a much later stage (out of memory during program compilation) and I have use a different set of command to create SWAP.

Anyway I suppose the command in the original guide should work.

First login to MBL thru SSH and my commands to create swap are:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/DataVolume/swapfile bs=4096 count=131072
mkswap /DataVolume/swapfile
swapon /DataVolume/swapfile
mkswap /dev/sda3
reboot

use TOP command to verify if SWAP are really enabled:

To autostart the SWAP file, create a file /etc/init.d/S88swap with content:

swapon /DataVolume/swapfile

Then:

chmod +x /etc/init.d/S88swap
update-rc.d S88swap defaults

reference: http://www.nasyun.com/thread-440-1-1.html (Use Google translate to view in your native language)

WD DLNA server and Twonky DLNA server

We have installed the rootfs.img from the WD firmware downloaded. The DLNA software under the downloaded firmware is not installed. If we want these services, go the the MBL UI, select the downloaded firmware apnc-024310-048-20150507.deb from step 4 and install the firmware once again.

Then perform a factory reset.

Please ensure the SWAP are still on (thru top command in SSH).

/etc/apt/sources.list

Optional: This file contains the directories in which subsequent library update would be retrieved from.

I only keep one line uncommented and other lines are all commented (commented lines are prefix by #):

deb Index of /debian squeeze main

That’s it. We should now have a working MBL with the updated firmware and blank harddisk. We can restore the configuration file saved in the old MBL or setup the MBL from scratch.

To be continued…

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