Hacking the WD MBWE

Spent the past few days Googling and reading up on the forums on the best way to hack the Western Digital MyBook World Edition, hereafter known as WD MBWE.

First step to hacking the MBWE is to gain ssh access to it. With the earlier models, you have to point your device to access an external website to download and install a "firmware". After running the upgrade, ssh will be enabled. My suggestion is for you to upgrade to the latest official firmware (currently 01.01.16), which has ssh access as an option. That's Advanced --> System --> Advanced, then turn on "Enable SSH". Easy as that. Default root password is welc0me.

What you get is a basic Linux running on your MBWE. To extend its functionality, you can download sources and compile them on your own, OR get Optware. With Optware, you get literally hundreds of pre-compiled binaries ready to be downloaded with just one command. Now, Optware is not just for MBWE, so you gotta be careful with which "feed" you subscribe to.

• If your MBWE has a ring of blue lights in front, use the mbwe-bluelight feed.
• If your MBWE has a string of white lights in front, use the cs05q1armel feed.

Run the below set of commands to install/set up Optware:
feed=http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/feeds/optware//cross/unstable
ipk_name=$(wget -qO- $feed/Packages | awk '/^Filename: ipkg-opt/ {print $2}')
wget $feed/$ipk_name
tar -xOvzf $ipk_name ./data.tar.gz | tar -C / -xzvf -
mkdir -p /opt/etc/ipkg
echo "src armel http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/feeds/optware//cross/unstable" > /opt/etc/ipkg/armel-feed.conf
wget http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/local--files/optware/sort_dirname.tar.gz
tar xvfz sort_dirname.tar.gz -C /

With Optware, all new applications are installed under /opt/bin
/opt/bin/ipkg update - to update local feed list
/opt/bin/ipkg list - to see what's available for download
/opt/bin/ipkg list_installed - to see what's already installed
/opt/bin/ipkg install - to install or upgrade packages (including dependencies)
/opt/bin/ipkg remove - to remove packages

Of course, any application you install won't run automatically unless you add it to /etc/initd Sample initialization and termination scripts are in /opt/etc/initd/* Optionally, you might want to install teinturman's feature packs. I tried the installer and feature packs, didn't work for me, had to spend some time and effort backing out the changes done to the system. Try it though, it might work for you.

Next thing we gotta do is disable the Mionet crapware. Other people might have a need for it, I don't. There's an option to turn it off via the GUI, but internally /usr/sbin/wixhwmonitor still calls /usr/mionet/monitorCVM.sh, which restarts it. So monitorCVM.sh is what needs to be tweaked to really disable Mionet.

Just add:

if [ ! -f "/etc/.mionet_on_startup" ]; then
exit 1
fi

The new firmware also upgrades TwonkyMedia Server to v5.1. This works out of the box - identifying most of my audio and video files. Only downside is that it's taking a long time to scan my files and the constant spinning is making the drive hot. More hacking next time.