Develop Bugs

How to Block Root using UVerse Gateway?

Hi
I seem to have hit a bit of bad luck.
I have ATT Uverse with their 3800HGV-B Gateway, and a Netgear WNDR4300 behind it. As Uverse gateway wouldn't block the amzdigitaldownloads.edgesuite.net, softwareupdates.amazon.com domains, I "blocked" them on the Netgear router, and AFTV is connected via Ethernet to the Netgear box.
I ordered AFTV from Staples and was lucky to get a rootable version (v620), the above blocking was not effective and v820 got downloaded but didn't autoinstall. I went ahead and Rooted it using AFTV Utility, and made a mistake!! of not disabling OTA updates on AFTV. I was make a mistake and clicked in the OTA menu and lost all root
I tried another AFTV box, and this installed OTA and went straight to v520. I have used AFTV Utlity to block further updates hoping it might be easier to get Root on this version than v820.
My "blocking" on Netgear router is clearly not working.
I MAY give this another try w/ a new AFTV order but need to know how to block the sites using Uverse Router. I would really like to get a Rootable AFTV, as I want to have XBMC assessable via the home page, pair my Wii Remotes, etc.
Is there anyway to determine the stock FW version based on AFTV DSN Number.
Any guidance would be most appreciated.
I really want the Root

Umm, ~200 views and no replies. I hope soem guru chimes in

First off, you should ask questions in the q&a forum. You get better results. But hold on, let me find my spoon...I don't use a netgear router so I can't tell u exactly what to do but you can probably Google it. On the router, you would need to look for parental controls or firewall areas. Use key word blocking or url blocking and block the required sites. They are listed around this forum somewhere. Then before you even power up your firetv, use your computer and try and download the software updates from Amazon. If you have your router set up correctly it should give you an error and not let you get them.
Edit: quick Google search turned up this: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2760884

Thanks for taking the time to post a reply. The issue I have is wrt the interaction of UVerse Gateway and the 2nd Netgear Router behind it. As DNS is still handled by Uverse, (I think) Netgear router is not able to block it. I have that part configured. I will try and block the additional URL in the thread. Thanks again.

Legolas2 said:
Thanks for taking the time to post a reply. The issue I have is wrt the interaction of UVerse Gateway and the 2nd Netgear Router behind it. As DNS is still handled by Uverse, (I think) Netgear router is not able to block it. I have that part configured. I will try and block the additional URL in the thread. Thanks again.
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I don't use UVerse but I have a similar setup with a router behind a gateway. Can't you disable DNS on the gateway and configure the router to handle DNS?
I can't offer specifics on UVerse as I don't use it but on mine I just turn off DNS on the gateway and let my router handle it.

The easy way to do it is to open a free account on opendns.com and block from there. After root, follow this guide: http://www.aftvnews.com/how-to-block-ota-update-for-amazon-fire-tv-and-keep-root-access/

Do you have DD-WRT installed on your Netgear? If so, I have the same setup (except I have a Time Warner cable in place of Uverse). Using the the DNSMasq on my Netgear does prevent DNS lookups. I can confirm that with my setup. The Netgear does not need to pass through the DNS look-up further upstream if you properly set up your Masq options in DD-WRT. I have used 2 routers with DD-WRT setup and both have worked as intended.
The reason I can say that it works is that my updates were blocked, but more importantly, any pings to the the blocked addresses from my laptop (hooked to the same Netgear router) results in the bogus IP I put (127.0.0.1). One thing you want to make sure to test your setup is to make sure that you ping it on a computer and make sure that you don't have any static DNS entries for your network adapter on your machine that you are testing with.
If you have DD-WRT installed or plan to install it, please update the thread and I can post some pictures of my setup.

jmerrilljr2 said:
The easy way to do it is to open a free account on opendns.com and block from there. After root, follow this guide: http://www.aftvnews.com/how-to-block-ota-update-for-amazon-fire-tv-and-keep-root-access/
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Click to collapse
Bingo. I had to do this when my router blocks were not working. Before I even plugged in my FTV, I tested the update web addresses in my browser. If I hadn't of done that, then I would've thought that my router block was working and lost root as soon as I plugged it in. Instead, I saw that my router blocks were eff'd, and signed up for OpenDNS. Confirmed the blocks in my browser...THEN, I plugged in the FTV for the first time.
Anytime you only get one shot at something, you really want to make sure that you get it right and don't miss.

Now that Staples has AFTV down to $84, I will try my luck again and use OpenDNS setup. Hopefully I can get a "rootable" FW version out of the box.
BTW, Uverse Gateway sucks

Legolas2 said:
Now that Staples has AFTV down to $84, I will try my luck again and use OpenDNS setup. Hopefully I can get a "rootable" FW version out of the box.
BTW, Uverse Gateway sucks
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I took a look at a pdf of your 3800HGV-B Gateway modem and it apparently does bridge mode.
Bridge mode will make it act like a modem only, and let your router take care of DNS & all the other settings. It's how I have my home set up (I have comcast though, different hardware), as in my experience the modem/routers you get from your ISP usually sucks.
Might want to take a look into that.

nyder said:
I took a look at a pdf of your 3800HGV-B Gateway modem and it apparently does bridge mode.
Bridge mode will make it act like a modem only, and let your router take care of DNS & all the other settings. It's how I have my home set up (I have comcast though, different hardware), as in my experience the modem/routers you get from your ISP usually sucks.
Might want to take a look into that.
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Click to collapse
Thanks Nyder. I managed to get 3800HGV into bridge mode and was able to block the Amazon sites from my computer. Will get to installing the new Fire TV (hopefully, it is rootable).
I wish AT&T had made this easy, it was PITA to get it working, w/ multiple factory resets needed to get it done right.

