Tuesday 17 November 2015

Root / su recovery for Seagate Central

Many people have lost root access to their Seagate Centrals after a particular firmware upgrade. Here I attempt to provide a procedure to recover root access that is as painless as possible. Note that there are a few alternative procedures posted elsewhere on the internet however my procedure has the advantage over the others that it does NOT require access to an external linux system because it makes use of the linux software running on the Seagate Central itself. It also does NOT require you to crack open the Central and take out the hard drive.

I'm assuming that you have a little bit of pre-requisite knowledge before we begin. Namely …

  • You know how to establish an ssh session into your Seagate Central (If you don't then why do you want root access?)
  • You know how to transfer files between your external computer and your Seagate Central. (If you don't then what are you using a Seagate Central for??)
  • You understand a few basic computer file concepts like "files", "directories", "copying", "zipping" and "editing". (If you don't then, Hello there Grandma Jones! I'm thrilled that you're reading my blog!!)



Part 1 : Try to revert to the "old" firmware.


If you have a non blank root password, and if the previously running firmware on your Seagate Central did have sudo/root access enabled then first try the procedure in the previous blog post called "Revert to previous firmware on Seagate Central" and then proceed to "Part 3 : Make sure root access is enabled from now on". If reverting to the old firmware doesn't work then proceed to Part 2 below. 

Part 2 - Create then load a modified firmware image

In this part we are going to take a Seagate Central firmware image, modify it to remove the "su" disabling functionality, and then load it back onto the Central. Our friends at Seagate might be somewhat alarmed by this step but I hope they come to the conclusion that anyone who is technically literate enough to perform this procedure is probably trustworthy enough to deserve "su" access to their beloved Central. In addition I think the spirit of the GNU General Public Licences which Seagate uses extensively for software in the Central product means that the software should be able to be improved and modified which is what we're doing here.

Note this procedure involves running a number of linux/unix commands. I have developed this method on the assumption that we are going to perform this procedure using the linux system running on the Central itself. You can use an external linux box to perform these steps however I think that for many people who have a Seagate Central, the Central may be the only linux system they have easy access to!! That is why this technique makes use of the Central itself and not an external system.

Step 1 : ssh into the Seagate Central. In this procedure I use the "admin" account but you can use any existing username you've set up on the system.

Create a new directory to perform our procedure in and navigate to that directory. In this example we create a new directory called "firmware".

admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~$ mkdir firmware
admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~$ cd firmware
admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~/firmware$

Step 2 : Obtain a copy of your desired version of Seagate Central Firmware and upload it to the new folder on the Central.

I got my firmware by navigating to the Seagate Download finder tool at https://apps1.seagate.com/downloads/request.html and entering the required details. You need to enter your Seagate Central's serial number and what country you live in and then you'll be given a download link.

In the example shown here I downloaded a file called Seagate-HS-update-201509160008F.zip . You have to decompress/unzip this file to get an "img" file. You can do this on the PC you downloaded the file to and then transfer the "img" file to the new "firmware" folder on the Seagate Central or you can upload the zip file to the new "firmware" folder on the Seagate Central and decompress it on the Central.

admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~/firmware$ unzip Seagate-HS-update-201509160008F.zip
Archive:  Seagate-HS-update-201509160008F.zip
  inflating: ReadMe.pdf
  inflating: Seagate-HS-update-201509160008F.img

Confirm that the image is in the "firmware" folder.

admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~/firmware3$ ls -l *.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 admin admin 130199138 Nov 17 21:52 Seagate-HS-update-201509160008F.img


Step 3 : Obtain a copy of the squashfs-tools for Seagate Central.

I have compiled binary versions of these tools (version 4.3) for the Seagate Central and made them available at the following links



If you don't trust my binaries (I swear I stopped spying for North Korea months ago) and want to make them yourself then you can obtain the source code from the squashfs-tools homepage at http://squashfs.sourceforge.net/ . You can also find instructions for compiling binaries for the Seagate Central using an external linux system at https://sites.google.com/site/modcentralnas/ .

