UNVR-NAS

Firmware builder to convert your Unifi NVR Pro into an OpenMediaVault NAS appliance.

This repo is still under heavy development and should be considered early alpha!

Supported Devices

• UNVR Pro

Note that the 1U UNVR is not currently supported as I do not have a unit to test on. PR's are welcome!

Usage

1. Download the required UNVRPro firmware, and place it in the unifi-firmware directory. Please see the README.md in that directory for more information.

2. Make sure your system has the required packages installed for this repo, which are:

   docker-ce losetup wget sudo make qemu-user-static squashfs-tools

3. Run the tool, and sit back and wait for it to do it's thing. Depending on your computer, this may take around an hour or so. Also note near the end there will be some scary errors during debootstrap, but this is expected.

   make

4. Once done, you will have a built disk image in ./output

Installation

Note that currently the install process requires UART to modify the u-boot env for booting. In the future, if I can get the latest kernel GPL source, this will not be required.

1. MAKE SURE your UNVR Pro is running the same Unifi firmware as referenced in the README.md in the unifi-firmware directory.

   • Failure to do this can cause issues from the installation process not working, to the touch screen not working!

2. Build the firmware image (follow the Usage section), and then throw it on an HDD/SSD formatted to ext4. Put said HDD in the UNVR Pro as the only hard drive.

3. Hook up UART to the UNVR Pro (4 pin header on the PCB near the DC Power Backup port).

4. Boot the UNVR Pro, and press Escape twice when prompted to get to the u-boot shell. You only have 2 seconds to do this!

5. Run the following commands to update the kernel cmdline and save the changes:

   setenv rootfs /dev/boot2
   setenv bootargsextra boot=local rw
   saveenv
   

6. Boot into recovery. This can be done using the command below, or by unplugging the UNVR Pro, and holding the reset button for 10~ seconds as you power it back up.

   run bootcmdrecovery

7. Once recovery is booted, login with ubnt:ubnt or root:ubnt. Note this can be done either via UART, or by telnet to the IP address your UNVR Pro display reports.

8. Mount your HDD with the firmware image, backup the Unifi firmware, your u-boot env partitions, and then flash our custom firmware to the EMMC. (below command example assumes your ext4 disk partition is at /dev/sda1)

   mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
   cd /mnt
   dd if=/dev/boot of=/mnt/unvrpro-emmc-backup.bin bs=4M
   dd if=/dev/mtd1 of=/mnt/unvrpro-mtd1-uboot-env.bin
   dd if=/dev/mtd2 of=/mnt/unvrpro-mtd2-uboot-env-redundant.bin
   gunzip debian-UNVRPRO.img.gz
   dd if=./debian-UNVRPRO.img of=/dev/boot bs=4M
   sync
   reboot
   

9. At this point you can remove the HDD/SSD you used, and enjoy Debian 12 with OpenMediaVault on your UNVR Pro! Default login for OpenMediaVault is admin:openmediavault. SSH login information is debian:debian. Please note that first boot may take a bit as cloud-init runs to finish the setup.

Removal

To restore back to the factory UNVR-Pro firmware, you can do the following steps:

1. Hold the "reset" button on the front while powering on to boot into recovery

2. Once the display shows it's in recovery, telnet to the IP address shown on the touch screen. At the login prompt, login with ubnt:ubnt or root:ubnt.

3. Erase the uboot env, to remove our custom boot commands. This SHOULD be mtd1/mtd2, but PLEASE VERIFY first with cat /proc/mtd to prevent bricking your device! DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP! The output should match below, if not, PLEASE DO NOT CONTINUE!

   $ cat /proc/mtd
   dev:    size   erasesize  name
   mtd0: 001c0000 00001000 "u-boot"
   mtd1: 00010000 00001000 "u-boot env"
   mtd2: 00010000 00001000 "u-boot env redundant"
   mtd3: 00010000 00001000 "Factory"
   mtd4: 00010000 00001000 "EEPROM"
   mtd5: 01000000 00001000 "recovery kernel"
   mtd6: 00e00000 00001000 "config"
   

4. Once the uboot env's are identified, erase them to remove the setting overrides we added during install:

   dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mtd1
   dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mtd2
   

5. Next, erase the EMMC so all partitions are wiped:

   /sbin/parted -s -- /dev/boot mklabel gpt
   

6. Now you can use the Unifi Recovery WebUI to upload the firmware file, and restore your device.

Known Issues

• Installation is Hard
  • Need to simplify the install process, this should be much easier once I can get latest GPL kernel source (no more uboot env stuff)
• OpenMediaVault
  • BTRFS is in TESTING
    • Building an out-of-tree module for this using an OLD Unifi GPL release from https://github.com/fabianishere/udm-kernel
• Reset Button
  • Only works to reboot the system

Disclaimer

Note that since prebuild Ubiquiti software is required for this tool to work, this repo will never have prebuilt images available. This is to prevent redistribution of Ubiquiti's IP, so please DO NOT ASK! Also, by using this repo you accept all risk associated with it including but not limited to voiding your warranty and releasing all parties from any liability associated with your device and this software.