Free the mouse Replay RunningShellCommands
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The ReplayTV has a built-in shell with various helpful, interesting, and amusing commands. There are various methods for getting to it, outlined below. Unfortunately, most of them require pulling the drive at least once.

hacked panels

WARNING

Don't try this method with GaeaSoftware 4.3.

Overview

Many of the ReplayTV UI screens & dialogues are driven by a high-level UI manager (called the "Wizard"), that reads and XML files describing UI elements, variables, and actions. By modifying a panel and writing it, you can change the Replay's UI; by using the shell-exec action, you can run shell commands.

Prereqs

A way of writing a file. This can be

Details

(TODO: write up/find (Sean Riddley probably wrote one, for himself at least) a full description of the panel language)

Pick a panel file to modify. Customize/p-credits.panel is a good choice, since nothing vital breaks if you mess something up; it's used for the 887/888/889 ZONE easter eggs from the setup screen.

Pick an action to modify; in the PPVEnableHack, I used the s-ToggleShowDisplay action, which is triggered when the DISPLAY remote button is pressed.

Add an action line, like:

           <do action="shell-exec" target="ptvio on" />
target can be used to run a literal string as a shell command; value can be used to name a variable whose value is the shell command to be run; the rest of the panel language can be used to create & define the variable's value.

See settime-plus.panel for a large-scale example of using this technique. (TODO: URL? where'd that come from?) Note that it's for previous versions and should not be used as-is on 4000s, just used as an example for how to use this and to see the scope possible.


modifying scripts

WARNING

Don't try this method with GaeaSoftware 4.3.

Overview

At bootup time, the shell script Platform/Plymouth/Scripts/StartupScript is executed; by modifying it, we can run shell commands.

Prereqs

A way of writing a file

WARNING

A shell command that returns an error here will evidentally cause a reboot. This may be preventable by starting the line with a -, but that hasn't been verified. This method is just listed for completeness' sake; please don't actually try it.

httputils-shell

WARNING

Don't try this method with GaeaSoftware 4.3.

Overview

Most of the code is in place for a method to run shell commands over the network; it's not enabled, though.

Prereqs

A way of writing a file

Details

See HttpUtilsShellHack for all the details.

ptvio

Overview

Just use the shell on the console, like sane people. It's not enabled, though, either.

Prereqs

A way of running shell commands, and specialized/custom hardware (not hard, even I could do it, on my second try)

Details

See PtvioShell for all the details.

nightly update

Overview

During the nightly update, two different times Replay supplies shell commands to execute. By putting ourselves between our ReplayTVs and Replay's servers, we can modify these commands.

Prereqs

Some networking skill; for the code I provide, probably a Linux machine acting as your router. This does not require having a way to write files or otherwise execute shell commands, however, and can be used to bootstrap any of the other methods or hacks without ever pulling a drive.

Details

See RnsProxy for the details.

-- ToddLarason - 27 Apr 2002


My impression is that only the nightly method will work on a 3000 series replayTV, but I don't know. If you have info on what version support what methods, it would be great.

-- TWikiGuest - 10 Jun 2002


The modified panel method certainly works -- see the various time-setting panels & the macrovision-fixing panel for the ShowStopper for examples of how that works.

the serial shell is available, too, after it's been enabled with the 'ptvio on' command; on the 3000, you don't need the IRMTS command first. She cable's the same, but set the serial port to 9600bps instead of 115200.

-- ToddLarason - 10 Jun 2002


The settime-plus.panel script source is: http://www.geocities.com/flipflop7146/#clock

-- TWikiGuest - 08 Jun 2003


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