You can use your external PC to obtain these binaries and then upload them to your Central or if your Seagate Central has internet access then you can download the files directly to the Central by running the "curl" commands as follows.

admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~/firmware$ curl -L -O https://sites.google.com/site/seagatecentralenhancementclub/squashfs-tools/mksquashfs
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  343k  100  343k    0     0  60087      0  0:00:05  0:00:05 --:--:--  288k

admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~/firmware$ curl -L -O https://sites.google.com/site/seagatecentralenhancementclub/squashfs-tools/unsquashfs
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  257k  100  257k    0     0  48704      0  0:00:05  0:00:05 --:--:--  299k

Now change the attributes of the files so that they are executable

admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~/firmware$ chmod a+x mksquashfs
admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~/firmware$ chmod a+x unsquashfs

Note : If you are performing this procedure on an external Linux system instead of on the Central then you'll have to get the version of the squashfs-tools for your particular linux distribution. You can't run the binaries seen above, they only work on the Seagate Central.

Step 4 : The Seagate firmware image is in gzipped tar format. Decompress the image with the following "tar" command. This takes about 30 seconds to complete.

admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~/firmware$ tar -zxpvf Seagate-HS-update-201509160008F.img
rfs.squashfs
uImage
config.ser


Step 5 : Extract the new firmware's filesystem.

Here we use the unsquashfs tool you downloaded in Step 3 to extract the file system contained in the Seagate firmware image. Note that this can take about 500M of disk space! This takes about 2 minutes to complete.

admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~/firmware$ ./unsquashfs rfs.squashfs

You may see some error messages similar to the following. Just ignore them.

create_inode: could not create character device squashfs-root/dev/apm_bios, because you're not superuser!

You should now have a new directory called "squashfs-root" in your firmware folder. This contains the new filesystem that we are going to modify.


Step 6 : On many linux systems, including the Seagate Central, access to the "su" command is governed by the "/etc/pam.d/su" configuration file.

In the new Seagate Central firmware there is a section in this file which disables "su" access for regular users as follows…


# Uncomment this if you want members of a specific group to not
# be allowed to use su at all.
auth       required   pam_wheel.so deny group=users


We need to re-enable root access for normal users by editing this file in the new firmware. Here we use the "nano" editor as follows.

admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~/firmware$ nano squashfs-root/etc/pam.d/su

Once the editor is open scroll down about 20 lines to the text as seen above and add a "#" to the start of the "auth  required" line to comment it out and disable it. After making the change the section looks like this


# Uncomment this if you want members of a specific group to not
# be allowed to use su at all.
#auth       required   pam_wheel.so deny group=users


Save your changes by typing Control-X to exit, then answering "Y" when you're asked to "Save modified buffer" and pressing enter to confirm the "File Name to Write".


Step 7 : If you have a blank root password the new firmware will reset it to a secret value each time the system boots with the startup script  "/etc/init.d/finish"

Here we will change this behaviour so that instead of using a secret value, we use a known value. In this example we set the root password to "test123". Obviously change "test123" to something unique for your system. We edit the "finish" startup script as follows

admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~/firmware$ nano squashfs-root/etc/init.d/finish

Once the editor is open scroll to the very bottom of the file and add the following lines to the end of the file.


# Is the root password set as blank?
if grep -q "^root:x:" /etc/passwd
then
# Change the root password to test123.
    echo "root:test123" | chpasswd
# Make sure the changes are in the Central's backup config folder.
    rsync -Rva /etc/passwd /usr/config/backupconfig
fi


Save your changes by typing Control-X to exit, then answering "Y" when you're asked to "Save modified buffer" and pressing enter to confirm the "File Name to Write".

