Pogoplug Pro Hack

The Pogoplug era is long gone, all necessary services have been retired, so it's basically a high-tech brick. Nonetheless, it is possible to repurpose this little (not so powerful) device, why, you ask? Well... because we can! I present you the "Pogoplug Pro re-activation project".

Ok, so what are we talking about, and what are the requirements?

1. We need access to the terminal
2. We need to flash a new bootloader
3. We need to create an Debian filesystem to boot from (the NAND only has 128MB)
4. We would like WiFi to be operational
5. We could install something like OMV (OpenMediaVault)

1. We need access to the terminal

Back in the days, when you could still boot the little device, you could use a 'secret' command to enable dropbear (and SSH). But, unfortunately, because all services have retired, this will not work anymore (at least, I tried and failed in many occassions).

The command is: curl -k “https://root:ceadmin@[PogoplugIPAddress]/sqdiag/HBPlug?action=command&command=dropbear%20start” You need to change the [PogoplugIPAddress] part with the IP-address of your device of course.

So, that's a no go... how do I go about it then? Well you can connect to the board and use the serial connection instead. You will need to open up the device and get your hands on a JST 2.0mm PH 4-Pin connector (you can open up some old devices to see if you can find a matching cable, connecting dupont cables wont work, unless you solder them). You just need GND, TXD and RXD; no need to connect +3V.

Connection settings

Speed: 115200
Data bits: 8
Stop bits: 1
Parity: None
Flow control: None

If you want to enable SSH, you can just edit the /etc/init.d/rcS file. First remount the rootfs with read/write using this command mount -o remount,rw / and edit /etc/init.d/rcS (you must use vi, nano is not yet an option). Comment out /etc/init.d/hbmgr.sh start by placing a pound sign before it (like this #/etc/init.d/hbmgr.sh start) and add this on a new line /usr/sbin/dropbear. This will disable loading the standard Pogoplug software, but instead just load dropbear (and enable SSH).

2. We need to flash a new bootloader

Someone else can probably tell you exactly what it does, and what it's for. I will stick to the necessary parts... you need to update it for more freedom and fun. First things first, let's see if our hardware is Oxsemi, otherwise, just stop right there.

#Verify Pogoplug is expected version (Oxnas)
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep Hardware

#Stop here if not expected output.
#Expected output
#Hardware : Oxsemi NAS

#stop my.pogoplug.com service
killall hbwd

Now that's out of the way, we need some tools (see tools tarball in this repo). wget https://github.com/Saiyato/pogoplugpro/raw/master/linux-tools-installation-bodhi.tar.gz

md5: e58f442411eb35e641d40ea0577e00ff linux-tools-installation-bodhi.tar.gz sha256: 88dfa8eadb319e2e286320643a654bf89bff0b0d450562fce09938e7f3b0007d linux-tools-installation-bodhi.tar.gz

Download the tools to /tmp and make them executable chmod +x flash_erase fw_printenv fw_setenv nanddump nandwrite. Setup fw_env.config and backup old envs:

#remount '/' as read/write
#by default the Pogoplug OS (internal flash) is read only
mount -o remount,rw /

#setup fw_env.config for oxnas
echo "/dev/mtd0 0x00100000 0x20000 0x20000">/etc/fw_env.config

#save original envs
/usr/local/cloudengines/bin/blparam > /blparam.txt

Download the latest uboot tarball and verify hash (uboot.2015.10-tld-2.ox820.bodhi.tar can be found in this repo).

md5sum c8d52236f906fd7fc8c84d15562331b0 sha256sum d9e034f70a3c40d6a970084c858e8890989e0d40d11699dc488e3dd852092aad

#extract uBoot files
tar -xf uboot.2013.10-tld-4.ox820.bodhi.tar

Be sure there is no bad block in the first 2M of your NAND (check dmesg for bad block 0 to 15). This is very important, if there is bad block in the first 2M, don't flash u-boot, because you will almost certainly brick your box. dmesg | grep -i 'bad'

Now the fun starts, carefully copy the commands, you don't want to brick your device, right?

