WD My Book World Hacking

The WD My Book World 500G arrived today. It packs a 500GB HD, a 200Mhz ARM processor, 32MB of RAM and it runs Linux.

Kind of accidentally i bumped into this site which offers much information on how to hack your WD and turn it into a little handy appliance.

I'll try to describe my first adventures with it. For starters, let's try to get PHP, vim, Transmission and Clutch, a Web interface for transmission running.

First, enabling ssh access to the disk:
Martin provides full instructions here: http://martin.hinner.info/mybook/sshaccess.php
Just a little note, the user name is uppercase.

Second, Installing Optware:
http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/optware

Third, now that Optware is installed, it's time for vim, for your file editing needs:

ipkg install vim
cp /opt/share/vim/vimrc_example.vim ~/.vimrc


Fourth, prepare it for PHP.

ipkg install php-fcgi
ldconfig


Configure lighttpd for php

cd /etc/lighttpd
cp lighttpd.conf lighttpd.conf.bak
chmod u+w lighttpd.conf

Apply this little patch

wget http://www.fragmentized.net/Stuff/blog_files/17032008/enable_php.patch
patch lighttpd.conf < enable_php.patch
/etc/init.d/lighttpd.sh restart


Test it:

vim /usr/www/lib/test.php

Add this line:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

point browser to http://MyBook-IP/test.php

You should now see the php info page;

We now have PHP working, let's try to add Transmission for torrents:
Install Transmission and clutch (web interface)

ipkg install transmission
ipkg install clutch


Make clutch available from web

mkdir /usr/www/lib/custom/
ln -s /opt/share/www/lighttpd/clutch /usr/www/lib/custom/clutch

Apply little patch to clutch init script

cd /opt/etc/init.d
wget http://www.fragmentized.net/Stuff/blog_files/17032008/clutch_init.patch
patch S88clutch < clutch_init.patch


Edit Transmission config to fit your needs, /opt/etc/transmission.conf and set your paths.

Run it:

/opt/etc/init.d/S88clutch start


Point your browser to http://http://MyBook-IP/custom/clutch, and the web interface should come up.

This was enough to get vim, php, transmission and clutch running.