 N.B. You might think it's a bit insecure setting the root password to a value just specified in a script file. Well it is! That's why in Step 10 we change the root password again to something else.

Step 7.5 : Make sure that the "sudo" and "su" commands have the correct unix file attributes.

In some versions of Seagate Central firmware the "sudo" and "su" commands do not have the required "read" and "set userID" file attributes set.

This isn't the case in all versions of firmware but just to make certain run the following commands.

admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~/firmware$ chmod 4555 squashfs-root/usr/bin/sudo 
admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~/firmware$ chmod 4555 squashfs-root/usr/bin/su         

To check that the changes have taken affect run the following "ls" commands and check that the "r" (readable) and "s" (set userID) bits as seen below are present for each file.

admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~/firmware$ ls -l squashfs-root/usr/bin/su
-r-sr-xr-x 1 admin admin 23692 Sep 17 09:06 squashfs-root/usr/bin/su
admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~/firmware$ ls -l squashfs-root/usr/bin/sudo
-r-sr-xr-x 1 admin admin 87316 Sep 17 09:06 squashfs-root/usr/bin/sudo


Step 8 : Run the following commands to create a new firmware image called Seagate-allow-root.img. Note that the first command (mksquashfs) takes about 5 minutes and the second (tar) takes about 3 minutes to complete. Also note that we are using the least powerful compression-level (1) in the mksquashfs command because this lets the command run most quickly. You can use any number up to the most powerful compression level "9" however the command could then potentially take hours to run for the sake of saving maybe only a few megabytes.

admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~/firmware$ ./mksquashfs squashfs-root rfs.squashfs -all-root -noappend -Xcompression-level 1
admin@Seagate-5A4B6C:~/firmware$ tar -cvzf Seagate-allow-root.img rfs.squashfs uImage config.ser


Step 9 : Upgrade the Seagate Central with the new firmware.

First, and this bit is optional, I'd suggest copying your newly created firmware, "Seagate-allow-root.img", to your local PC harddrive. It will be about 140MB so if you don't want to use up the space then don't worry about it.

Next start the upgrade procedure by logging in as admin to the Seagate Central management web page in your web browser, and navigating to the "Settings" Tab, then the "Advanced "menu, then the "Firmware Update" page.

From here click on the "Browse" or "Choose file" button and in the file dialogue box that appears navigate to the new software you've created "Seagate-allow-root.img". Now click on the "Install" button and let the upgrade process commence. The management web page should show a progress bar as the upgrade proceeds.

If you like you can get a scrolling live log of the progress of the upgrade by running the command "tail -f /var/log/syslog" in an ssh session on the Central while the upgrade is occurring. Hit Control-C to stop viewing the log. Most of the output of the log is useless but if you see something that is obviously indicative of an error or a problem then perhaps you can cut and paste it and add it as a comment to this blog post so we can take a look.

It took the firmware upgrade on my test Central system about 30 minutes to complete. Also it seemed to be stuck at the "86%" mark for ages according to the progress meter on the management webpage.

Once the system has booted up your new firmware should be running and you should have root access again.


Part 3 : Make sure root access is enabled from now on


Step 10 : If your root password has been changed to "test123" as per "Step 7" then you should change your root password to something else because any user can look at that /etc/init.d/finish script and see that the root password could be changed to that. Do this by logging in as root and running the following commands. 

Seagate-5A4B6C:~$ su root
Password: test123
Seagate-5A4B6C:/Data/admin# passwd
Enter new UNIX password: I-love-my-Central
Retype new UNIX password: I-love-my-Central
passwd: password updated successfully
Seagate-5A4B6C:/Data/admin# cp /etc/passwd /usr/config/backupconfig/etc/
Seagate-5A4B6C:/Data/admin# cp /etc/shadow /usr/config/backupconfig/etc/

Step 11 : Make sure "su" is enabled from now on. Even after another firmware upgrade.

