“Out of Range.”
Ye woh moment tha jab meri puri duniya hil gayi thi. TV screen par Android ka logo, fir CoreELEC ka splash, aur fir bas — Out of Range. Mujhe laga, “Ye kya mazaak chal raha hai? Main to sirf Kodi chalana chahta tha!”

The Stakes: Turning a Dead TV Box into a DevOps Playground

Mere paas ek purana Amlogic S905X2 TV Box tha (2GB RAM version). Idea simple tha — Android ko retire karo aur isse ek lightweight media + Docker box banao. Plan?

CoreELEC flash karo,
Kodi chalado,
Docker + Wake on LAN setup karo,
Aur mast home server ban jayega.

Simple sunai de raha hai na?
Reality? Huh.

Har step pe ek naya jaal, ek nayi chaal aur bhot sara bawaal.

1. DTB Drama – “2GB ya 4GB, Bhai?”

Sabse pehle dtb.img ka khel shuru hua. 4GB ka file dala — boot nahi hua. 2GB dala — finally Kodi loaded. Lesson: Always match DTB with actual hardware RAM (warna Android logo ka dhyan doge lifetime).

2. The “Out of Range” Horror

Boot ke baad CoreELEC CLI screen dikh rahi thi, par jaise hi Kodi start hota, monitor bolta — Out of Range.
Mujhe laga hardware dead hai, par pata chala HDMI output resolution mismatched tha. Fix?

config.ini me vout='720p60hz' dala.
Reboot → Finally Kodi GUI!

Ek chhoti line change, aur pura stress khatam. Sach Me? Abhi to party shuru hua hai, haha.

3. SSH, Docker and the Missing Daemon

SSH chalu hua, par Docker command bola: not found. Addon manually install kiya, path export kiya, fir daemon manually run kiya. Har reboot pe fir se manual start karna padta tha — pure DevOps ka jugaad chal raha tha.

Final fix?

nano /storage/.config/autostart.sh

#!/bin/sh 
/storage/.kodi/addons/service.system.docker/bin/dockerd &
ethtool -s eth0 wol g

Aur fir chmod +x kara. Ab reboot pe bhi Docker ready.

4. Wake on LAN – Theory vs Reality

WOL theoretically supported tha:

ethtool eth0 | grep Wake-on
Supports Wake-on: ug
Wake-on: d

Enable kara:

ethtool -s eth0 wol g

Phir bhi poweroff ke baad fail. Turns out, cheap TV boxes ka bootloader WOL fully support nahi karta. Suspend se kaam karta hai (kabhi-kabhi), par poweroff? Forget it.

5. The eMMC Temptation

“SD card slow hai, chalo eMMC pe dal dete hain!”
ceemmc -x chalaaya… Unsupported system.
Dual boot option mila par partitions fail.
Moral: Android firmware vendor ke bina eMMC flash risky hai. SD card hi mast hai — kam se kam safe.

Turning Point

Ek din lagataar Android logo – Out of Range – CLI – Kodi – Docker – WOL ka cycle chala. Aur fir jab finally Docker chal gaya, Kodi GUI stable ho gaya aur SSH se remote access set ho gaya — pura box ek minihome server ban gaya.

Wo moment tha jab realize hua:

Ye sirf ek “Kodi box setup” nahi tha.
Ye tha “Trust the process” ka lesson.
Aur haan, cheap hardware ke saath jugad DevOps karna bhi ek art hai.

Final Thoughts

Aaj jab main docker ps chalata hoon aur containers list aati hai, ek alag hi sukoon milta hai. Ye sirf technical victory nahi — ye wo moment hai jab realize hota hai ki “agar patience rakho, to har Android box ek mini-server ban sakta hai.”

Tumhare paas bhi purana TV box hai?
Try CoreELEC. Play. Break things. Fix them. Aur phir comment me batao kitne baar tumhe “Out of Range” dikha. 😆

#Docker #Android #CoreELEC #DockerOnARM #SelfHosting #HomeLab #LinuxHomeServer #Amlogic #OpenSource #CloudNative #DevOps #TerminalTimes

How I Converted a Dead TV Box into a Docker Beast?