INSTRUCTIONS FOR USING FREESCO TO CONNECT A MODEM-BASED REPLAYTV/ SHOWSTOPPER VIA BROADBAND Version 1.0 **NOTICE** These instructions are preliminary and will be updated to reflect any problems, suggestions, and tips you want to share. Requirements --------------------- -A PC with working broadband Internet access -A working ReplayTV/Showstopper, including its modem -A broadband router/gateway for your Internet connection (may be optional, we'll see) -A phone line simulator (optional but recommended) 1) Download the latest version of FREESCO from http://www.freesco.org (version 0.3.2 as of this writing). You may also need the latest modules package if your NIC isn't natively supported by FREESCO. 2) Extract the files to a temporary location you can access, e.g. C:\FREESCO, using Winzip or similar. 3) Place a formatted 1.44mb floppy disk in A:. 4) In the directory where you extracted FREESCO, run make_fd.bat (either by double-clicking it or through the command prompt). Follow the instructions and wait until it finished writing the FREESCO disk image. 5) Extract the files "mgetty" and "noauth_fd.bat" included in this .zip file to the directory of your choice. 6) With your FREESCO disk still in the A: drive, run noauth_fd.bat (either by double-clicking it or through the command prompt). This will copy the "mgetty" file to "\router\pkg\sbin" on your FREESCO disk. 6) Place the new FREESCO disk into the floppy drive of the PC you will be using as the FREESCO dial-in server for your ReplayTV(s). (Re)boot that computer. 7) With the floppy in its drive, the PC should now boot FREESCO automatically. At the FREESCO boot prompt, either type "setup" or just wait 8 seconds and it will automatically choose setup your first time through. 8) Login to FREESCO when prompted (user: root password: root). 9) You should be in setup now. Choose color or monochrome display, your choice. Leave all settings at default unless I tell you otherwise. 10) At the main setup screen, enter "r" to choose to set up FREESCO as a "Remote access server." 11) You can leave questions 611 (computer name) and 612 (domain) at their default values (just hit enter) unless you want to change them. 12) Set up your NIC. If your NIC is PCI-based, you shouldn't have to do anything here. Just enter "x" and move on. 13) Now, choose the number of the NIC you will be using to access your LAN and/or broadband. If you have a DHCP server on your LAN or are connecting directly to the Internet without a router, just change "Use DHCP client" (627) to "yes." Otherwise, you can manually configure the NIC with the appropriate settings for your LAN. Generally this will involve setting "IP Address" (621) to a local IP in the same subnet as the rest of your LAN and "Gateway" (631) to the address of your Internet gateway (your router if you have one). 14) When prompted to auto-detect modems, hit enter to let it do so. After a minute or two, hopefully it will have found your modem. It will ask you if you want to go to the advanced settings for the modem. Choose "yes." This leads to two additional setup screens. For most, you should not need to change anything in the first one, so exit it. The next screen is the one we want. 15) At the second advanced modem settings screen, choose the number of the modem you will be using to dial in to the PC. a) For that modem, enter the appropriate init command for your modem at "Init string" (713). For example, my modem needed "AT&F1." Most can probably leave it at the default "ATZ". NOTE: When you get everything working correctly, you will probably want to come back here and add the appropriate command for your modem to turn off its internal speaker. For example, my modem uses "L0" (so my "Init string" would be "AT&F1L0"). You should probably leave the speaker on initially as its sounds will help you verify that it is connecting. You can access this setting later by typing "setup" at the [Linux] command prompt, hitting "a" for Advanced settings, and choosing "71. Modem settings." b) For "Dial-in IP addr" (714), set this to be a unused IP on your LAN. (Note: if you manually configured "IP Address" (621) above, this address must be DIFFERENT.) If you don't have a router, I'm not sure how or if this will work. You can try using FREESCO as a router, which is after all what it designed for, but that is beyond the scope of these instructions. 16) Exit the modem settings screen. For the next several questions, just hit "enter" to accept the default values EXCEPT a) 454. Time offset - enter the CORRECT GMT offset for your time zone (e.g. CST is -0600 and CDT is -0500). 17) Keep accepting the default values until it asks you to change root password. Enter a password you can remember. Do the same for admin and ppp if asked (doesn't matter what the passwords are for our purposes). 