From NAS-Central Buffalo - The Linkstation Wiki

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Revision as of 22:13, 19 January 2013

This is an analysis of how Linkstations and Terastations are updating. This gives valuable insights on where to get the firmware without any password.

Contents 1 Validity 2 Analysis 2.1 Major and Minor versions 3 Intermediate Insights

Validity

This analysis has been done on a LS-WVL with firmware 1.52. It should be valid for at least for all other Linkstations sharing the same firmware (LS-AVL, LS-CHL-V2, LS-VL, LS-QVL, LS-SL, LS-WSXL, LS-WXL, LS-XHL) and for Terastation X- and V-Series (checked with V-Series 1.14 firmware).

If your box is matching this description, please add it to the list.

Analysis

• Current available firmware updates are listed at
  • for Terastation V-Series: http://buffalo.jp/download/driver/hd/autoup/fw_info.xml
  • for Linkstation Series: and Terastation X-Series: http://buffalo.jp/download/driver/hd/autoup/fw_info2.xml
• This XML contains several entries (XML-nodes) describing:
  • list of Product-IDs the respective firmware is for
  • binary_url, e.g. http://driver.buffalo.jp/buf-drv/hd/terastation_v_series_1.14-1.36.zip
  • release_note URL, e.g. http://buffalo.jp/download/driver/hd/autoup/note/tsv114_en.txt
• The URL for the release-notes contain only the major version and are easy to guess. The URL for the binary (zip-file) additionally contains the "minor" version, which has to be guessed. Please see below for a list of known major/minor-combinations.
  • The major an minor version currently installed on your box can be found in /etc/linkstation_release (even on Terastation!)

    VERSION=1.52
    SUBVERSION=HDD 2.81
    PRODUCTID=0x00000000
    BUILDDATE=2011/07/19 19:58:30

• The zip-file is downloaded using wget without any special parameters. It can be unzipped without password.
  • Binaries can be extracted without password. The contents of these files is e.g.:

234121284  12-09-2011 08:15   hddrootfs.buffalo.updated
  9613712  12-09-2011 08:15   initrd.buffalo
   407704  11-14-2011 02:54   u-boot_lsqvl.bin
   236120  11-14-2011 02:54   u-boot_lssl.bin
   401608  11-14-2011 02:54   u-boot_lsvl.bin
   407704  11-14-2011 02:54   u-boot_lswvl.bin
   407448  11-14-2011 02:54   u-boot_lswxl.bin
   401352  11-14-2011 02:54   u-boot_lsxh.bin
   401508  11-14-2011 02:54   u-boot_lsxl.bin
   408060  11-14-2011 02:54   u-boot_lsxlv2_64mb.bin
  2135060  12-09-2011 08:09   uImage-88f5182.buffalo
  2729776  12-09-2011 08:10   uImage-lsp.5.x.buffalo
      337  12-09-2011 08:10   u-boot.map
      408  12-09-2011 08:10   uImage.map

• hddrootfs.buffalo.updated is a .tar.gz containing the root-filesystem. For all other files, please refer to the XXX
• After download, all file contained in the zip-file will be moved to /boot.
• The update itself will be performed when rebooting the system. (What is automatically done when performing a "Update" via the Web-UI). Please refer to Analysis of the ARM9 boot process for more information about this.

Major and Minor versions

This is a list of some major and minor versions. Please add more if you get them known.

Linkstation Series

major	minor
1.41	2.58
1.52	2.81
1.56	2.90
1.57	3.57

Terastation V-Series

major	minor
1.14	1.36
1.04	0.71

Intermediate Insights

These insights have been found while analyzing the update process. They may be relevant again if the above results are no longer valid.

• Update script: /etc/cron/cron.d/S29_update_notifications.sh (links to /etc/rc.d/sysinit.d/S29_update_notifications.sh)

All relevant paths and URLs are at the top.

• Results of XML-parsing go into `/tmp/fwinfo` (`$RESULT_FILE`)
• Release-note go into `/tmp/fwinfo_note` (`$RELEASE_DST`)

• XML gets parsed by file:`/usr/local/bin/up_notifications.py`