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Altoid

Member

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 1,581  

[SOLVED] WD MyBook Live with Devuan

Hello:

Yewsterday I came across a practically new 1Tb MyBook Live for a bit under US$30 (!) and as I am needing a better backup routine, I went for it.
My only worry was that the 1Tb SATA drive would have some dings but even if it did, the hardware in the box was worth it.

The thing runs on an APM82181@800 MHz CPU, 256MB + 512Kb flash.
It has a SATA bay and Gigabit Ethernet LAN but no USB port.

After resetting it, when I hooked it up to the router it reported the proper MAC address with a 169.254.7.194 IP address.
Not the expected 192.168.1.1 or thereabouts.

As I was not able to get into the UI via browser, ssh or in any way get into the system and as I still had to check the drive before going forward, I decided to disassemble the case to remove the drive and hook it up to my main box with the idea of modifying a configuration file to set up another IP.

disks and gparted reported nothing nasty and gsmartcontrol gave it a clean bill of health.
No grown defects.

This is the drive's data and layout:

Model: WDC WD10EURX-63FH1Y0 (01.01A01)
Size: 1.0 TB (1,000,204,886,016 bytes)
Partitioning: GUID Partition Table
Serial: WD-WMC1U7235566

freespace   | swap partition 3 | partition 1       | partition 2       | partition 4: primary
16Mb        | 513Mb            | 2.0Gb             | 2.0Gb             | 996Gb
unallocated | basic data       | linux raid        | linux raid        | filesystem
                               | linux raid member | linux raid member | ext4

Unfortunately, I cannot mount the primary partition and get this error:

Error mounting /dev/sda4 at /media/groucho/7599bee0-ee74-4354-9c41-dbc05d70b49d: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda4, missing codepage or helper program, or other error

When I try lsblk to see what's there I get this:

~$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk 
|-sda1   8:1    0   1.9G  0 part 
|-sda2   8:2    0   1.9G  0 part 
|-sda3   8:3    0   489M  0 part 
`-sda4   8:4    0 927.2G  0 part 
--- snip ---
~$ 

When I try parted to see what's there I get this:

~$ parted -l
[sudo] password for groucho: 
Model: ATA WDC WD10EURX-63F (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name     Flags
 3      15.7MB  528MB   513MB                primary  msftdata
 1      528MB   2576MB  2048MB  ext3         primary  raid
 2      2576MB  4624MB  2048MB  ext3         primary  raid
 4      4624MB  1000GB  996GB   ext4         primary  msftdata
--- snip ---
~$ 

What confounds me is the gpt partition table, this is a 1TB drive and other configurations only go to 3Tb.
And the msftdata flag.

I have no Windows installation to do anything with.

There is the also possibility of using WRT instead of the WD software.
I'm sure it won't have the problems thousands of users had last year.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Best,

A.

garyk

Member

Registered: 2018-04-14

Posts: 40  

Re: [SOLVED] WD MyBook Live with Devuan

You may find this helpful.

nfotinks.com/clone-partition-tables-gpt-mbr-sfdisk-sgdisk/

Altoid

Member

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 1,581  

Re: [SOLVED] WD MyBook Live with Devuan

Hello:

You may find this helpful.

Thanks but I finally managed to successfully reset the unit late tonight.
After that it got assigned a proper IP by the router and I can access it via ssh and the UI via a browser.

After checking it out, I see it runs on an old linux kernel:

~# uname -a
Linux MyBookLive 2.6.32.11-svn70860 #1 Thu May 17 13:32:51 PDT 2012 ppc GNU/Linux
~# 

I have to look into something newer without all the media suff the original FW has as I want to use it as a backup drive.
eg: Twonky, iTunes, etc.

But there's does not seem to be much available for PowerPC/ppc32 these days as Debian dropped support when Debian 8 came out.

The only example of 2020's firmware for this system that I have come across is OpenWRT which also has regular updates.
Also found someone who says he's been running Gentoo for about 10 years on his various units but he has now switched them all to OpenWRT.

I wonder if anyone here has done anything on these WD thinguies.

Thanks for your input.

Best,

O.

Altoid

Member

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 1,581  

Re: [SOLVED] WD MyBook Live with Devuan

Hello:

... example of 2020's firmware for this system ...
... OpenWRT
... if anyone here has done anything on these WD thinguies.

Seems I'm the only one here scavenging on old hardware. 8^D

I'll mark this thread as solved.

I have managed to successfully install OpenWRT 21.02.2 to the WD-MBL and it is working, albeit with an expected issue: it seems that the APM821xx processor does not have a way to poweroff or even halt.

So while I'm installing a couple of missing utils I see if I can find a suitable work around, maybe with a script and a switch for when it needs to be moved or taken off-line for a few days.

Best,

A.