GregLedet.net Adventures in networking, security, and other things

Western Digital MyBook World Edition Hacks

I know that I've been moving further and further away from the main purpose of this blog, and that's Cisco networking and security. I'm putting this here so I can remember how to do this stuff later and have a place to look! The MyBook World Edition is a great device that you can do tons of stuff with. It runs Linux, so just about anything you can do with Linux, you can do with this device.

First off, you need to enable SSH on your NAS. There's a few different ways of doing it. Martin Hinner was the original hack. I've used this method before and it works just fine. There's also a slightly cleaner way of doing it found here. I have both scripts on my server should something happen to either one of those.

Martin Hinner Original Hack

http:///auth/firmware_upgrade.pl?fwserver=gregledet.net/mybook/firmware.php

Slightly Cleaner Hack from Mybook-Linux

http:///auth/firmware_upgrade.pl?fwserver=gregledet.net/mybook/enablessh.php

For both of those, simply plug the link into your browser, add the IP of your MyBook, and it will tell you that there's new firmware available. Click the button that tells you Download and Install. It's not going to take the 30 minutes that it'll say on your screen, it should take around 5 or 10. With the Hinner hack, you may get an error message saying that the firmware update failed. This happens with firmware 2.00.15 and higher. Don't fret, the script did run. You'll be fine. Continue on with the instructions.

• *NOTE* If you have an SSH client, great. If now, download PuTTY. I use it and it works perfectly fine. Login with the username "root" and the password "root".
• *NOTE* If you don't know how to use vi, or if you are uncomfortable using it, you can get a program like WinSCP that will allow you to secure FTP into the device. Then you can download the files to your computer and use the editor of your choice to edit the file (notepad works fine) and upload the new file back to the device.

If you use the Martin Hinner hack, after you install the "firmware", you need to make SSH permanent by editing the /etc/inittab and adding the following under the "# Startup the system" part of the file.

::sysinit:/usr/sbin/sshd

The other way should turn it on permanently by itself. After you add that line for the Hinner hack, or once the "firmware" is installed and you can SSH into the device, you need to reboot.

[root@MyBookWorld ~]# reboot

Now you have SSH permanently installed on your MyBook World Edition!

One error that I ran into was not being able to get mplayer CE to connect via samba to the network share on the MyBook. To fix this I had to enable Microsoft Directory Service on the device. First, you need to add the following lines to the /etc/services file.

microsoft-ds    445/tcp                         #Microsoft Directory Service
microsoft-ds    445/udp

Add this after "snpp 444/udp # Simple Network Paging Protocol" and before "saft 487/tcp # Simple Asynchronous File Transfer". Do your best to make it fit in the file. By that, I mean use the tab key.

After this, you need to edit the /etc/inet.d file and add:

microsoft-ds stream tcp nowait root /usr/local/samba/sbin/smbd smbd -s/etc/smb.conf -l/var/log -d0

I would just add it on the second line or at the bottom. I don't think it matters.

One more file to edit. This time you need to add the following to the /etc/smb.conf file under "[global]" after "max log size = 1"

smb ports = 445

A quick reboot and you're done! This will have you connected to your Wii to stream movies with no problem.

There are tons of sites out there that have great information on hacking your MyBook World Edition. With the following 2 sites, you should be able to do whatever you want with it.

Martin Hinner's site on Hacking the MyBook World Edition
MyBook World Hacking at wikidot.com

Those sites should answer any questions you have about anything having to do with Hacking the MyBook World Edition!