Buffalo+Plex firmware 1.71-3.66 Halloween released

By 2015-10-19 Buffalo + Plex, General

A minor update for the North American celebration of Halloween. The European version of this holiday is much more serious but not without its charm: on the 1st of November (all saints’ day), people visit their passed ones’ graves and leave flowers and light candles. Graveyards look the most amazing on that night and there’s nothing spooky about it. It makes you wonder about past events and people and the shortness of life. I think it’s a beautiful celebration of the past.

I have nothing against kids in costumes either, I’m a huge Amazing Spider-Man fan myself. (The original comics.) Here’s what’s been updated:

  • Minor Plex update: v0.9.12.13
  • Recompiled transmission with OpenSSL 0.9.8ze
  • Deployed through the Buffalo auto-update channel (will be available for separate download by the end of the day)

This version will show up on your admin screen when you log in to the web interface. (For the 732 users who downloaded Andimaginary before. The rest of you will need to download it from the project page.) The recompiled transmission is “more” compatible with the Buffalo 1.71 firmware, but there were still issues reported. If transmission worked for you in the Andimaginary (previous) version of the firmware, this will work too. If it didn’t work, look below for a workaround.

What if transmission doesn’t work for me?

If transmission quits unexpectedly, there’s one workaround for now. I’ve recompiled the v1.69 firmware from Buffalo with the additions (Plex, transmission, etc) and I’m releasing it here under the name “Mapuo”. Mapuo helped me troubleshoot the issue the most.

So, Mapuo version differences compared to Halloween:

  • Buffalo Linkstation firmware v1.69 instead of v1.71
  • no other differences

Please note that v1.69 has security issues so make sure you only install this firmware if you are using your Buffalo Linkstation in a secure environment, like an internal network with firewall. Do not open up your web interface or your SSH to the Internet.

Download v1.69-Mapuo for Windows   Download v1.69-Mapuo for Mac

The Halloween release is on the project page as usual.

Shameless plug

I’m going to be travelling for a while and I’m looking for a job in Toronto, Canada. If anyone needs a versatile IT guy (ASP.Net, scripting in PowerShell and BASH, Windows Engineering, Linux engineering), leave a note and I’ll contact you. (I’m still a bit shy about my identity.)

On a different note I’m planning to reach out to BuffaloTech to give them a bit of feedback on their product. I hope they take it to heart, it would be great to see a Media Center NAS in the future. I want to come clean with the licensing of their firmware too, although my current experience tells me that we’re not breaking any laws by creating this custom firmware, I’d like a nod from them so we are all on the same page.

57 Comments

  • Chris says:

    I would like to say thank you for all your work which I honestly admire. Good luck in canada. Chris

  • R3DMVN says:

    Thank you again for another update.

  • mapuo says:

    Ha! Thanks for naming a release under my name 🙂
    I’ll try later the new firmware and report if Transmission has any improvement.
    Also I will give a try of the “Mapuo” release – just to see how will my ego react 😀

    • garyt says:

      Hah! 🙂 Thanks for the help with the troubleshooting.

      To be fair, I have to mention that Manish also reported the bug and Phong Nam even offered to walk me through the issue remotely, but I didn’t have the time to do that. I’ll have to thank them in the new post. I hope this alternative solution is ok for the holidays because I’m not sure when I can release an update again.
      Please send feedback no matter which version you try. I really appreciate it.

      – GaryT

      • mapuo says:

        At least you have names for the next releases of the firmware with the users that helps you debug it. 🙂
        Now, with Halloween release – the Transmission doesn’t work for me… I’ll try the “Mapuo” release and I hope that I have some luck with it.

      • mapuo says:

        Ok, so I’ve “upgraded” to “1.69-Mapuo” and Transmission is working happily without complaining at all.

        • garyt says:

          Thanks for the feedback Mapuo. I’m a bit more relaxed knowing that there is a tested workaround.

  • kyle says:

    Nice work on the release. Halloween in the US isn’t nearly as fun as you’ve described. I wish we could celebrate more than just kids asking for candy.

    Good luck with the job search, by the way.

