Is it possible or is there a guide on how to revamp this forgotten TV box (Arris VIP4302) into a home server? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 year ago by orize@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

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I got this thing in my home. How can I turn this into a home server?

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mitronic.se%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2022%2F05%2Farris-vip-4302-2-768x276.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=aa77ac0336a11d6b409fb73ac7a78b21068bd561e10ca8cfa53ab9eaf5305b43&ipo=images

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[-] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Google the product name and Linux. If nothing turns up, you need to find the name of the SoC / processor and google that. Find out if it's supported by Linux and what other people did to install Linux. You might need additional hardware though, like a serial or JTAG adapter and a soldering iron. Plus the required expertise. And I must warn you, that thing has 1 GB of RAM and 256MB(!) of flash storage. You won't be able to do much with those specs. Like a slow FTP server or one small website or a few other tiny services which don't use a lot of resources.

[-] mrvictory1@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Why does it have more RAM than storage?

[-] DaGeek247@fedia.io 11 points 1 year ago

Probably for video streaming. If you're only ever downloading large amounts of read-once content, you don't actually need to save any of it.

[-] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 7 points 1 year ago

Well, it's a mass-produced, embedded device, designed to do one specific task. I guess lots of the video related stuff is assisted by hardware and they usually strip down the embedded Linux to the minimum needed. Because every Megabyte of storage costs extra and they need to hit some 99,- or 89,- price point. Furthermore, they don't want it to boot for 20 seconds, so these devices generally don't contain any extras. Similar things happen on wifi routers, the ones below $100 usually contain similar amounts of memory (or less). At least the last time I bought one.

[-] adarza@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

it's an iptv stb, it doesn't need much. it's not designed for subscriber customization or 'app' loading.

[-] sk@hub.utsukta.org 8 points 1 year ago

I have a similar tv box running on rk3328. You'll need to flash the rom and put armbian on it. Search by model and you'll find some guide on armbian forums. Mine had 4gb ram but uses only about 600mb running my hubzilla server on docker. And 30gh storage is decent for small projects.

this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025

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