Ubuntu and XBMC on the MELE

Been trying to set up the MELE as a media/home server and found guillaume's blog (http://guillaumeplayground.net)

Get the ubuntu 12.10 armhf image with the patched 3.0.4.2+ kernel from here  (MD5: 32e181589ac4232fdaac3e9f86546e87)

Decompress the image and dd it to your SD card.
Put it in the MELE, connect VGA/Ethernet and turn it on.
Default user/password is: root/root

To modify the video output, led flashing and MAC address, run PIMP_MY_MELE as root.
It's a perl script located on /usr/local/pimpmymele/

Sata module is not loaded by default.
To load it until reboot, run

modprobe sw_ahci_platform
or load it on boot with
echo "sw_ahci_platform" >> /etc/modules; reboot
Check your MELE speed
# grep BogoMIPS /proc/cpuinfo
BogoMIPS : 1001.88
If not:
rm -f /etc/rc2.d/*ondemand
echo "cpufreq-set -g performance" >> /etc/rc.local
cpufreq-set -g performance

Overclocking
This is dangerous. You've been warned. This will set your frequency at 1.15GHz and it will be off when you reboot (stress test to see if your MELE is stable; glxgears is useful)
echo '1152000' > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq
If you want to make this permanent run
echo "echo '1152000' > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq" >> /etc/rc.local

Available frequencies are at /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_available_frequenciesConsider that you'll need overvoltage to pass 1.2GHz, and if you plug in an external HDD / sata HDD, the current might not be enough for the processor

This got me from 35.785 to 39.447 fps on GLXGears (~10% performance increase with a 15% OC)

XBMC
Download the files (compiled from git://github.com/empatzero/xbmca10) and decompress them to / (yes, to root)




You can run these from X

/allwinner/xbmc-pvr-binhf/bin/xbmc

/allwinner/xbmc-pvr-binhf/bin/xbmc-standalone

or this from a TTY

/allwinner/xbmc-pvr-binhf/lib/xbmc/xbmc.bin




Considering it runs on framebuffer, if you run it from SSH you'll see the cursor where it was; if you run it locally the cursor will go to the last row and it'll be unnoticeable




Before setting up XBMC on boot you should test audio and video; as well as automounting if you plan on using external disks or pendrives.







If you have dependecy problems launching xbmc 

Run 

apt-get install xbmc

You won't run the repo version, but some libraries/dependencies are not in the tar