  • garyt says:

    Thanks everyone for the kind words. Next week I’m driving 600kms (about 370 miles) in a U-Haul truck. I wouldn’t mind it, if I didn’t have to arrive on time to the storage or else I have to sleep in the truck and unload the next day… But this is the cheapest solution. (Except for giving away all my stuff. :))
    Most probably I won’t have proper Internet for a few weeks. Feel free to send any bugs you find, but I really-really hope there are no major issues with this release.

    – GaryT

  • cthog says:

    Thanks for this firmware–I’m running 2 LS-WVLs and a LS-WXL on my network–I’ve noticed that the transfer speed to your firmware (on the WXL) is almost a full 1 MB/s faster than the LS-WVL I’ve got running Shonk’s firmware (which is still running firmware v. 1.68, which may/may not have something to do with that.) Just a note for other users in case you have my issue–I had to unbrick my WXL using tftp boot, and I couldn’t get Andimaginary to successfully repartition and format the drives–it kept failing. Ended up installing Shonk’s, then upgrade from that, with no problem.

    2 questions–I’m reasonably certain the answer is “No problem”, but installing this on top of Shonk’s (or stock firmware) wouldn’t mess with folder settings and data, right?

    Second question (kind of an exploratory feature request), how hard would it be to include an OpenVPN client for the firmware (or even better a namespace-specific one for transmission or a custom user app (I’ve got nzbget chugging away merrily on my LS-WVL which, for the masses, is easier to install than ever since the crew at NZBget created an installer that recognizes the platform, in this case, ARM). I just can’t figure why, for the life of me, anyone would want to use transmission without a VPN (since it doesn’t even support a SOCKS5).

    But I digress–I swear, the main reason I logged on was to say kudos for the builds, sincere thanks, and Happy Halloween.

    Chris

    • garyt says:

      Hi Chris,

      Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it, especially from such a heavy user. 🙂 Your comment about the LS-WXL being faster is really surprising, considering that the LS-WVL has a 3 times faster CPU. I’m not sure about the rest of the components, but 1MB/s is impressive.
      I think Shonk’s firmware is as good as anything and as far as I saw Buffalo only made security-related updates to its firmware for a while now.

      Thanks for the note on reppartitioning, to be honest it’s been a while since I did any repartitioning test. Last time it was with one of the v1.69 firmwares… At that time, only fully clean disks (no partitions) were able to properly set up the device. I wonder if there’s anything different in Shonk’s firmware for that or maybe that’s something with the newer Buffalo firmware again.

      Installing on top of Shonk should not cause issues if you didn’t change files on the main partition. If you installed optware while on Shonk’s firmware, the newer (version Chris and above) firmwares will identify your optware settings and remount /opt after the upgrade. Make sure all your files are on the harddrive for any other case. For example optware puts everything to /mnt/array1/.optware and mount /opt to point to that .optware directory. This way it’s integrated nicely into the folder structure but it resides on the hard drive so a firmware upgrade doesn’t affect it.

      Installing a VPN client onto the Linkstation is technically possible, but I definitely won’t have the time to implement something like this for now. As a starter, you can try installing optware (the installer is in the root folder), download openvpn and configure it. (One page you can try for instructions is here: http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/HowTo/SetUpOpenVPNServer)

      The harder part would be to design a web interface that’s fairly usable for the OpenVPN configuration. The “Tomato” firmware for routers do a pretty good job with it (the name has nothing to do with my domain) but it’s quite the work to implement it on the Linkstation.
      Secondly, that’s exactly what the Tomato firmware is for on your router. (At least on mine.) I used to have a VPN server at my parents’ place and I segregated my NAS on my router to go through that VPN so they accessed it securely too. This way the NAS didn’t need to know it’s on a specific network, all the logic was done behind the scene on the router. To be honest, I think that’s the right way of handling it, because your router can take better care of your traffic this way. I understand it’s also very complicated to set up.

      If you’re afraid someone might steel your Torrent data, you can enforce encryption in the torrent client (both transmission and utorrent). It will make sure it only connects to encrypted channels so it’s harder to spoof your data. I’m not sure of the encryption algorithm, but so far so good. This is a great reminder, eventually I have to check how torrent files are encrypted during transfer.

      Congrats on getting NZBget to work, it’s nice to know that others are also hacking away at the Linkstation.

