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Topic:
iPronto hacked
This thread has 50 replies. Displaying posts 1 through 15.
Post 1 made on Saturday August 20, 2005 at 13:00
satscan
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After beeing very disappointed by the support and lack of most advertised future developments for the iPronto I decided to hack into my device. I dumped the firmware, extracted the cramfs and jffs2 filesystems, compiled an inetd, tcpd and in.telnetd, modified hosts.deny and now can telnet into my remote.

iProntoTSi6400:/proc# cat version
Linux version 2.4.17-rmk5-pxa1-cerf1 (BELVJHL@linux5) (gcc version 2.95.3 20010315 (release/MontaVista)) #1 Thu Jul 7 13:45:09 CEST 2005
iProntoTSi6400:/proc# cat cpuinfo
Processor : Intel XScale-PXA250 rev 4 (v5l)
BogoMIPS : 397.31

Looking at the changes from 1.6.18 to 1.9.5 I doubt there is a full time programmer responsible for the iPronto Software. The changes are so minor and mostly bugfixes. For example MMC support has always been part of the image but the modules were unloaded in previous releases.

Does anybody know where to get sources for the Embedded Linux parts under GPL?
Post 2 made on Sunday August 21, 2005 at 05:58
Goshdarnit
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186
Woohoo! Are we perhaps on the way to third party development of iPronto at last?
Post 3 made on Sunday August 21, 2005 at 14:36
Jean-Max
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Woohoo! Are we perhaps on the way to third party
development of iPronto at last?

Why not, during the deep sleep of the first party ? ;)
Jean-Max
OP | Post 4 made on Monday August 22, 2005 at 04:11
satscan
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I don't think it's that easy. I only added some files to the Linux OS and have telnetd and wu.ftpd running so everything is accessible and research can be started. There are no passwords set. It seems the embedded Linux was never updated and still runs MontaVista 2.0. Currently I'm adding USB support to Linux.
The iPronto application is another issue. So far I can't tell how easy it is to add functionality.
Post 5 made on Monday August 22, 2005 at 07:20
spongebobtoejam
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rockon satscan. Its about time everyone stopped moaning, realised that phillips probably only spends like a dollar fifty on developing the ipronto (especially since they released their inferior new remote), and especially since we are probably still gonna keep being conned by them anyway.

I say lets get all the eggheads together who can actuallly programme (not me) and give em some encouragement and generally do everything we can to assist them. I cant think what a guy like me could do but I think that we need to just let phillips swing and show em what people who really care about the ipronto concept can do. I suppose i could tell you what I would like.

mp3 playback or streaming (yeah like thats probably not possible anyway but a guy can dream)
access to email somehow and web radio or at least podcasts (in stereo)
getting rid of that awful guitar music (it dont rock!)
Post 6 made on Monday August 22, 2005 at 15:50
Goshdarnit
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On 08/20/05 13:00 ET, satscan said...
MMC support has
always been part of the image but the modules
were unloaded in previous releases.

Out of curiosity, have you any way of ascertaining if USB support is also already part of the image?
OP | Post 7 made on Wednesday August 24, 2005 at 07:10
satscan
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On 08/22/05 15:50 ET, Goshdarnit said...
Out of curiosity, have you any way of ascertaining
if USB support is also already part of the image?

It looks like the iPronto has a Philips ISP1161 USB Host Controller. The drivers are part of the image. They can be loaded and an USB memory stick and USB keyboard are detected (/proc/bus/usb) but cannot be used yet. For the USB memory key SCSI support might need to be compiled into the kernel.

Where can we get the kernel sources from Philips? This should be part of open source under GPL?

./lib/modules/2.4.17-rmk5-pxa1-cerf1/kernel/drivers/usb:
93 22 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 22732 Jul 7 13:47 hid.o
92 90 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 91848 Jul 7 13:47 usbcore.o

./lib/modules/2.4.17-rmk5-pxa1-cerf1/usb:
102 4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4408 Jul 7 13:47 baron_hcd-1161_fs.o
100 4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4056 Jul 7 13:47 hcd-1161-fake.o
101 33 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 33900 Jul 7 13:47 hcd-1161.o

This message was edited by satscan on 08/24/05 12:29 ET.
Post 8 made on Wednesday August 24, 2005 at 13:12
Goshdarnit
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Thanks. I suspected this might be the case. It wouldn't take a lot of work for Philips to enable this for at least some degree of connectivity, possibly even programming through the USB port rather than WiFi/MMC card. USB keyboard for browsing is an interesting idea, but not too high on most people's lists I suspect!

