NeTV release 43 notes

Firmware 43 has been pushed. Here is a summary of the changes:

• Working disaster recovery mode. You can enter this holding the setup button during a reboot. Continue holding it through the reboot until a screen comes up showing you potential wifi networks to join. This mode will support open and WPA networks only. Once you join, it will attempt to download a full new firmware image and reflash the drive. It should be able to recover you from a disastrous failure, i.e. kernel missing and/or root filesystem totally trashed.

• Migration of web services to lighttpd. This will enable things like CGI scripting and better security.

• Addition of “LAMP” environment: lighttpd, MySQL, and PHP are now available on NeTV, which helps expand the development environment for apps.

• fixed an FPGA firmware bug where video sources that used burst mode to read the DDC would get corrupt data. This should fix a host of compatibility problems.

• modified matchmoded behavior:
  • on failure, it will display a diagnostic screen for a few seconds
  • after the diagnostic screen, it will hide the UI and attempt to pass through video even if the mode is not supported, as opposed to simply showing the black screen.
  • added hooks to allow users to change behavior: /psp/behavior.passthru, /psp/behavior.overlay, /psp/tolerance.strict, /psp/tolerance.loose .
  • if the UI is hidden and the mode is not supported and the unit dwells in that state for longer than a minute, sshd will automatically start to allow users to attempt to fix the problem. A security issue, for sure, but helpful for developers.
  • fixed a bug in clock rate detection
  • will attempt to force video sources that present a 1080p60 signal to 720p only mode before declaring failure

• added an easter egg. Try this:

 fpga_ctl w 0xc 0×32

Yes, that’s really encrypted. As you can see, it almost works. More on how later.

• changed scanning rate of AP scans. Instead of once every 20 seconds, it scans once every hour when the device is connected. This should reduce the rate of connectivity drops.

• Newer version of compat-wireless pulled in that should resolve some N-connectivity issues

• Added a cron job that will attempt to reconnect the unit every half hour as a last-ditch firewall against network dropouts

• Removed “activation” screen as it’s no longer used

• Improved/clarified some help text

• Add ntpd to reduce clock drift over long periods of time

• Made default twitter searches to be “TheOnion” and “ラメン” (ramen). Because what’s better than negi on your ramen?

IMPORTANT — upgrade takes about 10 minutes to run. The progress bar will hang out at the end for a while because there are a number of cleanup tasks it runs. It will also flash the screen a couple of times and reboot when done.