The Seagate Central stores a backup of all it's important configuration files in the "/usr/config/backupconfig" folder. Every time the central boots up it copies the contents of this folder to the root filesystem. If you want to see the details then have a look at the "/etc/init.d/firmware-init-1bay" startup script on the Seagate Central.

Incidentally this is why some people complain that when they set a root password on the Central it reverts to blank or the old password after a reboot. You have to make sure that your password changes are reflected in the "/usr/config/backupconfig" folder as well as the normal locations otherwise they'll be overwritten on a reboot.

The way the new Seagate Central firmware disables "su" access is by changing the "/etc/pam.d/su" file. (See Step 6 for details)

At this point, because we have root access now, we know that the system is using a version of the "/etc/pam.d/su" file that works properly.

What we want to do is copy this working version of "/etc/pam.d/su" to the "/usr/config/backupconfig" folder so that each time the Seagate Central boots up this "good" version of the file is restored even if a firmware upgrade tries to modify it.

As root run the following commands

Seagate-5A4B6C:~# mkdir -p /usr/config/backupconfig/etc/pam.d
Seagate-5A4B6C:~# cp /etc/pam.d/su /usr/config/backupconfig/etc/pam.d/

Note that from now on if you decide to modify the "/etc/pam.d/su" file for any reason, say to restrict "su" access to certain users, you'll have to remember to copy the changes to the "/usr/config/backupconfig/etc/pam.d/su" file as well otherwise your changes will be lost on reboot.


Conclusion


If you have performed the procedures above but still can't get root access then please let me know at what point things seemed to fail and any relevant details. I'm keen to make this procedure work for everyone. In addition if you notice any errors, things that need correcting, or suggestions to improve this procedure then I'm keen to hear about that too.

Just to briefly mention, if things have failed there is yet another alternative. You can crack open the Central (goodbye warranty), take out the hard drive and mount it on an external system, manually modify the files we manipulated above (init.d/finish  pam.d/su) as per the steps above, then put the drive back into the Central. You can certainly do this with a linux system and possibly even a windows system (maybe). If there's anyone who needs a procedure to do that then let me know and I'll try to write one up.

Finally there is one rather clever alternative procedure for creating the modified firmware as we did in Part 2. It makes use of an automated script running on an external linux system. You can find that here


Good luck!


Edit 3-Aug-2017 : Modified Part 3 Step 10 to add copying the "/etc/shadow" file to /usr/config/backupconfig/etc  after you change your root password as well. SFAIC
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39 comments:

  1. Unknown23 November 2015 at 12:53

    Thanks for this article. I use to be able to use xshell4 and log onto the drive and run a script that would copy all folders to a passport drive. This was done to backup the NAS (just in case). When I called Seagate to explain this to them they said that the NAS drive was the backup and I didn't really need to do that. When I asked them if they would guarantee the drive never fail they didn't...(surprise). At the end of the conversation they basically told me "you can't do that".

    I am excited to see your instructions. It looks daunting but I'll try it ASAP and let you know the outcome.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown23 November 2015 at 18:45

    Ok. Need some help. Everything works great until I go to compile the img file. see link--http://s23.postimg.org/rq6kwr5rf/error.jpg

    I skipped this and continued on but after it applies patch it won't let me login as root
    any help is greatly appreciative.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. llllloooooo24 November 2015 at 16:32

      Hi James. Thanks so much for providing all these good troubleshooting details.

      I *think* I know what's gone wrong. The firmware file has the wrong unix permissions set on the "sudo" and "su" executables. I've added "Step 7.5" in the procedure above that I believe will fix this problem. Obviously after executing Step 7.5 proceed to Step 8 and 9 and perform the upgrade again with the new new firmware and see how we go.

