Did more googling for Series2 hacking. Finally found the core problem:
You see, Tivo's run Linux, but the kernel is signed by Tivo's private key. The public key is hard-coded in the PROM, which verifies the integrity of the kernel and refuses to boot if the kernel has been modified. So, the kernel (which cannot be modified) in turn verifies checksums on all the startup scripts. If a script has been modified, it's replaced by an unaltered version. Bottom line: you can't get a fucking bash shell on a Series2 Tivo. I think I'm going to look at hacking the Series2 somehow, to enable modifying scripts. So I can show up some of those punks in the TivoCommunity underground. -- CaptainSuperBoyI wonder how longer before some site starts selling Series2 modchips to replace the PROM, or to flash it. (can you?)
I understand why Tivo wants to lock down the boxes... they don't want people doing video extraction and then getting sued left & right by the industry. Okay, fine. We don't want Tivo shutting down either. But, geeks want other stuff that's perfectly legal, like updates over IP, which is in Version 3.0 now. But some API to the Tivo over IP would also be wonderful... so things like Tivoweb could work without hacking a shell.
Maybe my time would be well spent writing a nicely written proposal to Tivo. The staff seems involved in the Tivo community suggestion forums. I could detail everything from having to enable the interface in the Tivo menus, to the actual API calls that would be useful.
I just wonder how clean the internal Tivo code/API is and if there's a "middleware" layer (buzzword!) or not. I hope the scheduling logic that makes Tivo Tivo isn't all scattered about myworld's source.