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the mystery of the green screen
Aug. 29th, 2011 05:56 pmThis morning I thought let's update our dreambox 500hd satellite receiver to run the new OpenPLI 2.1 version.
Normally it's an opkg update && opkg upgrade away, but the 2.1 release requires that you flash the new firmware. It's not so bad as they have auto-install which can restore all your settings and added plugins automagically.
Anyway the procedure is normally pretty simple: shutdown the device using the power switch at the back, turn it back on while pressing the power button at the front. It goes into the 'BIOS', shows the IP address it gets from DHCP on the screen. You go there with a browser and install the new flash.
Except this time.
It would keep hanging on me and showing a green screen. It would even do this if I just looked at it without doing anything. (I checked using tcpdump)
So... what changed? This worked previously... IPv6? No the BIOS is too stupid. The new Argus monitoring which I setup recently? Could be...
Then it hit me: previously the BIOS would get some random IP, but I had changed the DHCP server to give the 'correct' IP to the device (normally it uses a hardcoded IP). And of course in the past all my monitoring scripts and other stuff would not be able to connect, as the IP was different.
But now it was 'correct' so they would try to log in and check for things... in the BIOS setup screen...
I removed the DHCP permanent binding, it got a random IP and stopped crashing with a green screen :). Mystery solved, system upgrade.
Normally it's an opkg update && opkg upgrade away, but the 2.1 release requires that you flash the new firmware. It's not so bad as they have auto-install which can restore all your settings and added plugins automagically.
Anyway the procedure is normally pretty simple: shutdown the device using the power switch at the back, turn it back on while pressing the power button at the front. It goes into the 'BIOS', shows the IP address it gets from DHCP on the screen. You go there with a browser and install the new flash.
Except this time.
It would keep hanging on me and showing a green screen. It would even do this if I just looked at it without doing anything. (I checked using tcpdump)
So... what changed? This worked previously... IPv6? No the BIOS is too stupid. The new Argus monitoring which I setup recently? Could be...
Then it hit me: previously the BIOS would get some random IP, but I had changed the DHCP server to give the 'correct' IP to the device (normally it uses a hardcoded IP). And of course in the past all my monitoring scripts and other stuff would not be able to connect, as the IP was different.
But now it was 'correct' so they would try to log in and check for things... in the BIOS setup screen...
I removed the DHCP permanent binding, it got a random IP and stopped crashing with a green screen :). Mystery solved, system upgrade.