Thanks again. Interesting work!
Post 9 made on Wednesday August 24, 2005 at 20:41
SirKalle
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Hi Satscan,

some info can be found here (not very new, sorry):

[Link: linuxdevices.com]

The java stuff came from a German company called ProSyst:

www.prosyst.com

They developed and still develop most of the communication software and interfaces of this Java embedded stuff. There you find also a developer forum.
However, my Java expertise equals zero therefore I never started fighting with this "Java container development".

Some people also wrote, that they were able to load java containers to the iPronto but there wasn't any possibility to run them?!

I think several progs for Iscale might run on the iPronto if we just can put them on that box (store them, that's another question).

Best regards,

Kalle
OP | Post 10 made on Thursday August 25, 2005 at 04:40
satscan
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Hi Kalle,
thanks for the information. I had registered at ProSyst a year ago and motivated by the information from linuxdevices I already tried portscans as well.

I am still trying to fiddle out how these things work together:
iPronto OS 1.x
Tao Intent 1.3.3 (Personal Java 1.2)
Espial Escape 3.x (browser software developer kit)
Espial Espresso 4.0 TV RTK (Java, lightweight GUI development toolkit)
Espial DeviceTop (graphical application manager, provides a standard OSGi Release 2 Service Platform to receive and execute OSGi service bundles)
ProSyst mBedded Server 5.0
UPnP
ProSyst mGUI Library (Java graphical user interface)
Poet FastObjects J2 (object database technology for Java and C++ applications)
Intrinsic CerfWorks OS Manager (remote management application to monitor, update and manage devices)
Intrinsic TurboBoot (bootloader located in flash memory on a device)
Intrinsic TurboManage (server for provisioning TurboBoot enabled devices)

Isn't mBedded Server from ProSyst the service delivery platform? The multimedia platform being used is Intent from Tao. They also provide the PersonalJava 1.2. How does Elate RTOS fit into this?

Philips has fooled me buying this expensive device based on all the promised features that were never implemented. It's a shame to watch the harware becoming obsolete and Philips doing absolutely nothing.

I found this article dated 04/2003:
The iPronto includes USB connectivity and an MMC/SD card slot for future applications and accessories. Among others, the iPronto features other built-in components that enhance the entertainment experience, like a built-in microphone and stereo speakers that will allow users to listen to MP3s from the Internet through future software upgrades and for future applications such as voice recognition and telephony. Implementing ProSyst's open, modular and scalable service delivery platform, the iPronto has an always-on Internet connection by which new features and software can be sent to the unit on the request.

This message was edited by satscan on 08/25/05 06:06 ET.
OP | Post 11 made on Saturday August 27, 2005 at 08:00
satscan
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14
I feel Intrisyc did the major hardware design of the iPronto. I had already noticed the similarities.
[Link: intrinsyc.com]
"The result was a solution based on Intrinsyc’s CerfPDA reference
platform and Intrinsyc’s CerfWorks device management software. The
CerfPDA reference design, modified to run Intel’s PXA250 processor,
provided the core of the hardware design and a significant portion of
the operating system adaptation for the iPronto."
Their I-Linux 4.0 CD contains sources and toolchain for kernel 2.4.17-rmk5-pxa1-cerf1. That's the version iPronto is running.
Post 12 made on Saturday August 27, 2005 at 20:28
SirKalle
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130
Hi satscan,

unfortunately for me I don't know how to fight with this bunch of Java stuff - that's ab bit to complicated for me and I don't know where to start with learning :-)

How did you dump the firmware? And how put you put your modified version back?

That would be a beginning .....

Did you find a "crontab" or something like this to turn of the daily EPG download? Or a way to change the time and period, e.g. download not every day but rather one time per week.

Best regards,

Kalle
OP | Post 13 made on Sunday August 28, 2005 at 07:49
satscan
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There is no cron daemon running. Updating the EPG seems to be done by Java code.

In order to extract the firmware take a wireless sniffer and watch the iPronto connect to the update server. Some more steps and you can rebuilt the files and notice how outdated this software is. The software levels were shocking to me.

What enhancements has the iPronto Team done? They even removed features like the 4 M view instead of fixing it and stabilizing the code.

The code has a backdoor but presently I refuse to publish it because the average user would be at high risk killing the iPronto. There seems to protected boot code to recover, so maybe it can be published lateron.

There are more possibilities to access the device but why should I tell Philips?
Post 14 made on Tuesday September 20, 2005 at 23:04
ccncomics
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4
Could anyone do custom screens for a fee? and if so, when uploaded would it mess up stuff? like epg and stuff?

thanks.
Post 15 made on Wednesday September 21, 2005 at 12:36
Jean-Max
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On 08/28/05 07:49 ET, satscan said...
but why should tell Philips?

Have you tuned your car ?
Do you think that your car factory, after the end of guarantee period, would have to say something about that ?
I doesn't think so

For Ipronto : it's a true "tuning", we are talking about !!
Jean-Max
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