Installing Ubuntu in Samsung Smart TV natively

[Sky]

So i wrote this guide on how to install Ubuntu in a Samsung Smart TV.

The bottom line was to completely replace the original Smarthub interface for something way more useful and efficient.
There are some features of the TV that are not yet ready, and so far the lack of hardware graphic acceleration makes many applications too slow, but I'm posting all my research hoping that more people get involved and help developing the project. Otherwise it will most likely die, since it's way easier just to buy a Linux box and use it instead of the TV's interface .

Anyway, the guide itself is kinda long and that's why I'm posting it as a PDF, including images, some test running Nintendo DS / Game Boy emulators, etc..:

http://www.mediafire.com/view/mrt1xecd3 ... _Smart.pdf (you may need to zoom in to read it more comfortably and see the images better )

Hopefully someone will find it useful, I'll upload this post as the research advances ^^

~Sky

[greenhorn]

cool! Thumbs up!

[juusso]

Wow, thanks so much for such a great project! And thanks for sharing it with us

If you don`t mind, we`ll move content of your pdf to a wiki article, or if you wish you can do this by yourself.

p.s. Here is a link to similar project, just everything is in russian. I was thinking to translate it to english and post here, but time was gone and i forgot about that completely.

Time to add Ace stream and Ace Proxy and watch torrent TV?

[bobiturboto]

Is there some chance ubuntu to be installed on F series. I am not sure that F support xfs. There is no mkfs.xfs. I've formatted the drive with ifs on my laptop but the tv can't see it.

juuso ??????? ??? ????

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VDLinux#> cat /proc/filesystems
nodev   sysfs
nodev   rootfs
nodev   bdev
nodev   proc
nodev   cgroup
nodev   tmpfs
nodev   debugfs
nodev   securityfs
nodev   sockfs
nodev   pipefs
nodev   anon_inodefs
nodev   rpc_pipefs
        ext4
        squashfs
        emmcfs
nodev   ramfs
        vfat
        msdos
nodev   nfs
nodev   nfsd
nodev   mqueue
nodev   usbfs
        tntfs
        exfat
nodev   devpts
        fuseblk
nodev   fuse
nodev   fusectl

[zoelechat]

Is there some chance ubuntu to be installed on F series. I am not sure that F support xfs. There is no mkfs.xfs. I've formatted the drive with ifs on my laptop but the tv can't see it.

You can probably use ext4, it is used on F recording devices instead of xfs on E.

@Sky
You should be able to mount bind (I do for SSH to work). Path to mount.ko module is wrong in default SamyGO-E catch_crap.init script so it is not loaded as it should. Check in /mnt/lib/modules/2.6.35.13/kernel/drivers/pty if mount.ko is present then you could try to insmod it

[bobiturboto]

Is there some chance ubuntu to be installed on F series. I am not sure that F support xfs. There is no mkfs.xfs. I've formatted the drive with ifs on my laptop but the tv can't see it.

You can probably use ext4, it is used on F recording devices instead of xfs on E.

@Sky
You should be able to mount bind (I do for SSH to work). Path to mount.ko module is wrong in default SamyGO-E catch_crap.init script so it is not loaded as it should. Check in /mnt/lib/modules/2.6.35.13/kernel/drivers/pty if mount.ko is present then you could try to ins mod it

Thank you I have tried but I am receiving error like this (there is no /bin/bash for F):

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root@tv:/mnt/core # chroot /mnt/core /bin/sh
chroot: can't execute '/bin/sh': Exec format error

[Sky]

@ juuso:

You're welcome, feel free to post this on the wiki, or wherever it can be of some use ^^. And yeah, I had seen that Russian project while I was doing some research, however since Google Translate didn't help much, I ended up thinking it was completely unrelated, for the images ^^.

@ zoelechat:

Thank you very much! I didn't know we had that module available but surely it helps a lot, now all device nodes can be present, and we should be able to use an alternative xorg.conf file (maybe that way we can add proper mouse support, maybe using sections such as "InputDevice", "Pointer" o "Xinput").

@bobiturboto:

Looks like that shell is not working on F series, maybe if you chroot without specifying it, like...

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chroot /mnt/core

~Sky

[zoelechat]

@ zoelechat:

Thank you very much! I didn't know we had that module available but surely it helps a lot, now all device nodes can be present, and we should be able to use an alternative xorg.conf file (maybe that way we can add proper mouse support, maybe using sections such as "InputDevice", "Pointer" o "Xinput").

Feel free to update your (already very interesting) tutorial if that makes the difference

[bobiturboto]

@bobiturboto:

Looks like that shell is not working on F series, maybe if you chroot without specifying it, like...

Code: Select all

chroot /mnt/core

~Sky

Thanks Sky, but the same error appearing.

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root@tv:/mnt/core # chroot /mnt/core
chroot: can't execute '/bin/sh': Exec format error

[Sky]

@zoelechat:

Sure, as soon as I find some time to rewrite some parts I'll do it. However I'm trying to enable proper mouse support by tweaking the xorg.conf file (now that I can bind it), and... No dice :/. Maybe I'll have to write that /dev/mice -> XdoTool script, I'm gessing that should work ^^".

@bobiturboto:

Hum, I'm not quite sure what could be the problem, could it be that the pre-built filesystem does not match your TV's processor architecture? Maybe you need a different Ubuntu build, that does match your hardware (I actually have no idea what are the specific differences between hardware in E and F series...)

~Sky