      To summarize the new step you basically correct these incorrect permissions on su and sudo by running the following commands in the "firmware" subdirectory just before step 8 where you create the new firmware image.

      chmod 4555 squashfs-root/usr/bin/sudo
      chmod 4555 squashfs-root/usr/bin/su

      If that doesn't fix the problem then please let me know exactly what version of firmware you're modifying, and can you run the following commands from the firmware directory and send me the output

      ls -l /usr/bin/sudo
      ls -l /usr/bin/su

      ls -l squashfs-root/usr/bin/su
      ls -l squashfs-root/usr/bin/sudo

      If Step 7.5 doesn't work then we can take another tack which involves modifying one of the startup scripts in the new firmware to *force* the "su" and "sudo" commands to have the correct permissions. This is a little bit less elegant than the original procedure but it should work.

      Thanks James. I appreciate your patience.








      Delete
    2. Unknown24 November 2015 at 20:05

      Thank you so very much. Your 7.5 worked however when I use xshell and try to login as root it is trying to prompt me for a password. I try to not enter any but it keeps asking me for one. So I logged in as a super user and then continue on with your steps and this is what I get.
      http://s12.postimg.org/grwkvznul/notworking1.jpg

      thanks again. For the record I am using. Seagate-HS-update-201509160008F

      Delete
    3. llllloooooo25 November 2015 at 16:50

      Thanks for persisting with this James. I really appreciate it.

      I've identified a few things that could have gone wrong.

      Can you do me a favor and run the following command on your Central..

      cat /etc/passwd | grep root | cut -c 0-10

      And tell me if the output of the command has an ":x:" in it as seen below?

      root:x:

      If it doesn't look like this then things haven't progressed in your system the way I envisaged. Skip down to "BACKUP PLAN" below. Otherwise readon...

      More thorough testing on my part seem to indicate that the command I used in Step 7 to clear the root password (passwd -d root) doesn't seem to work in every circumstance.

      I think a better way to go is to set the root password to a known value instead of trying to make it blank again.

      For that reason I've modified step 7 to replace the command "passwd -d root" with " echo "root:test123" | chpasswd " which changes the root password to "test123". Can you go ahead and re-edit the bottom of the "squashfs-root/etc/init.d/finish" file as per the new Step 7 and make those changes?

      Also in Step 10, when you're executing "sudo su" are you putting in the root password or the password of the user you are loged in as?

      I'm going to change this step to use "su root" instead of "sudo su" because this way anyuser, not just those designated as administrators, can log in as root.



      BACKUP PLAN :

      If none of this works then something just isn't going as planned and I'd suggest the way forward is to change Step 7 again and make it so that *every time* the system boots up the root password is changed to a known value regardless of whether the root password is blank or not.

      We can do this by editing the bottom of the "squashfs-root/etc/init.d/finish" file and instead of adding all the commands listed in Step 7 above, just add one command to the bottom of the file....

      echo "root:test123" | chpasswd

      This will cause the system to change the root password to "test123" everytime the Central boots up no matter what the current status of the root password is.

      Then, after the system has benn upgraded with the modified firmware and rebooted and the password has been changed to "test123" we re-edit the "/etc/init.d/finish" file and remove that line we added at the bottom, change the root password with the "passwd" command, and then copy the "/etc/passwd" and "/etc/init.d/finish" files to the backup folder.


      admin@Seagate-xxxxx:~$ su root
      Password: test123
      root@Seagate-xxxxx:/Data/admin# passwd
      Enter new UNIX password: I-love-Central
      Retype new UNIX password: I-love-Central
      passwd: password updated successfully
      root@Seagate-xxxxx:/Data/admin# nano /etc/init.d/finish
      root@Seagate-xxxxx:/Data/admin# cp /etc/init.d/finish /usr/config/backupconfig/etc/init.d/finish
      root@Seagate-xxxxx:/Data/admin# cp /etc/passwd /usr/config/backupconfig/etc/passwd


      Please let me know if either of these suggested modifications to the procedure work.

      If they don't then don't despair. We'll battle on and find more things we can try. I'm determined to make this work for you and everyone else.

