Accessing the Freecom MusicPal (telnet)

This is the first post dealing with (hacking) the Freecom MusicPal - an internet radio which runs Linux. The MusicPal is so nice that it soon got popular with friends and my radio has now a number of cousins. It is light, looks good, and is busy either with live radio or podcast/RSS. The sound quality can be fully appreciated when connected to a stereo.

Freecom MusicPal

A great place to learn is MyMusicPal (thanks!). Some of the documents there are in German. Whatever is used here will be translated.

Starting the telnet daemon

My MusicPal currently runs version 1.59d of the firmware. Since version 1.58 there is the possibility to start the telnetd program (telnet daemon). This only possible from an address that exists for the purposes of debugging.

Start by logging into the web interface and in your browser window replace the address following the IP address (or the hostname used for musicpal) with /admin/cgi-bin/debug.cgi. In my case:

http://192.168.1.6/admin/cgi-bin/debug.cgi

The right frame of the interface will give you an idea of the system status. The top part will look somewhat like this:

Scrolling down you will find the option to start telnetd.

Connecting to the MusicPal

Everything should be in place to telnet to the MusicPal with whatever telnet client you have. If you run Linux or Mac OS X, just use the telnet in a terminal. As you can see form the next image, the root account is not protected by a password (even if there was a password telnet offers no protection anyway), so you should not start the telnetd of your radio in an insecure network.

Comfortable shell access in the MusicPal! Thank you Freecom.