      Regards,
      Gary

      • cthog says:

        Hi Gary,

        As an initial note, getting NZBget to work is super easy at this point–I used to be a *lot* cooler for being able to get it to work on the linkstation, but it’s pretty much fully scripted on their website now, so if you’re in the market for an NZB client, I’d highly recommend them now. (Actually I would have highly recommended them before–SABnzbd is just too resource hungry, and the speed difference between the two is significant on both the WXL and WVL.) Come to think of it, perhaps the network speed differential has something to do with nzbget running, although I’m pretty sure I didn’t have anything downloading at the time.

        I’ve got a WD-N750 running Openwrt, but you’re right about it being complicated to set up. I don’t want to have ALL traffic going through the VPN, as that would needlessly slow down regular traffic, and would be pointless on NZBget, but your remark that it’s ‘very complicated to set up’ is the understatement of the year. I may be a ‘heavy user’, but I’m not terribly technical–just curious and mildly clever enough to be dangerous. I almost had deluge working on the linkstation, but I couldn’t get one of the dependencies to compile on buffalo’s kernel, and have never had enough luck (or patience) to get a vanilla kernel running on the hardware. I actually bought one of those LIVA-X mini-pcs last month, and it’s great at running sonarr, couchpotato, deluge, and plex (has enough horsepower to transcode), on a linux install. I keep all of my media on my linkstations though, hence the allure of getting transmission working behind a VPN.

        Having spent many a year tinkering with the linkstation, however, I have to again congratulate you on your firmware–I think if I’d had it several years ago, it would have saved me tons of stress, and is absolutely fantastic for the casual user. I was quite tickled by the firmware update notification I got the other day–very professional. If you were looking for a new ‘feature’ for the next edition, you should seriously take a look at NZBget as, like I said, the installation is automagic with a script, and the best part is, once it’s installed through the script, it can be updated through the web interface. I suppose you could integrate options into the buffalo interface to change the port or default username, but really you’d just need a ‘button’ to open up the address. Food for thought, my friend, lol!

        Again, many many thanks for your efforts. It’s useful people like you that make the internet awesome.

        Chris

        • garyt says:

          Hi Chris,

          Thanks for the reply, I’m glad you liked the auto-update notification. 🙂 It’s a Buffalo built-in feature, I only had to make it work again. (Buffalo didn’t do auto-updates for a while now.) I’ll keep NZBget in mind.

          Regards,
          GaryT

  • massimo says:

    Thanks you for your work , when do you think move to LS420?

    • garyt says:

      Hi Massimo,

      Apologies for the late reply, I’m still dealing with moving. I think I can’t start working on the LS420 until next year, possibly second quarter. We haven’t figured a way to ship the device from Net7 to me yet.

      Regards,
      GaryT

  • Manish says:

    Hello Gary

    How are you ? Thanks for another update. I tried last time the Transmission fix with the manual steps you provided.
    I followed that and still problem did not go away. Transmission will just die within 1 min after starting. Even debug
    logs did not show anything ( as fas as I could see).

    Rest everything is OK with NAS and now I am running 1.71-Halloween.

    Manish

    • garyt says:

      Hi Manish,

      You can try the “Mapuo” release if you are ok with security issues in your NAS. (DON’T share it on the Internet.) Go to my last blog entry, you can download it from there. It contains the 1.69 firmware where we didn’t see any transmission issues. (Everything else is the same as in Halloween.)

      Apologies for the intermittent responses, still no access to my personal machine…

      Regards,
      GaryT

  • DocterD says:

    Would love to see LS420 support as well! 🙂

    • garyt says:

      Hi DocterD,

      Maybe next year, sorry. A few things need to come together before I can do it.

      Regards,
      GaryT

  • Gustav says:

    Hi Gary!

    I’m wondering If there is any plan to support Ls400 ?
    I have a link station ls420d and I really want to try Plex on it.

    Thanks!

    • garyt says:

      Hi Gustav,

      Sorry for the late reply, I’m traveling and I don’t have access to my regular computer. This is one of the reasons why I can only start working on anything LS420 related only next year. There are plans in place, but a lot of things need to get together before I can work on it.

      I think I’ll have to create a blog entry about the LS420 eventually. 🙂 Many people are asking for it.
      Regards,
      GaryT

  • Lefredo says:

    Hello guys,

    Thanks for the work done.
    I have an issue with my LS-X2, I not able to open Plex Media Manager and edit media path.