      Delete
  3. Unknown24 November 2015 at 20:06

    One other thing. Everything compiles without any issues

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unknown24 November 2015 at 20:25

      Here is also the last part of the :~/firmware$ nano squashfs-root/etc/init.d/finish

      http://s1.postimg.org/9f547yvzz/nanofile.jpg

      Delete
  4. Unknown27 November 2015 at 10:00

    Ok. I followed your steps and here is the results.

    See screen shot for the first part. root:x:. It is there so I continued on with your steps and everything worked with changing the password. Great job and I cannot thank you enough.

    Have a great Christmas.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unknown27 November 2015 at 10:18

      forgot to give you screen shot
      http://s17.postimg.org/ttjb593r3/step3.jpg

      Delete
    2. llllloooooo27 November 2015 at 14:39

      Oh that's awesome!! I'm so pleased!

      Thanks again James. Please let me know if you can think of any other enhancements you'd like on the Central and perhaps we can look into them.

      Thanks again and have a great Christmas and New Year!

      Delete
  5. Unknown9 December 2015 at 02:06

    how can i Install aira2 on Seagate Central?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. llllloooooo10 December 2015 at 19:16

      Hi there. This looks like a good project to pursue. I'm just busy with something at work for the next week and a half. Let me try to get an answer back to you by just after Christmas. Thanks.

      Delete
    2. llllloooooo3 August 2017 at 01:27

      Sorry this has taken so long. You wouldn't believe what work's been like. I'll try to make a binary for you soon.

      Delete
  6. Unknown19 December 2015 at 14:36

    First, thank you for the information on the SU and firmware hacks.

    I was able to fall back to my old Kernel, Seagate-HS-update-201506110006F
    Unfortunately, the only img file still on the drive is Seagate-HS-update-201509160008F

    That appears to also be the only version available for download... :(
    You wouldn't happen to have a copy of Seagate-HS-update-201506110006F you would be willing to share? I have been unable to locate it anywhere and Seagate support refuses to give it to me.

    Any thought on functions/features/performance of the different versions?

    Also, I am far from a linux/gep/sed/echo guru, but it appears that the linux script you linked to and the updated 2015-09-16 forked version edit different files than you are in your manual process or am I just misreading them? (https://github.com/detain/seagate_central_sudo_firmware/blob/31109437af7223c29cdc718f81bfea8741543e4f/seagate_patch_root.sh)

    They appear to be editing:
    etc/ssh/sshd_config
    /usr/sbin/ba-upgrade-finish
    /etc/sudoers

    Just wondering what the different approach might be and why?

    I am also fighting the issue with USB attached NTFS drives not being able to delete files. This is actually why I want sudo/root so I can hopefully resolve that without having to reformat it as ext3 or something and reload.

    ""You need permission to perform this action
    You require permission from Unix User\nobody to make changes to this folder""

    Have you run into that issue?

    Thanks again.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Unknown19 December 2015 at 17:20

    Another thought is what if the drive dies? How do we build a replacement? Assume we can open he case and swap drives, but should we do some sort of DD of the boot partition or is having the img file good enough?

    ReplyDelete
  8. lpt200713 February 2016 at 01:21

    Great article. Do you know how to put firmware on seagate central with blank hard drive?

    ReplyDelete
  9. lpt200713 February 2016 at 01:22

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Unknown23 February 2016 at 17:56

    Hey,

    In the process of recovering some data from a seagate central I used testdisk to build a partition table, so I could mount the LVM partition in linux. Now I need the central to go back to working as a NAS if possible, but it won't boot and the light stays amber. I tried deleting the partition table I had created, but it didn't help.

    I guess I have the same question as Dean Benz and lpt2007, in that I'm interested in dd'ing the firmware back onto the drive without going through the seagate central web interface (since it's not working and never connecting to my network). Do you have any thoughts about how I might do this? Alternately, could you host an image of the boot partition somewhere so that the three of us could copy it to our drives?

