Unbrick with Clean 03.04.01-230 Bittorrent FIrmware

Hi,

Just like most that have hacked their WD MyCloud to include Transmission client for all their torrent need, it came as a surprised that my unit stopped working.  I could no longer access the web UI nor Transmission. After some ssh diggin, the 4.0 update has replaced all the stuff that I’ve added.  I pretty much used the WD as my little linux box, which is pretty awesome. 

This is the 1st time that I’ve called tech support and get to the level 2 dude that knows what they are doing. Still, the new 4.0 image no longer allows installation of anything from SID MAIN.  That kinda **bleep**. So I’ve spend better part of this weekend performing some hardware and software hacking to get my WD back up and running.  All heavy lifting has been completed by yours truely.  Just click to download the image below.

Clean v03.04.01-230 image with Transmission preinstalled

There are plenty instruction for linux newbie on how to restore a DD image. Ask your best friend Google for help :wink:

Enjoy!

1 Like

Hi,

Just a follow up, I’ve sendmail running serving as my personal SMTP Mail server.  Here are some screen shoot .

Sweet :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like

Hi,

BTW, the 2TB virgin 3.03 image that is available on this forum is a good start till you try to install the latest 3.04 (prior to the screwup 4.0 image).  The image will not allow update due to Disk space problem which some user posted on this forum.   Give the above URL image that is preinstalled with Transmission a shot and report any feedback.

Cheers! 

1 Like

Just like most that have hacked their WD MyCloud to include Transmission client for all their torrent need, it came as a surprised that my unit stopped working.  I could no longer access the web UI nor Transmission. After some ssh diggin, the 4.0 update has replaced all the stuff that I’ve added.  I pretty much used the WD as my little linux box, which is pretty awesome. 

 

I know what you mean, sounds like a WD manager has stepped in and said something like “Why are we allowing people all this freedom. They should pay extra for it, our other higher priced NAS products are suffering. Lets take away this ability and lock it down.”

Little do the managers know its one of the best features of the box! I know engineers are the first ones to have a device thats hackable beyond its primary function… it the narrow minded managers that stuff it up with bulls#@!#

Don’t get me started on the Boxee Box debarcile … a consumer media player that was supposed to be open but went on sale completely closed until hackers had to save it from the consumer rubbish bin.

So thanks Yo_Bubba,  at least we have an image for custom building the hardware to allow tinking again independant of WD.

Can somebody instruct me how to restore this image to the drive ?

Sorry for my “newbieness”, I may ask: that Content Scan I see on the bottom right, is it one you implemented?

It would be useful on my EVER-scanning WD Mirror :cry:

Angelus81 wrote:

Sorry for my “newbieness”, I may ask: that Content Scan I see on the bottom right, is it one you implemented?

 

It would be useful on my aver-scanning WD Mirror :cry:

Hi,

That’s default setup from WDC.

Cheers!

johnsheppardwd wrote:

Can somebody instruct me how to restore this image to the drive ?

 

Hi,

As mentioned earlier, most of the instruction is available on this forum.  Here’s a quick run down on the steps I’ve done.

The below instruction are based on my Toshiba laptop configuration, your  /dev/sd*   WILL BE DIFFERENT,  if you’re a TRUE LINUX/UNIX NEWBIE don’t try, stop now and go watch some PBS.   The DD process below is NON RECOVERABLE. 

1. Download the Clean v3.04.01-230 image and save it to your local hard drive

    Link to download v3.04.01-230 image

  1. Grab a Debian rescue ISO image.

     Link to download Debian x64 rescue ISO

  1. Download the above WD image.  Use 7Zip to uncompress the image file

    Link to download 64bit 7Zip

  1. Download Rufus to create a bootable flash memory stick

    Link to download Rufus

  1. Crack open your WD MyCloud (WARNING: THIS WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY!)

    Link to watch YouTube video on cracking open your WDC

  1. I’m using a SATA/IDE to USB 3.0 adatper to attached the WDC RED 2TB hard drive to my laptop

    Ebay link to SATA/IDE to USB 3.0 adapter

  1. Boot the Debian flash memory stick to BASH shell

  2. At shell,  use ls -l /dev/sa*   to list all hard drive

9. Mount the Windows partition that contain the Clean 03.04.01-230 image

    # mkdir /mnt/hd3            ***** create a node to mount hard drive ****

    # mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/hd3      **** this is my laptop D drive win7 partition, that I’ve save the clean image ****

    # ls -l /mnt/hd3/WDC/mycloud2tb_transmission_v03.04.01-230.img  **** just to make sure the image is there! ****

    # dd if=/mnt/hd3/WDC/mycloud2tb_transmission_v03.04.01-230.img  of=/dev/sdc   **** Write image to WDC RED HD*

    # halt          **** shutdown your debian rescue server ***

  1. Install the WDC RED HD with the circuit board back into the gray mounting frame.

11. Check everything is hookup correctly and fire up your WDC MyCloud and start configuring.

  1. If you follow thru, you should have Transmission http://wdmycloud:9091 back up and running for your torrents    needs :wink:

Hope this helps.