    • garyt says:

      Hi Lefredo,

      Is that the LiveStation LS-XLv2? I’m not sure of the specs of that machine, it’s possible, that the CPU is not fast enough for Plex. Does Plex start?

      Regards,
      GaryT

  • R3DMVN says:

    PLEX seems to crash a lot for me on this new update anyone other then me having this issue.

    • garyt says:

      Hi R3dmvn,

      It might be the new Plex version, it’s hard to say. Which Linkstation do you have?

      Regards,
      GaryT

      • R3DMVN says:

        LS-WVL/R1

        • garyt says:

          I have the same version, it shouldn’t be happening… Do you know how to upgrade Plex only on the NAS? There’s another minor update on the website, maybe that would help.

          I can’t create a new version right now, if I find some time I’ll create some workaround to upgrade Plex only.

          Regards,
          GaryT

          • R3DMVN says:

            No I don’t know how to update plex. But I do like the idea of putting a plex update button in the settings ha.

  • Waqar Ahmed says:

    Transmission Keeps Crashing for me , any solutions?? plz any help will be appreciated

    • garyt says:

      Hi Waqar,

      Read my last blog entry (the Halloween release), there’s an alternative firmware you can use if transmission crashes for you a lot. Try installing that and report back if that works.

      Regards,
      GaryT

  • Andrew says:

    Any plans for a version supporting arm v7 processors as it seems Plex are now supporting those? Thanks

    • garyt says:

      Plans for next year: get a LS420, try to put a firmware on it. Unfortunately it won’t be until around second quarter because of personal stuff.

      Regards,
      GaryT

  • mac says:

    So just stumbled across this after having a Buffalo NAS for a couple of years and just wanted to say LOVE IT! The Plex Server + SSH are amazing.

    One question, I got a new Apple TV and it looks like it requires the latest version of Plex Media Server to be able to read from the Apple TV App. I’m not afraid of doing my own commands and detective work (web dev/linux server administrator by day), but I was wondering if you might be able to point me in the right direction as far as updating the plex server manually (unless you are planning an update soon that includes the version needed for Apple TV).

    Thanks again for the great software.

  • marc says:

    Stumbled across this after having a Buffalo NAS for a couple of years and just wanted to say LOVE IT! The Plex Server + SSH are amazing.

    One question, I got a new Apple TV and it looks like it requires the latest version of Plex Media Server to be able to read from the Apple TV App. I’m not afraid of doing my own commands and detective work (web dev/linux server administrator by day), but I was wondering if you might be able to point me in the right direction as far as updating the plex server manually (unless you are planning an update soon that includes the version needed for Apple TV).

    Thanks again for the amazing software.

  • Marc says:

    I was able to get it figured out by downloading the updated version of plex and swapping out the 4 main folders (Plex*, Resources) for those in /usr/local/plexroot/ . Restarted plex from Buffalo web panel and it works flawlessly.

    • garyt says:

      Hi Marc,

      Apologies for the late reply, I’m moving, traveling, looking for a job, so my life is upside down – just like my regular PC (in the storage). I’m glad you find my firmware useful, and I’m even more happy that you were able to figure out how to upgrade Plex on it. I usually use the Synology package. You can even upgrade to the PlexPass version if you have it.

      You gave me a good idea with this. Maybe if there’s a button on the web interface that says “upgrade Plex” and the NAS would download the upgrade from the Plex site… Most people wouldn’t even need a full firmware upgrade any more… Thanks for the idea. 🙂

      Regards,
      GaryT

  • Marc says:

    I was actually thinking what it might take to just build a one click alum dater once I realized how easy it was (actually had to upgrade it twice bc a new plex update was released hours after I got the first update installed). Once that’s enabled then you’re right, I don’t think people will care about updates to the firmware.

  • Jack says:

    link “ROLLBACK FOR WINDOWS” not work. Please give me a correct link 🙁

  • Alex says:

    New officlal firmware 1.81 … cannot use this mod anymore 🙁

    • garyt says:

      Hi Alex,

      I checked the Buffalo site but I didn’t see any new firmwares for the Linkstation WVL (and similar) series. Do you have a link or an announcement that I could look up?