    ReplyDelete
  11. Unknown23 February 2016 at 18:08

    Hey,

    In the process of recovering some data from a seagate central I used testdisk to build a partition table, so I could mount the LVM partition in linux. Now I need the central to go back to working as a NAS if possible, but it won't boot and the light stays amber. I tried deleting the partition table I had created, but it didn't help.

    I guess I have the same question as Dean Benz and lpt2007, in that I'm interested in dd'ing the firmware back onto the drive without going through the seagate central web interface (since it's not working and never connecting to my network). Do you have any thoughts about how I might do this? Alternately, could you host an image of the boot partition somewhere so that the three of us could copy it to our drives?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Unknown20 April 2016 at 23:48

    I've been trying to either find nfs/rpc utils that can be installed onto the Seagate Central.. or a Debian distro to install over the MontaVista environs.. (personnally - a version of Debian Jessie is where I'd like to focus)..

    If those options are not possible - do you have instructions for setting up a 'proper' toolchain/build/cheroot/whatever environment so that nfs-utils and what not can be built from scratch?

    Or even instructions on getting the on disk version of opkg configured to talk to the 'outside world' ??

    Help?!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. llllloooooo3 August 2017 at 01:22

      I don't know about installing Debian on the Central (sounds like a marvelous idea) but I'm working on getting a proper toolchain built that works. I should be finished in the next few days. I plan on uploading instructions on cross compiling it yourself on a "normal" X86 Debian/Ubuntu system and also the resultant binaries that you should be able to just dump there.

      Let me know if you're still looking into this or if you found a way to get Debian or some other distro running on the Central.

      Delete
    2. [-H-]desu16 April 2020 at 18:09

      Where you able to acomplish this? I am also interested in replacing MontaVista with Debian.

      Delete
  13. Unknown26 September 2016 at 02:59

    Thank you! Very clear with copy-paste commands. Works like a charm!

    ReplyDelete
  14. Michael5 October 2016 at 18:21

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Michael5 October 2016 at 18:22

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Michael5 October 2016 at 18:23

    http://seagatecentralenhancementclub.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/root-su-recovery-for-seagate-central.html#comment-form

    Thank you so much for this post. I had searched high and low to find info on gaining root access to my Seagate Central STCG4000300 (with 4TB ST4000DM000 disk) using firmware version 2015.0916.0008-F. I have now successfully gained root access which is persistent across reboots. Very happy days thanks to you!

    The only change I made to your instructions was part #2, step #7:
    # Is the root password set as blank?
    if grep -q "^root:x:" /etc/passwd
    then
    # Change the root password to test123.
    echo "root:test123" | chpasswd
    # Make sure the changes are in the Central's backup config folder.
    rsync -Rva /etc/passwd /usr/config/backupconfig
    fi

    I left that script out and replaced the root password with my own encrypted root password from /etc/shadow from another server. Perhaps a little more manual but effective.

    ReplyDelete
  17. MKSoft3 December 2016 at 11:38

    I would also remove the SSH authorized_keys file for root or at least change it to be yours. The one that is in there is from the factory in China and thus likely compromised and basically is a way into the device as root.

    See the home/root/.ssh/authorized_keys file

    ReplyDelete
  18. Unknown24 March 2017 at 21:55

    Hi,
    can't perform step 5. Terminal write follow:

    Seagate-cloud:~/firmware$ ./unsquashfs rfs.squashfs
    -sh: ./unsquashfs: Permission denied

    could you advice me, whats wrong?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. llllloooooo3 August 2017 at 01:06

      Did you remember to change the attributes of the "mksquashfs" and "unsquashfs" files to executable with the following commands?

      chmod a+x mksquashfs
      chmod a+x unsquashfs

      Can you do an "ls -l" in the directory where those files are located and see the "x" attributes set like below?

