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The Western Digital MyBook Live

I recently got my hands on the Western Digital MyBook Live ( Amazon DE, Amazon US ). It is a 2 TB external harddrive that has only 2 connectors:
- A power supply
- A gigabit ethernet port

Initially, I wanted to use it as a no-hassle solution for OSX Time Machine backups. This worked perfectly and I can easily push 5-6 MB/s over Wifi to the drive. After being happy with this, I decided to see if there is anything else interesting going on with the drive.

Here are some findings: - The MyBook Live admin console is done in PHP using the full blown cakePHP framework:
cake php on the mybook
- The MyBook Live has a hidden page to enable SSH at “/UI/ssh”:
enabling ssh on the mybook
- It has an 800MHz CPU with 256 MB RAM:

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# cat /proc/cpuinfo  
processor : 0  
cpu       : APM82181  
clock     : 800.000008MHz  
revision  : 28.129 (pvr 12c4 1c81)  
bogomips  : 1600.00  
timebase  : 800000008  
platform  : PowerPC 44x Platform  
model     : amcc,apollo3g  
Memory        : 256 MB
  • The internal harddrive is using ext4:
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# cat /etc/mtab  
/dev/md1 / ext3 rw,noatime 0 0
tmpfs /lib/init/rw tmpfs rw,nosuid,mode=0755,size=50M 0 0
proc /proc proc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
procbususb /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw 0 0
udev /dev tmpfs rw,mode=0755 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,size=50M 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs rw,size=50M 0 0
/var/log /var/log.hdd none rw,bind 0 0
ramlog-tmpfs /var/log tmpfs rw,size=20M 0 0
/dev/sda4 /DataVolume ext4 rw,noatime,nodelalloc 0 0
/DataVolume/cache /CacheVolume none rw,bind 0 0
/DataVolume/shares /shares none rw,bind 0 0
/DataVolume/shares /nfs none rw,bind 0 0
none /sys/kernel/security securityfs rw 0 0
rpc_pipefs /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs rpc_pipefs rw 0 0
nfsd /proc/fs/nfsd nfsd rw 0 0
  • It is using lots of open source software:
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# ls -l /etc/init.d/
total 456
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1510 Mar  4  2010 README  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  6532 Sep 20 22:34 apache2  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 18698 Mar  4  2010 autofs  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2359 Jul 31  2010 avahi-daemon  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2155 Mar  4  2010 bootlogd  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1988 Mar  4  2010 bootmisc.sh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  3004 Mar  4  2010 checkfs.sh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  9831 Mar  4  2010 checkroot.sh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2602 Jun 16  2010 cron  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  4636 Mar  4  2010 dbus  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   833 Jul 14  2010 emi-patch-check.sh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  6593 Mar  4  2010 exim4  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   959 Jun 18  2010 factoryRestoreSettings.sh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1397 Sep 13  2010 halt  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10725 Mar  4  2010 hdparm  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1287 Mar  4  2010 hostname.sh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  5061 Jul  9  2010 hwclock.sh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  5079 Jul  9  2010 hwclockfirst.sh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  3117 May 14  2010 ifplugd  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2518 Mar  4  2010 ifupdown  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1046 Mar  4  2010 ifupdown-clean  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2814 Aug  2  2010 itunes  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1484 Mar  4  2010 killprocs  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   851 Mar 15  2010 lltd  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1051 Mar  4  2010 lvm2  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1845 Jul 31  2010 mDNSResponder  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1916 Mar  4  2010 mdadm  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  6226 Mar  4  2010 mdadm-raid  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1726 Jan 14 18:25 mionet  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1793 Mar  4  2010 module-init-tools  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1546 Jul  9  2010 monitorio  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2625 Sep 20 22:34 mountDataVolume.sh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   620 Mar  4  2010 mountall-bootclean.sh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1956 Mar  4  2010 mountall.sh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2194 Mar  4  2010 mountdevsubfs.sh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2476 Mar  4  2010 mountkernfs.sh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   618 Mar  4  2010 mountnfs-bootclean.sh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2330 Mar  4  2010 mountnfs.sh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1321 Mar  4  2010 mountoverflowtmp  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  3668 Mar  4  2010 mtab.sh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  5755 Mar  4  2010 mysql  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2515 Mar  4  2010 mysql-ndb  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1905 Mar  4  2010 mysql-ndb-mgm  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  3180 Aug 11  2010 netatalk  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1844 Mar  4  2010 networking  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  5964 Mar  4  2010 nfs-common  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  4563 Mar 19  2010 nfs-kernel-server  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1308 Aug  2  2010 ntpdate  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2066 Mar  4  2010 portmap  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1247 Mar  4  2010 procps  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 29492 May 27  2010 ramlog  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10036 Mar  4  2010 rc  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   788 Mar  4  2010 rc.local  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   117 Mar  4  2010 rcS  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   639 Mar  4  2010 reboot  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1710 Jun 11  2010 reset_button_mon  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   941 Mar  4  2010 rmnologin  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  5108 Mar  4  2010 rsync  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2850 Mar  4  2010 rsyslog  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2533 Oct 15 02:25 samba  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   765 May 11  2010 saveclock.sh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   918 May  2  2009 screen-cleanup  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2283 Mar  4  2010 sendsigs  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   590 Mar  4  2010 single  
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4167 Mar  4  2010 skeleton  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  3364 Mar  4  2010 smartmontools  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  3845 Aug  2  2010 ssh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   525 Mar  4  2010 stop-bootlogd  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1096 Mar  4  2010 stop-bootlogd-single  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   551 Mar 18  2010 sudo  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  4176 Jan 14 22:57 twonky  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  7473 May 13  2010 udev  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1001 May 13  2010 udev-mtab  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  3175 Mar  4  2010 umountfs  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2140 Mar  4  2010 umountnfs.sh  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1456 Mar  4  2010 umountroot  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2006 May 27  2010 upnp_nas  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1815 Mar  4  2010 urandom  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   903 May 28  2010 vftd  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2516 Aug  2  2010 vsftpd  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1777 Mar  4  2010 x11-common  
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1923 Mar  4  2010 xmail
  • A somewhat recent SVN kernel:
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# uname -a  
Linux MyBookLive 2.6.32.11-svn21605 #1 Fri Oct 15 17:13:23 PDT 2010 ppc GNU/Linux
  • Debian Lenny (I might have added contrib and non-free to this):
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# cat /etc/apt/sources.list | grep lenny  
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free  
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free  
deb http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free  
deb-src http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/debian/ lenny main  
deb http://security.debian.org lenny/updates main contrib non-free  
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free
  • They even deliver a Java VM with their weird mionet service:
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# /usr/mionet/bin/cvm -version  
Product: Sun Java Media Client 1.3-b111 WesternDigital-b003 (built on 10/Jun/2010 00:33 IST)  
Profile: Foundation Profile (Security Optional Package) 1.1.2 (Specification 1.1.2)  
JVM:     1.1.2 1.3-b111 WesternDigital-b003 (mixed mode)

Since we’re pretty good on available RAM, there is a bunch of fun stuff we can do (cough)

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