MyBookLive and OpenWRT version

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Hello:

Three years ago I came across a practically new MBL 1TB for a song and as I was needing an inexpensive NAS, I took it home and installed the latest OpenWRT on it.

OpenWRT seemed to be an odd choice at the time (ie: not a router) but maybe not as odd as calling this single drive box with a crippled 10/100 ethernet port a NAS.

There was nothing else available for 32bit ppc but OpenWRT worked properly, was actively maintained and has proved to be very reliable.

So, once again, thanks to all at OpenWRT for making it possible.

The issues I had were mostly down to the MBL hardware limitations ie: no proper shutdown procedure, weak-ish processor / small RAM and a very slow data transfer speed in spite of having a GbE port.

I worked around the shutdown problem with a script and a switch and (sort of) solved the slow data transfer* by sending the back-up files** via FTP to the MBL at ~ 40Mb/s.
*rsyncd ~19MiB/s @CPU load of ~90%.
**Clonezilla-Live compressed

Not being a router or exposed to the web, I also added an important number of packages I use in my other Devuan based boxes to make it more 'usable' and am quite happy with the result.

The OpenWRT version installed at the time was 21.02.2 and I see that the last available version is 24.10.

The MBL hardware has obviously not changed and I wonder if it would make any sense to take the time and trouble to upgrade.

Have there been any significant changes to OpenWRT / packages which would warrant upgrading to 24.10?

Thanks in advance.

Best,

JHM

1 Like
2

Huh? The MBLs have gigabit ports.

The MBL's SoC does not have a halt-and-catch-fire state. The original firmware fakes it by shutting everything down putting the SoC into an in infinite loop. It looks powered off, but actually isn't.

The last really significant speed bump the MBL itself got was in 2018, before your 21.x was released. Since then it was smaller improvements, which still could make a difference, but proabably not as significant.

However, what will make a difference is newer versions of server software, e.g. Samba4 or ksmbd. I believe I have seen significant speed boosts with newer versions of those, especially with newer Samba versions.

Generally, the MBLs are now going well into their teenage years, and they still hold up fine. I am still using several for applications where their speed is not the limiting factor, or a factor in general. One drive, for example, is used as an off-site backup drive, and being connected via the internet with latencies well into the quarter seconds it really does not matter if they deliver 40, 50, or 60 MB/s. Another I use with an SSD as a local backup Git server. They still have their purpose.

1 Like
3

Hello:

... gigabit ports.

Quite so, I thought I had corrected both references to GbE.
My bad, not enough espresso.

... does not have a halt-and-catch-fire state.

Indeed ...
The hardware hack+shutdown script works well enough.
Just have to wait for green to turn blue.

... last really significant speed bump ...

I see.

... what will make a difference is newer versions of server software ...
... e.g. Samba4 or ksmbd

This MBL is an 'off-desktop' backup for system drive images previously processed by Clonezilla Live. ie: the last nine in a fast SAS drive in my main box and the last 50 or so in the MBL and given its specs, it will have to stay that way.

... they still hold up fine.
... still have their purpose.

Quite so.
I am on the lookout for another one to work on but no luck so far.

From your posts I see that you have been around these MBLs for quite a while and know them inside out. Hoping not to impose, I'd like to ask a question:

Given this layout:

root@OpenWrt:~# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 931.51 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Disk model: WDC WD10EURX-63F
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x228c756a

Device     Boot   Start        End    Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *       8192      24575      16384    8M 83 Linux
/dev/sda2         32768     450559     417792  204M 83 Linux
/dev/sda3       3174400 1953523711 1950349312  930G 83 Linux
root@OpenWrt:~#

Is this possible?

dd if=/dev/sda1  of=/dev/sda3/sda1.img 
dd if=/dev/sda2  of=/dev/sda3/sda2.img

Best,

JHM

4

How many do you need? Which continent you at?

5

Hello:

How many ...

Just one for now.

Which continent ...
-34.603, -58.381

Too far away for a reasonable shipping fee from almost anywhere else.
Not to mention customs surcharges, making the local option the most reasonable one.

Best,

JHM

6

Hello:

So ...
Is this possible?

dd if=/dev/sda1  of=/dev/sda3/sda1.img 
dd if=/dev/sda2  of=/dev/sda3/sda2.img

I mean, without thrashing anything.
Best,

JHM

7

No. /dev/sda3 is a raw device node. You can't use it like a folder and write files to it, and trying it would fail in an "not a directory" error. You need to mount it first.

8

Hello:

... /dev/sda3 is a raw device node.
... can't use it like a folder ...
... need to mount it first.

Yes.
It is mounted.

