Boot from USB
- Booting from USB is possible by replacing the kernel and ramdisk with those found on the RMA image. Follow the instruction on RMA to create an RMA USB stick.
- To replace the kernel and ramdisk you will need to have shell access on the boxee. This can be accomplish either by serial port (documented here) if you have an A1 or A2 model boxee. For any other boxee you can access a shell through telnet by installing Boxee+Hacks.
- Next you need to break out of the chroot jail. A precompiled binary to do this can be found here.
- After breaking out of the jail:
- mount -o bind /ramtmp/boot/proc /proc
- mount -o remount,rw /dev/Glob_Spectraa1
- cd /ramtmp/p1
- ln -s dlink_boxee_runtime.img TargetFS.img. This will allow boot from NAND to still work with the new ramdisk. For reasons I haven't determined booting through this symlink does not work on all boxees. It seems to fail to initialize the video out.
- Replace the kernel with: dd conv=sync if=bzImage-PC137HF2-Gold.signed of=/dev/spectra bs=256k seek=20
- Replace the ramdisk with: dd conv=sync if=ramdisk_v2.2.gz.signed of=/dev/spectra bs=256k seek=40
- Extract dlink_boxee_runtime.img to the second partition of the USB stick created in step 1.
- On the second partition of the USB stick rename /etc/rc3.d/36nandflash to /etc/rc3.d/S36nandflash.
- At the end of the start function in /etc/rc3.d/S04network add dhcp6c.
- Create a new symlink from /etc/init.d/telnet.d to /etc/rc3.d/S06telnetd.
- Unmount the usb drive and plug it in to you boxee.
- Reboot and cross your fingers. If all goes well your boxee will boot off the USB stick. If it fails, but you do not get the christmas tree lights on the boxee the kernel and ramdisk were replaced successfully, but there is a problem with you usb stick. Double check it and try again. If you're on an A1 or A2 you can also see check the serial port for boot messages and see what failed.
Other Notes
On an A1 or A2 you can fix any errors by booting in to recovery mode and accessing the shell through the serial port. This is not possible on other models of the boxee.
page revision: 3, last edited: 25 Apr 2014 08:50