Cheers!

rubikcubic wrote:

Just like most that have hacked their WD MyCloud to include Transmission client for all their torrent need, it came as a surprised that my unit stopped working.  I could no longer access the web UI nor Transmission. After some ssh diggin, the 4.0 update has replaced all the stuff that I’ve added.  I pretty much used the WD as my little linux box, which is pretty awesome. 

 

I know what you mean, sounds like a WD manager has stepped in and said something like “Why are we allowing people all this freedom. They should pay extra for it, our other higher priced NAS products are suffering. Lets take away this ability and lock it down.”

 

Little do the managers know its one of the best features of the box! I know engineers are the first ones to have a device thats hackable beyond its primary function… it the narrow minded managers that stuff it up with [Deleted]

 

Don’t get me started on the Boxee Box debarcile … a consumer media player that was supposed to be open but went on sale completely closed until hackers had to save it from the consumer rubbish bin.

 

So thanks Yo_Bubba,  at least we have an image for custom building the hardware to allow tinking again independant of WD.

 

Hi,

You’re right, WD has no business in what I do with a piece of hardware that I own.  Of course,  I’m fully aware that if I hack the device, I will void my warranty.   It’s fair game.  WDC build this WdMyCloud using freebie GNU apps and they are gracefully allowing the enabling of SSH from the managment GUI.  Kudo to WDC engineering team.   Most of the embedded NAS vendor usually lock their GNU device from user tinkering, which is NOT cool.   Anyway, even without SSH access from the management GUI is not a big deal, since you can alyways mount the WDC RED HDD and install SSH from Debian SID MAIN. Anything that is man build can be hack period.

After this 4.0 firmware update debacle,  I’ve spend a little bit of time doing a post-mortem of the update and frankly I’m surpised and I have told the WD Level 2 support folks that WDC is evil in the way they update the unit.  In the firmware package, it contain a DD image of the probably a engineering release version of the HDD image.  The update simply write the root file system which contains all the stuff that I’ve installed or complied.  This is very sloopy way of providing an update. Yes, I’ve installed GCC complier and link library onto the units for development works.   Hack, I’ve just install the Asterisk PBX onto the MyCloud and it works just fine.  After analyzing the firmware update shell script, I WILL NEVER EVER ALLOW the UNIT to install any update period.

The units works extremely fine with all my HD media needs.   Perviously, I’ve tried the DLNA on a high-end Netgear router and it leaves bad taste in mouth.  With MyCloud,  I can now stream all media to my 1080P projector,  iPAD, Samsung Galaxy Android phone and all my other LED LCD tv. Oh BTW,  I’ve a USB 3.0 active hub with 4 ports and I’ve hook four additional 2.5" USB 3.0 hard drive and it’s running fine.

The WDC firmware team has not done themself any favour by releasing an update that is not extensively tested and results in all this **bleep** and moaning on this forum.  

Cheers!

PS: For the money, the embedded ARMF motherboard runs a dual core ARM processor at 1.2ghz which is way better than the Beagle board black costing almost $70 for the Rev C with only a single T1 core at 1.0ghz.   The MyCloud is a very capable embedded Linux machine.

WD MyCloud CPU Info

Processor       : ARMv7 Processor rev 1 (v7l)
processor       : 0
BogoMIPS        : 1292.69

processor       : 1
BogoMIPS        : 1292.69

Features        : swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp neon vfpv3 tls
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant     : 0x2
CPU part        : 0xc09
CPU revision    : 1

Hardware        : Comcerto 2000 EVM
Revision        : 0001
Serial          : 0000000000000000

WDMyCloud:~#

Hi

1) How to create a backup image of my entire WDMC? I’ve installed some 3rd-party programs and want to keep my current installation as a back up.

  1. Is there a way to restore an image onto WDMC w/o having to remove the internal HDD?  Possibly, tftp via LAN?

thanks

Is there a reason for the speed not getting over ~5MB download ? 

I’ve set a bigger cache size (64 mb) but the speed is still crappy

Thanks

muonic wrote:

Hi

 

1) How to create a backup image of my entire WDMC? I’ve installed some 3rd-party programs and want to keep my current installation as a back up.