$ ssh 192.168.1.13
BusyBox v1.33.2 (2022-02-16 20:29:10 UTC) built-in shell (ash)

uptime:		    2 min
ui:             running
mem free:	    226560 kB
mem available:  210532 kB
sda1 free/used: 3.6M  53%
sda3 free/used: 296.7G  66%
hd temp:	    22°C
$ 

$ mount -l
/dev/sda2 on / type ext4 (rw,noatime)
proc on      /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,noatime)
sysfs on     /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,noatime)
cgroup2 on   /sys/fs/cgroup type cgroup2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,nsdelegate)
tmpfs on     /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext4 (rw,noatime,errors=remount-ro)
tmpfs on     /dev type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,size=512k,mode=755)
devpts on    /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,mode=600,ptmxmode=000)
/dev/sda3 on /mnt/sda3 type ext4 (rw,relatime)
debugfs on   /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,noatime)
none on      /sys/fs/bpf type bpf (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,noatime,mode=700)
~$

I want to generate an *.img file of each of the MBL system partitions for back-up.
ie: /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2

Edit:
Hmm ...
It should be like this (?):

dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/mnt/sda3/sda1.img

Thanks for taking the time to write.

Best,

JHM

9

Yes, exactly.

10

Hello:

Yes, exactly.

Done.
Thank you for your input.
Best,

JHM

11

Hello:

I'm still looking to see if I can get a better throughput from the GbE port in the MBL and was wondering about the ibm_emac driver present in openwrt 21.02.2.

ethtool reports this ...

$ sudo ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
	Supported ports: [ TP MII ]
	Supported link modes:   10baseT/Full 
	                        100baseT/Full 
	                        1000baseT/Full 
	Supported pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only
	Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
	Supported FEC modes: Not reported
	Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Full 
	                        100baseT/Full 
	                        1000baseT/Full 
	Advertised pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only
	Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
	Advertised FEC modes: Not reported
	Speed: 1000Mb/s
	Duplex: Full
	Port: MII
	PHYAD: 1
	Transceiver: internal
	Auto-negotiation: on
	Link detected: yes
$ ethtool --help

... and this:

$ ethtool --driver eth0
driver: ibm_emac
version: 3.54
firmware-version: 
expansion-rom-version: 
bus-info: PPC 4xx EMAC-0 /plb/opb/etherne
supports-statistics: yes
supports-test: no
supports-eeprom-access: no
supports-register-dump: yes
supports-priv-flags: no
$

Q: has this driver ever been upgraded / patched?

TIA.

Best,

JHM

12

What throughput are you seeing? I'm looking at an iperf3 measurement of between 690 and 720 Mbits/sec to and from an MBL running OpenWrt 23.05, and very similar numbers for 24.10. If this commit is to be believed that's about what can be expected.

Not since 21.02 as far as I can see.

13

Hello:

Thanks for the fast reply.

My apologies, I was not referring to the version present in 21.02 but the driver version itself. eg: 3.54 to (say) 3.60 or 4.0.

Best,

JHM

14

No. 24.10.1 still reports driver version 3.54.

15

Hello:

Yes, that what I see from the ethtool printout.

But is there a more up to date version of the emac driver?
I think 3.54 dates from 2005 (?) and would expect a more up to date version.

Best,

JHM

16

Upstream says 3.54 so I'm inclined to say no. And given that the driver is specific to the obsolete PowerPC 4xx platform I would not expect that to change anymore.

17

Hello:

Right.

The only other possibility could be getting dropbear to work without encryption which is 'expensive' for the MBL and seems to be what slows down throughput.

Thanks for your input.

Best,

JHM

18

Hello friends. When installing OpenWRT to a 4kn hdd, the disk is not recognized by the nas. is there a way to use this type of disk in my device?

19

Hello:

I am assuming that you are referring to the WD MyBook Live (single drive) 'NAS' and a SATA HDD, albeit not the OEM one.

That said, could you please post a photo of the label on that HDD?

My (basic) understanding is that an HDD formatted to 4K could (?) be formatted to the more common 512e but [ brand + model + FW version ] are of import because (as I recall having read) some HDDs do not support 512e and as a result, cannot be reformatted.

Depending on the brand, specific utilities (usually MS OS based) may be available from the OEM to reformat the drive.

If not, there are native Linux utilities that can be used.

Best,

JHM

20

This is a shortcoming of the bootloader. It does not know how to handle 4Kn and consequently fails to read the drive.

For context: While the drives that originally shipped with the MBL (WD Green/Red) were formatted to 4K sector size ("advanced format"), they were still 512e and not 4Kn. Also, the original firmware was based on Debian Lenny with Linux kernel 2.6, which did not really support 4Kn either.

(Edited for clarity.)