      root@NAS:~/firmware$ ls -l *squash*
      -rwxr-xr-x 1 admin admin 351706 Aug 3 18:04 mksquashfs
      -rwxr-xr-x 1 admin admin 264102 Aug 3 18:04 unsquashfs

      Delete
  19. driftwood16 April 2017 at 12:04

    Can someone just upload the modified version of this firmware somewhere?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. llllloooooo3 August 2017 at 01:02

      I don't know how Seagate would react to that. If someone were inclined to supply a place to host such a file and if someone were willing to reply to this comment about how to upload it there with a reasonable degree of anonymity then someone might be inclined to upload it there.

      Delete
  20. Unknown17 February 2018 at 14:08

    I an such a noob... can you explain how to use the alternative procedure for creating the modified firmware as we did in Part 2, using an automated script running on an external linux system?
    Also accessing the disk using FTP i think there is the latest ".img" firmware saved on a folder. should we use that copyng to firmware folder?

    Thank you for all the help.

    Regards

    https://github.com/detain/seagate_central_sudo_firmware

    ReplyDelete
  21. Wayne12 January 2019 at 18:14

    I just found this article in 2018. I have had my Central since 2014 and I have moved computers a few times. each time, I loose access to some group of files because of permissions. This just gave me all my access back! Thanks for this, 3 years later :)

    ReplyDelete
  22. MrBlc6 February 2020 at 15:12

    I found even simpler way. /cirrus/ is webroot folder and regular user have permission to create php script. Since php is run under root account, you can edit /etc/shadow, /etc/pam.d/su from php script and change su and sudo permission as well. Just write script and call it via http.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Augusta22 April 2020 at 22:18

    Mine is giving me a Operation not Permitted when trying to change permissions.. dump of terminal below:

    admin@BULL-NAS:/Data/Public/firmware$ unzip Seagate-HS-update-201509160008F.zip
    Archive: Seagate-HS-update-201509160008F.zip
    inflating: ReadMe.pdf
    inflating: Seagate-HS-update-201509160008F.img
    admin@BULL-NAS:/Data/Public/firmware$ ls -l *.img
    -rw-rw-rw- 1 admin nogroup 130199138 Apr 23 15:11 Seagate-HS-update-201509160008F.img
    admin@BULL-NAS:/Data/Public/firmware$ curl -L -O https://sites.google.com/site/seagatecentralenhance
    mentclub/squashfs-tools/mksquashfs
    % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
    Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
    100 343k 100 343k 0 0 38529 0 0:00:09 0:00:09 --:--:-- 287k
    admin@BULL-NAS:/Data/Public/firmware$ curl -L -O https://sites.google.com/site/seagatecentralenhance
    mentclub/squashfs-tools/mksquashfs
    % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
    Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
    100 343k 100 343k 0 0 41985 0 0:00:08 0:00:08 --:--:-- 268k
    admin@BULL-NAS:/Data/Public/firmware$ curl -L -O https://sites.google.com/site/seagatecentralenhance
    mentclub/squashfs-tools/unsquashfs
    % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
    Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
    100 257k 100 257k 0 0 33015 0 0:00:07 0:00:07 --:--:-- 291k
    admin@BULL-NAS:/Data/Public/firmware$ chmod a+x mksquashfs
    chmod: changing permissions of mksquashfs: Operation not permitted
    admin@BULL-NAS:/Data/Public/firmware$ cd ../../..
    admin@BULL-NAS:/$ mkdir firmware
    mkdir: cannot create directory firmware: Permission denied

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MrBlc14 May 2020 at 11:20

      See my comment above. You can simply use php script to copy file to share, edit it on your PC (notepad++ on windows is recommended) and put i back. Simply using PHP copy function is enough.

      Delete
  24. Daniel22 January 2021 at 10:10

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Anonymous16 January 2022 at 08:04

    The link to the compiled squashfs isn't working. Is there another?

    ReplyDelete

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