18) Follow the instructions, and you'll be back at the main setup menu. 19) Hit "s" to save your configuration and exit. FREESCO will reboot and load your new configuration. 20) At the FREESCO boot menu, hit enter or wait 8 seconds to boot normally. When prompted, login as "root" with the password you set earlier. 21) Now we need to make the supplied "mgetty" executable. At the [Linux] command prompt, type "chmod 755 /pkg/sbin/mgetty". ***THE FOLLOWING STEP IS ONLY FOR USERS WITHOUT A PHONESIM*** 22) ONLY If you are NOT going to be connecting through a phone line simulator, there are a couple of additional things we need to do. a) At the [Linux] command prompt, type "edit /pkg/sbin/mgetty". The relevant options are at the top of the file and are decently explained there. Basically, with PHONESIM=n set, your modem will be forced to answer every DELAY1 seconds and then wait DELAY2 seconds for your ReplayTV's modem to establish a connection before starting the process over. So, you need to 1) change the default "PHONESIM=y" to "PHONESIM=n" and 2) adjust the values of DELAY1 and DELAY2. You will particularly want to set DELAY2 to something much smaller than the default of 600 seconds, which is geared toward connections through a phonesim. Press "alt+x" when done editing, and choose to save when prompted. b) You will also probably want to restrict the hours that the modem repeatedly tries to answer in order to save wear and tear on your modem. To do this, at the [Linux] prompt, type "setup". Once at the main setup menu, hit "a" to go to the advanced settings menu. Choose Option "23. Remote access" and follow the instructions there. Allow login only during the time that the ReplayTV normally tries to dial out. For example, a NOLOGIN setting of "0500-0100" would cause FREESCO to try to answer ReplayTV calls only from 1:00am-5:00am (thus, be sure the time is accurate on your FREESCO PC). Do this for each day of the week as desired. For testing purposes, you may not want to limit the hours for the current day until you have made a successful connection or two with your ReplayTV to make sure everything is working. IMPORTANT: Be sure to set option "220. Number of rings before answer during NOLOGIN time" to 0 (zero)! Exit the advanced settings menus and press "s" to save your configuration. c) If you are NOT using a phone line simulator, you need to disable "Wait for dial tone" on your ReplayTV. You can do this by going into Menu | Setup | Change Dialing and Input Settings | Telephone Connection. On the "Dialing Prefix" screen, press the "zones" key and set "Wait for dial tone" to "No" at the resulting menu. Save/accept all changes to your connection. 23) Now we need to shutdown FREESCO's RAS services and restart them. Enter the command "rc_ras restart" to do this. 24) Hook everything up. Connect the phone line from the ReplayTV to the telco/in jack on your FREESCO PC modem (with the phone simulator, if you have one, in between the ReplayTV and PC modems). 25) OK, we're almost done. Let's test it. Force a net connect with the ReplayTV by going to 243+zones net connect. If you are using a phone line simulator and a router, it will probably work. Otherwise, you may need to do some tweaking to the delay options in the "mgetty" script and/or go back into FREESCO setup to adjust network settings. Troubleshooting --------------------- Display the log to monitor the connection attempt in real time by pressing CTRL+ALT+F3. Press CTRL+ALT+F1 or CTRL+ALT+F2 to get back to a command prompt. Check the log file at /var/log/messages for errors. The log is lost upon reboot but you can save it with "cp /var/log/messages /boot". You could then view the "messages" file on the floppy from Windows using Notepad or similar. Do NOT modify any of the files on the FREESCO disk from within Windows, however, unless you are using a text editor that can save in UNIX format (such as UltraEdit)! Alternatively, you can view the recent system log from the FREESCO web control interface using any other PC on your LAN by browsing to http://IP_OF_YOUR_FREESCO_PC:82/, logging in with the root/admin account, and choosing the "Recent Log" option on the left of the page. You can then copy and paste the log into Notepad or similar on Windows. Some helpful FREESCO commands --------------------- reboot - reboot FREESCO date - check the time and date edit - text file editor rc_ras start - start FREESCO RAS service rc_ras stop - stop FREESCO RAS service rc_ras restart - restart FREESCO RAS service rc_stop - stop all FREESCO services killall mgetty - kill any instance of mgetty (handles modem answering) killall pppd - kill any instance of pppd (the dial-in server) setup - enter FREESCO setup