Hi everyone, I’m looking for recovery help on a Lorex Cloud LHV221600 DVR. It may be the same hardware family as LHV2016 (that's the hostname that shows up on LAN), but I’m not 100% sure. Model string I’ve seen in env is deviceid=lhvb11f1e4f6.
I really need help figuring out what's happening to this system. Any help and guidance would be greatly appreciated. I can attach full minicom logs, TCP captures from my TFTP server, and other data to help guide towards a solution.
Problem
- The unit boot loops continuously.
- Over UART, it progresses through U-Boot and kernel start, then hangs/freezes around FA6/FA7 core bring-up and reboots back into U-Boot.
- The most repeatable point is right after:
- wait FA6 core response ok
- done, FA7 core now is booting.
- then it resets and starts the full boot sequence again.
What I've already checked and tried
- Power: tested with a known-good 12V 5A supply, behavior unchanged.
- Storage: tested with no HDD, and also with a known-good HDD, behavior unchanged.
- Connected via 3.3V UART, 115200 baud, and can interrupt autoboot into the U-Boot GM # shell by pressing *.
- U-Boot shows SPI NOR flash:
- Winbond W25Q256FV (32MB)
- U-Boot version:
- U-Boot 2013.01-svn2178 (May 27 2016 - 14:03:50)
TFTP flashing attempt
- Following the instructions from this thread:
- I set up a Linux box as a TFTP server with dnsmasq.
- Used tcpdump to see what the DVR requests over TFTP.
- It requests a device-specific ID file like:
- ID_ND011601000102.txt
- I created that file and also success.txt, and confirmed the device reacts to them, it just goes to the #GM shell because I made the ID and success file empty dummy files.
- I downloaded Lorex firmware .bin files for the LHV2016 family from this pdf.
- Used binwalk and found an embedded ZIP file and extracted it.
- Extracted the following images:
- romfs-x.cramfs.img
- web-x.cramfs.img
- custom-x.cramfs.img
- logo-x.cramfs.img
- extend-x.cramfs.img
- For some reason, the packages did not include user-x or slave-x, even though my U-Boot env has du/ds scripts for those.
- dr -> romfs
- dw -> web
- dc -> custom
- dl -> logo
- de -> extend
- du/ds exist but I do not have matching user-x / slave-x images from the firmware packages I extracted
- run dl
- run dc
- run de
- run dw
- run dr
- successfully TFTP-loaded the file
- passed checks
- wrote flash
- rebooted as part of the script
Frontboard and watchdog tests
There are messages in the update scripts about the frontboard. I tested boot behavior with the frontboard ribbon unplugged:- If I interrupt autoboot, run wd_disable, and leave the frontboard unplugged, the box can sit at GM # without rebooting.
- If I let it autoboot into the kernel, it still reaches FA6/FA7 loading and continues the same boot loop.
I really need help figuring out what's happening to this system. Any help and guidance would be greatly appreciated. I can attach full minicom logs, TCP captures from my TFTP server, and other data to help guide towards a solution.