  • OlsBean says:

    Thank you for all your hard work!

    I no longer have SSH access, I noticed yesterday that my LS-CHL V2 was in EM mode after a power cut, so I reflashed your firmware which I had been using for sometime without any issues at all and everything worked fine except SSH connection gets refused. So I went back to Shonks firmware, got that working fine including Telnet, re-flashed your Firmware still no SSH access, so flashed the Halloween version and still no SSH, do you know anything that could be causing this to happen? I really need SSH or Telnet access 🙁

    Thanks in advance!

  • OlsBean says:

    Been playing with this all day, if I roll back to one of Shonks builds, I get back Telnet and SSH back on 22 but as soon as I upgrade back to one of your versions, even the same version number I can’t then connect with Telnet or SSH even on Port 2222. I am able to get the acp_command tool to pass a simple directory command to try and initiate Telnet but then when I attempt to telnet in I get connection refused. Has something changed in your Firmware since August?

    • garyt says:

      Hi OlsBean,

      I found a line in my sshd startup file which disables ssh on LS-CHL devices: since LS-CHL doesn’t support SFTP according to the nas_feature file, SSH gets disabled. I’ll change this in the next version so SSH starts regardless of SFTP support.

      Happy holidays,
      GaryT

  • KuhnMaddox says:

    I have ssh (2222) enabled, but “password” isn’t working (for “root” user). I’m on 1.71-Halloween (DTCP-IP:1.65-20130731) installed on an LS-XWL. No luck with that login either using SFTP (22).

    • garyt says:

      Hi Kuhn,

      The username is “root”, the password is the same as the one you set on the web interface for “admin”.

      – GaryT

      • Yohanes says:

        Hi Gary, I’m having the same problem. I used:

        ssh -l root -p 2222 192.168.1.10

        entered my password for admin, same as the one in Web UI and still got Permission Denied. Any suggestion? Thanks!

        Yohanes

  • Maik says:

    Hi garyt,
    I’ve the same Problem as KuhnMaddox,
    I’ve an LS-WXL, cant’t Login with:
    root:password-from-my-admin
    root:password
    Username-from-my-admin;password-from-my-admin
    Username-from-my-admin:”password”

    I’ve renamed my adminuser to admin, set a new password.

    No change, no ssh login,

    User-ID: 52

    Any Idea’s how i can use SSH ?

    Regardful
    Maik

    • Maik says:

      Garyt, any ideas ? Please

      • garyt says:

        Hi Maik,

        Once more apologies for the delayed answers, I’ll have a new firmware ready soon and we can troubleshoot your SSH issue then.

        Regards,
        GaryT

    • garyt says:

      Hi Maik,

      I think it’s because a bug I introduced into one of the SSH scripts. I’m not sure if I fixed it in Heiwa, but I’ll check it soon. Sorry, stay tuned…

      Also, I was traveling until now, hence the late responses. I’m settling in my new home now, so I won’t b gone any more. (See my latest blog entry.)

      – GaryT

      • kyle says:

        Wow, I’m glad I’m not the only one seeing this. I’ll simply wait for the next release before worrying about it.

  • Julien says:

    Hello,

    Sorry for my translation , I use translate because I ‘m French .

    I install your firmware ” 1.71 Halloween” on my ” LS- WXL55F ” however when I enabled ” BitTorrent ” he ran for 3H and after it is deactivated and can not reactivate it , and ended up making me the error ” E06 ” on my station.
    I also noticed that you could not plan a hard disk verification .

    I reinstalled a stable version of Bufallo and reinstalled in your Version 1.69 Peace while waiting for a more stable version .

    Could you tell me which version is more stable with Plex for my linkstation ?

    Otherwise very good job.

    cordially

    • garyt says:

      Hi Julien,

      Thanks for taking the time to check out this custom firmware. 1.69 is definitely more stable today, but it’s less secure. The applications were all made for 1.69. The newer 1.71 has different libraries which makes it less compatible with applications (bitterness included).

      Don’t worry about the language, my French is way worse than your English. 😉 Feel free to write anytime.

      Regards,
      – GaryT

  • Hosting says:

    Only x86-based processors are really capable of the sort of transcoding that Plex Media Server does. Even many x86-based systems may not be powerful enough to transcode content fast enough to be useful.