hartvig.de

Every time Nokia releases a new version of the N800 OS [1], one has to redo all the hacks and reinstall all the non-standard software. Rather than reinventing the wheel (i.e. goggling for two hours or so looking for the desired solutions), I have decided to make a list of what to do after a fresh install.

1. Take the Red Pill To enable a bunch hidden features, enable the Red pill mode. Go to Application manager, Tools, Application catalogue. Select New and enter matrix in the web address field. Now, press cancel and take the Red pill.

2. Maemo Extras Enable the Maemo Extras repository. Once again, go to Application manager, Tools, Application catalogue. Select the maemo Extra repo and press Edit. Uncheck the Disabled box.

3. Root Access To gain root access, we must add a repository. Go to Application manager, Tools, Application catalogue. Select New. Enter the following, and press ok.

Catalogue name: Eko
Web address: http://eko.one.pl/maemo/
Distribution: bora
Components: user

Then, go to Application manager, and install the package becomeroot. To gain root access, enter sudo gainroot in a terminal.

4. Setup up passwords At this point, we should set up a root and user password. Open up a terminal, become root, and type

passwd

passwd user

to change the passwords for the root and user accounts respectively.

5. Ssh installation Now, its time to set up ssh on the N800. As root, type

apt-get install openssh

then, as user run

ssh-keygen -t dsa

This will generate a ssh key that you can copy to your favorite servers to log in without having to type in a password every time. You copy the key by running

ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub serveruser@serverip

replacing username by you user name on the server corresponding to the ip-address serverip. To gain easy access to the N800 from your server, repeat the steps while on the server.

6. wget, mplayer and Python Now, lets install wget, mplayer and Python 2.5

apt-get install wget mplayer python2.5

7. N800streamer To install N800streamer, lets first wget it

wget http://www.hartvig.de/files/n800streamer.py

Then, open the file n800streamer.py and in the settings section edit the lines

serverip=’10.0.0.1′
serveruser=’user’
serverdir=’/home/user’

Finally, start the N800streamer by typing the following in a terminal:

python n800streamer.py

8. Watch live tv To watch live tv (Discovery, FOX news etc.), download the file Metadata.db, rename it to .meta_storage and put it in the /home/user folder. Now, launch Media Player and you’ll be able to watch live tv on your N800. Quality isn’t exactly 1337, but what the hell…

Further reading

[1] Nokia N800 firmware updater (M$ Windows version)

[3] N800streamer

[2] wahlau.org