#first backup your current NAND, e.g. to /dev/mtd0
nanddump --noecc --omitoob -f mtd0  /dev/mtd0

Erase the NAND (careful now!)

#BE EXTRA CAREFUL WITH THE THESE COMMANDS.
#NO TYPOS! CUT AND PASTE.
#Erase and flash uboot on mtd0
#Flash encoded spl stage1 to 0x0
/tmp/flash_erase /dev/mtd0 0x0 6

Expected output: Erase Total 6 Units Performing Flash Erase of length 131072 at offset 0xa0000 done

Flash encoded spl stage1 to 0x0 /tmp/nandwrite /dev/mtd0 uboot.spl.2013.10.ox820.850mhz.mtd0.img Expected output: Writing data to block 0 at offset 0x0

Flash uboot to 0x40000

#Flash uboot to 0x40000
/tmp/nandwrite -s 262144 /dev/mtd0 uboot.2013.10-tld-4.ox820.mtd0.img

Expected output: Writing data to block 2 at offset 0x40000 Writing data to block 3 at offset 0x60000 Writing data to block 4 at offset 0x80000 Writing data to block 5 at offset 0xa0000

Erase 1 block

#Flash uboot environment
#Erase 1 block starting 0x00100000
/tmp/flash_erase /dev/mtd0 0x00100000 1

Expected output: Erase Total 1 Units Performing Flash Erase of length 131072 at offset 0x100000 done

Flash uboot environment to 0x00100000 /tmp/nandwrite -s 1048576 /dev/mtd0 pogopro_uboot_env.img Expected output: Writing data to block 8 at offset 0x100000

YAY! New uBoot has been flashed!

Set the HW MAC address

#Set MAC Address
/tmp/fw_setenv ethaddr "$(cat /sys/class/net/eth0/address)"

Optionally default to Pogoplug classic dtb.

#default to pogoplug classic dtb
/tmp/fw_setenv fdt_file '/boot/dts/ox820-pogoplug-classic.dtb'
/tmp/fw_setenv dt_load_dtb 'ext2load usb 0:1 $dtb_addr $fdt_file'

Or the Pogoplug Pro (for wireless functionality), note a non-pro will not boot! /tmp/fw_setenv fdt_file '/boot/dts/ox820-pogoplug-pro.dtb'

Check your MAC address and verify that there are no errors in the uboot env params.

#double check the MAC Address matches with
#what is on the bottom of your Pogoplug
/tmp/fw_printenv ethaddr

#print out all uboot environment parameters
#make sure there are no errors
/tmp/fw_printenv > /fw_printenv.txt
/tmp/fw_printenv

I've use the serial cable for the entire process, but you can use netconsole I support. See this post: https://forum.doozan.com/read.php?3,14,14

3. We need to create an Ubuntu filesystem to boot from

This one's actually very easy, you just need some patience. Format a disk, I used a USB flash drive for the matter. Mount the disk to anywhere, I used the below.

#note, sda is the usb flash drive
#partition your USB flash/hard drive
/sbin/fdisk /dev/sda

# Type in the following commands to erase
# and re-partition USB flash/hard drive
#(WARNING - FLASH/HARD DRIVE WILL BE COMPLETELY WIPED):
#
# p # list current partitions
# o # to delete all partitions
# n # new partition
# p # primary partition
# 1 (one) # first partition
# <enter> # default start block
# <enter> # default end block (to use the whole drive)
# If you're using a hard drive, create a small
# 4GB partition instead of using the whole drive,
# leaving the rest for a data partition
# +4G # to create a 4GB partition
# w # write new partition to disk

#format USB Flash Drive
cd /tmp
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Saiyato/pogoplugpro/master/mke2fs
chmod 755 mke2fs

#format as ext3 and label partition as 'rootfs'
./mke2fs -L rootfs -j /dev/sda1

#mount
mkdir /tmp/usb
mount /dev/sda1 /tmp/usb

Download the Debian rootfs, you can find the latest here: https://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,16044 Or source your own of course.

