Boxee root - freedom at last

[PhatPhreddy]

As far as the "G-Box Quad Core 3D HD Google Android 4 Cortex Internet TV Mini PC" that isn't on a stick, nice..I might have to buy one of these to test with and play with. The specs aren't that bad, even though it's a RockWill chipset, it does have the Mali GPU which is exactly what the GTV ARMS use. I think it's a single core CPU though, need to look it up. The Mali400 is a quad-core GPU though. Just be wary of anything < $99 USD on any of these new devices unless you have the full specs from the manufacturer. The remote is shit, but you can always use a better one via USB.

89 USD on amazon but wont ship to me international.

[neveroffline]

After my experience with Boxee and a closed system, I am much more leaning to more open / developer solution on unlocked hardware. I dont mind some setup, I dont mind some tinkering, and I get the feeling android is about to take off as the STB OS.

Android as a STB is already taking off via Google TV, it just took a while - but even with the Gen1's like the Revue they beat the sales of Boxee by a landslide - same with Rokus. There is no pass-through Live-TV on Boxee built-in. There isn't an app market on Roku, Apple TV, etc that is open. The possibilities on Android are basically endless vs the crap people are used to. I suggest you pick up a VIZOCoStar (sold out now) for $99USD and test it against the Android stick or China STB and your remaining "boxes". I think it will be night and day.

Going to send you a PM here in a bit, want to keep in touch outside of this forum.

[PhatPhreddy]

Happy to chat.. Not getting hits on that VIZOCoStar to search.

EDIT :: Found it http://www.vizio.com/ looks very interesting..

Lovely remote, good price, etc.. If XBMC ends up on these boxes, with plex, with all kinds of open tools.. Thats killer.

[winedog]

dude...that is a pro-tip, right there.

will try this tonight when I get home!

Tried your fix and it seems to be working great. I had to parse my password followed by the call to the script. Everything is looking good now and I can access the drives attached to the Boxee from my windows machines on my network.

I do notice that the code in that script that changes the boxee icon to red, only lasts for a short time during the boxee bootup and then it goes back to green. However, the telnet daemon continues to run.

Gonna reconfigure my network back to my preferred PPPOE setup and see if my theories about lowering the ppp0 MTU to fix VPN connection issues prove true.

EDIT: So, much as I expected, you can resolve issues with VPN connections and Netflix on PPPOE connections by adjusting the MTU. I had to lower the MTU on eth0 as well as ppp0 to get it working, but it's working sweet!

[Eugen1968]

I have a solution for you! This has worked perfectly for me. ....

Thanks, working good for me.

[haveringcottage]

So, much as I expected, you can resolve issues with VPN connections and Netflix on PPPOE connections by adjusting the MTU. I had to lower the MTU on eth0 as well as ppp0 to get it working, but it's working sweet!

....why the hell havent the boxee devs incorporated this fix into their firmwares!?!??!!! It's so simple!

[winedog]

....why the hell havent the boxee devs incorporated this fix into their firmwares!?!??!!! It's so simple!

yeah, it's very simple....i literally ran the following two commands:

ifconfig eth0 mtu 1460
ifconfig ppp0 mtu 1400

I think we just need to add an mtu="1492" to ifcfg-eth0 and then probably a similar mtu parameter either options.pptp or add the ifconfig command to ip-up for the ppp connect. The problem is that the filesystem is read-only (I assume because it loads from a rom image), so I'm still pondering a workaround to make the change happen automagically using the /data/etc space as our good friend axl82 did to get busybox/telnet to always run at bootup.

[tronbrain]

Android as a STB is already taking off via Google TV, it just took a while - but even with the Gen1's like the Revue they beat the sales of Boxee by a landslide - same with Rokus.

Google TV was a widely acknowledged failure, though I agree that Android is intriguing as an STB OS. But really, it's Linux that is the STB OS here. Android is just one flavor of Linux.

I don't know where you get the statistic that Revue sales beat Boxee sales by a landslide. Boxee was, for the last two years, consistently outselling the Revue on Amazon.com.

[axl82]

space as our good friend axl82 did to get busybox/telnet to always run at bootup.

Ahh glad to be of assistance

There's a bit of somewhat off-topic chatter in this thread about why any developer would bother with the Boxee; For me, it's for the fun of it - and just because I can. I could go out and buy a new box, but the Boxee works well for me, just a few minor annoyances.

I have a Samsung Ace smartphone, which came with android gingerbread and for which Samsung is not providing any updates. Thanks to the guys at cyanogenmod and maclawstudios I now have Android Jelly Bean on this old underpowered phone. The phone works great! I could go out and spend another 200 for a newer phone with JB but why? my phone works great but having the ability to install or do anything I want on it just makes it better.

In the whole there isn't a huge target audience for people who want to run alternative software on their Boxee's - but that's the same for my little phone and many of the other hacked devices sitting around my home.

The point of trying to hack the box is just to make our little toys even better; it's as simple as that.

(In the case of the boxee specifically, it's not like hacking a Wii or DS where the main goal is to play pirated games-- for us it's just to get the box to work as we were promised originally...)

Anyway - that's my rant.

I'm setting up a build environment as described in boxee-ce4100-16126-source and will give compiling Boxee a shot this weekend.

You can kill the Boxee app (killall -9 BoxeeLauncher ; killall -9 Boxee) - and then launch Boxee again from the /opt folder. If you want some fun, launch two instances of the Boxee app; your screen will flicker and you'll kind of see both apps running at the same time!

I figure once i have it compiled, I can setup a boxee box filesystem on a USB stick with my build of the boxee app- kill Boxee at startup, chroot to the USB key and then launch boxee again. Might work. Going to give it a shot this weekend.

[tronbrain]

Is there any storage space on the internal flash where firmware could be stored and launched during start-up, rather than having to rely on a USB key drive?