Identify Linux loader


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Thread: Identify Linux loader

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Dec 2015
    Posts
    2

    Identify Linux loader

    I have a special Linux HDD used in a satellite receiver with hard disk recording feature Panasonic TU-HMS3.
    The HDD is PATA (IDE) Seagate 120GB ST3120025ACE.
    http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/s...100271705f.pdf
    I tried to clone it using Acronis True Image 2015 and also Redobackup.
    Since then the receiver does work anymore. It boots, I can see the splash screen Panasonic, but the menus are not accessible anymore. It seems the loader sequence was affected even if was use only as source disk.
    Is anyone able to help me to identify the loader and to recover the HDD to its initial state?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    May 2002
    Posts
    1,254
    On a typical desktop PC the two common boot loaders are grub and lilo. You would have a /boot/grub or a /etc/lilo.conf which would indicate the receiver is using grub or lilo. However, the receiver could be booting from a single board computer built in flash memory and only using the drive for configuration files and data.

    It might be possible to connect to the device using telnet or ssh and rebuild the hard drive but it would probably erase all recorded data.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Dec 2015
    Posts
    2
    The original Panasonic source disk has 3 partitions as seen in the next pictures:
    https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bw...ndmNE5neE9EMXM

    The partition 1 contains the Linux files. It has around 200MB and zipped around 60MB.
    Here is the zipped partition 1 with Linux files:
    https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bw...m5Tc05TcEJWVEE

    Analyzing “vmlinux” file next info was found: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, MIPS, MIPS-II version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, not stripped.
    It will not boot in a PC.
    MBR is not relevant for MIPS Linux. It is used just as partition table.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_instruction_set
    https://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/Main_Page

    Any other suggestions?

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Feb 2014
    Location
    Riviera Beach, Maryland, USA
    Posts
    172
    FWIW
    MIPS (originally an acronym for Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by MIPS Technologies. MIPS implementations are primarily used in embedded systems such as Windows CE devices, routers, residential gateways, and video game consoles. Until late 2006, they were also used in many of SGI's computer products. MIPS implementations were also used by Digital Equipment Corporation, NEC, Pyramid Technology, Siemens Nixdorf, Tandem Computers and others during the late 1980s and 1990s. In the mid to late 1990s, it was estimated that one in three RISC microprocessors produced was a MIPS implementation. MIPS II was introduced in 1990 with the R6000.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_instruction_set

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Aug 2016
    Posts
    5
    See this. This script is written in Bash, however, so if you need to run it on an embedded platform you will have to modify it. I have tested this script and it has correctly recognized GRUB on Ubuntu and LILO on Slackware.

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