#Download Debian rootfs (this will take a while)
wget https://www.dropbox.com/s/rtghye0ll247vm5/Debian-4.14.180-oxnas-tld-1-rootfs-bodhi.tar.bz2

As always, verify!

md5: a1204e4bd6d3b129d525bf18421cd3bb sha256: ea58957c269826f3b487606929148ddfd11fc512ae20de4088a9196b06238212

Information

Basic Debian buster Oxnas rootfs for Popo Pro/Classic V3 and other OX820 NAS.

• tarball size: 187M
• install size: 497M
• Installed packages: nano, avahi, ntp, busybox-syslogd (log to RAM), htop, dialog, bz2, iperf, ethtool, sysvinit-core, sysvinit, sysvinit-utils, mtd-utils, u-boot-tools.
• see LED controls in /etc/rc.local, and /etc/rc0.d/K08halt
• see some useful aliases in /root/.profile
• root password: root

Unpack the contents, note this will take a long while...

#unpack
tar -xvjf Debian-4.14.180-oxnas-tld-1-rootfs-bodhi.tar.bz2

#cleanup
rm Debian-4.14.180-oxnas-tld-1-rootfs-bodhi.tar.bz2

#sync and reboot, cross your fingers
sync
cd ..
umount /tmp/usb
reboot

Basic setup tasks after it boots back up

#Change password
passwd

#Generate New OpenSSH Keys
rm /etc/ssh/ssh_host*
ssh-keygen -A

#Initial update
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

#Set hostname to DebianPlug or whatever you like
echo DebianPlug>/etc/hostname

#Set Time Zone
tzselect
reboot

4. We would like WiFi to be operational

If /etc/apt/sources.list does not containt deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian buster main non-free, add it and run apt-get update.

In order to control the WiFi device, we will need some packages. Install them using the following command: apt install pciutils wpasupplicant hostapd bridge-utils wireless-tools iw firmware-misc-nonfree firmware-realtek

Check the WiFi device id

Because we can't tell for sure what your device id, you'd best just query it using iwconfig. The output should look like this:

root@pogoplug:~# iwconfig
wlp0s0    IEEE 802.11  ESSID:off/any
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=0 dBm
          Retry short  long limit:2   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off

sit0      no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

ip6tnl0   no wireless extensions.

In this case my device id is wlp0s0, which I will use in my configs.

Add the network config

In order to connect, you will need to setup your wireless network info in /etc/network/interfaces

auto wlp0s0
iface wlp0s0 inet dhcp
  wpa-ssid your_wifi_ssid
  wpa-psk your_wifi_password

Test your configuration afterwards with ifup -v wlp0s0, you should be seeing some DHCP activity and an assigned IP address. Note: you will need to add this info again if you've installed OMV afterwards.

Enable auto-connect after boot

Luckily someone already did the heavy lifting for this, you can just download the WiFi_Check script from this repo

cd /usr/local/bin/
wget --no-check-certificate https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Saiyato/pogoplugpro/master/WiFi_Check
chmod +x WiFi_Check

apt-get install cron

crontab -e
*/3 * * * * /usr/local/bin/WiFi_Check

5. We could install something like OMV (OpenMediaVault)

Ok, I must warn you, it's slooooooow, but hey... at least it's something. I've found the script contents on a OMV forum, it's for testers, so nothing is confirmed to be working. Also I needed to create a swap file for the installation to succeed.

#create a 512 MB file called /swapfile. This will be our swap file.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=512

#set file permission, don't be too permissive!
chmod 600 /swapfile

#format it to swap
mkswap /swapfile

#activate the swap file
swapon /swapfile

Then make the swap file persistent in /etc/fstab

#add swap file
/swapfile none swap defaults 0 0

Now we can get crackin' on the installation

#download the script
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Saiyato/pogoplugpro/master/install_omv.sh

#make it executable
chmod +x https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Saiyato/pogoplugpro/master/install_omv.sh

#run it (takes a while!)
sh install_omv.sh

Afterwards just init and populate the db

#initialize

#populate the database.
omv-confdbadm populate