 

  1. Is there a way to restore an image onto WDMC w/o having to remove the internal HDD?  Possibly, tftp via LAN?

 

 

thanks

 

 

Answer 1 # 

You will need to have a new matching size hard drive of any make.  Install both the new hard drive and the drive removed from your WD into a working machine.  Boot up with Debian rescue flash and drop into Linux shell and enter the following commands.

ls -l /dev/sd*              *** The WDMyCloud drive will show up with 8 partition  eg  /dev/sda  /dev/sda1 - /dev/sda8  **

                                        *** your new backup drive migh show up as /dev/sdb for example.

dd if=/dev/sda  of=/dev/sdb        *** will image content from your WdMyCloud drive to the new drive ***

Answer 2 #

NO, you can’t restore a image with the drive in the WD unit…

Hope this helps.

Cheers!

Hi,

Excuse me, what do you mean by download over 5MB ??

Cheers

Yo_Bubba wrote:


Answer 1 # 

You will need to have a new matching size hard drive of any make.  Install both the new hard drive and the drive removed from your WD into a working machine.  Boot up with Debian rescue flash and drop into Linux shell and enter the following commands.

ls -l /dev/sd*              *** The WDMyCloud drive will show up with 8 partition  eg  /dev/sda  /dev/sda1 - /dev/sda8  **

                                        *** your new backup drive migh show up as /dev/sdb for example.

dd if=/dev/sda  of=/dev/sdb        *** will image content from your WdMyCloud drive to the new drive ***

 

Hi 

Actually, I just want to back up only the system image of WDMC like the .img you created? What is the command for that?

Thanks again

H

muonic wrote:


Yo_Bubba wrote:

 

 

Answer 1 # 

You will need to have a new matching size hard drive of any make.  Install both the new hard drive and the drive removed from your WD into a working machine.  Boot up with Debian rescue flash and drop into Linux shell and enter the following commands.

ls -l /dev/sd*              *** The WDMyCloud drive will show up with 8 partition  eg  /dev/sda  /dev/sda1 - /dev/sda8  **

                                        *** your new backup drive migh show up as /dev/sdb for example.

dd if=/dev/sda  of=/dev/sdb        *** will image content from your WdMyCloud drive to the new drive ***

 


 

 

Hi 

 

Actually, I just want to back up only the system image of WDMC like the .img you created? What is the command for that?

 

Thanks again

 

 

 

Hi,

I see.  Here’s the command below assume you want to create a backup of your WD drive to a file containing only the essential to restore the image later.

dd if=/dev/sdc  of=/mnt/hd3/MyWDBackupImage.img bs=1M count=5000  

*** assumption, /dev/sda is your WD and /mnt/hd3 is my local hard drive mounted from /dev/sda3  to save the recovery image ***

Hope this helps.

Cheers!

Instead of removing the internal HDD to perform a backup, I did this in SSH on WDMC

WDMyCloud:~# dd if=/dev/sda of=/shares/Private/backup/MyWDBackupImage.img bs=1M count=5000
5000+0 records in
5000+0 records out
5242880000 bytes (5.2 GB) copied, 145.187 s, 36.1 MB/s

This created a “MyWDBackupImage.img” file. Is this ok w/o having to remove the internal HDD to create a recovery image?

You  wrote: "the embedded ARMF motherboard runs a dual core ARM processor at 1.2ghz "

I was under the impression that “My Cloud uses a Mindspeed Comcerto 2000 (M86261G-12) dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 Communication Processor running at 650 MHz”!?

Hi,

Check out this Guide on how to install QBittorrent which offers faster and consistent download compared to Transmission.

Guide to install QBittorrent on your WD

Cheers!

if you couldn’t hack the mycloud it really wouldn’t be worth it’s money. I’ve got transmission, sabnzb and sickbeard all running on mine :smiley:

Wormvortex wrote:

if you couldn’t hack the mycloud it really wouldn’t be worth it’s money. I’ve got transmission, sabnzb and sickbeard all running on mine :smiley:

Hi,

Well,  the DLNA & UP&P function alone is worth my investment on the WD MyCloud.  I’m happy camper with ability to watch my media on any device in my house (WD Live, iPAD, Samsung Galaxy, LG tv, Vizio google TV and so on).

The SSH is the real deal, an icing on the cake that opens up a whole world of possibilities with a bunch of Debian compiled binaries. Too bad, WDC decided to make a 64k memory page change that resulted in not being able to install or cross compiled apps for the device.

Cheers!