Fire TV sharing Kodi settings?

So I bought myself a fire TV and naturally it turned up with 51.1.4.0 pre-installed, so I wanted to at least block updates, but I'm using dd-wrt on my router which creates lots of fun when trying to do that, it was easier to just block all internet access to the device. I figured this would block all of their tracking and auto login stuff too.
My thinking was that I only wanted to use it for kodi/xbmc anyway, it mostly plays local files, but I could set up my file server to act as a proxy as well, put those settings into kodi so that only it can access the internet.
What was of no surprise is that it didn't work, I could get other computers to talk easily through the proxy but kodi on the fire TV didn't want to know.
However at some point, without changing any settings kodi started talking through the proxy, I installed youtube etc. etc. But then I figured out the delay.
The fire TV was actually blocking kodi from having a separate proxy, had seen the proxy settings, including password, and was now happily connecting itself to the internet through the proxy, the light even went white and everything.
Tin foil hat time, I assume their software is monitoring everything else kodi is doing as well?
Has anyone else find this kind of behaviour with their fire TV?

I don't know the answer to your question but the easiest and probably best way to do this is thru a free account on opendns.com.

I blocked updates through DNSMasq in the end, for anyone else having trouble with dd-wrt the settings that took me a while to find and sort it out was under DHCP settings.
Setup - Basic Setup - Network Setup, and under Network Address Server Settings you want to make sure the Use DNSMasq options are selected, then the Additional DNSMasq Options will work.
Of course, fireTV can still look for proxy settings to get around it apparently, even though I'm pretty sure they don't let you set the options yourself?

[Q] Connect to WiFi with browser login?

I have an Amazon Fire TV Stick. I use xfinity wifi hotspot which requires that I sign in on a browser that normally on a Windows or Android device, the browser will automatically open up and take me to a login page.
I sideloaded Firefox to my AFTV Stick but that doesn't seem to load up the page even if I try to connect to the wifi network.
Is there some kind of workaround for this? Thanks!

I would like to know this also as I plan on taking the stick with me when I travel and would be connecting to Hotel wifi

I can't speak to the OP's question but as to hotel access you can usually call the hotels Internet help line with your MAC address from your Fire TV and they can manually log you into the network.

Would also love to know if this is possible. I on a little vacation and took my fire tv with me, ready to watch away, but can't connect to the WiFi, since there is a browser login ...

spoof the firetv's mac on your laptop and go through the portal

ziddey said:
spoof the firetv's mac on your laptop and go through the portal
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Could you enlighten me on how to do that or direct me to somewhere? Thanks!

well i am guessing something like this
http://www.howtogeek.com/192173/how-and-why-to-change-your-mac-address-on-windows-linux-and-mac/
will have to try that and see

I often take my AFTV when on the road and faced this very problem. I've overcome this by connecting to the hotspot (in my case the hotel's wifi network). The AFTV should say something like "Connected with a problem" or something to that effect. Then I back out and go to Applications, and launch a browser, in my case Chrome, and the hotspot router should direct your browser to the login page, where you can enter the needed credentials.
However, of course you would need to have a browser installed. Works most of the time though some hotels have routers that for some reason won't auto-direct you to the login page until you manually type in a website address to go to.

AQKhanTheOne said:
I often take my AFTV when on the road and faced this very problem. I've overcome this by connecting to the hotspot (in my case the hotel's wifi network). The AFTV should say something like "Connected with a problem" or something to that effect. Then I back out and go to Applications, and launch a browser, in my case Chrome, and the hotspot router should direct your browser to the login page, where you can enter the needed credentials.
However, of course you would need to have a browser installed. Works most of the time though some hotels have routers that for some reason won't auto-direct you to the login page until you manually type in a website address to go to.
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Same - just did this in fact. Had to use my phone as a hotspot to install a browser (lighting) first.
I don't think it would be possible on the firestick unless amazon added some browsers to their store.

JackieBrown said:
Same - just did this in fact. Had to use my phone as a hotspot to install a browser (lighting) first.
I don't think it would be possible on the firestick unless amazon added some browsers to their store.
Click to expand...
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Why? You could side load a browser on the stick just the same I assume.

I side loaded Dolphin browser onto my AFS. Seems to work well.
Update : when trying to enter address or url, the search dialog box comes up. It starts to load the Web page but immediately closes the browser. So for me, Dolphin doesn't seem to be working.
What browsers are you all using successfully to browse Web pages?
Sent from a Freedompop HTC Evo 4G

To the original poster, I know exactly what you're talking about. What I had to do was plug in a mouse so I could click.
Reloaded the page a lot of times and it took forever, but you only have to enter this once.

fix!
philessthanthree said:
I have an Amazon Fire TV Stick. I use xfinity wifi hotspot which requires that I sign in on a browser that normally on a Windows or Android device, the browser will automatically open up and take me to a login page.
I sideloaded Firefox to my AFTV Stick but that doesn't seem to load up the page even if I try to connect to the wifi network.
Is there some kind of workaround for this?
I went and found this free software for my laptop (Virtual router..google it.....wont let me post link since i'm new) and now fire tv works like a charm. i was having the same exact problem. It's pretty straight forward. Hope this helps and good luck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

You can use the built-in web browser in the ES File explorer to go to the login page. The ES file explorer is free and available on the amazon app store.

I have Chrome side loaded in my AFS. Works well. Able to get to YouTube website and play videos easily.
Sent from my LG-LS980 using Tapatalk

can't get past FireTV registration page after deregistering

Hi, not sure where to go from here.
I have a rooted FireTV with ClockworkMod installed. It was registered to my name, but my wife just started a trial of Amazon Prime, so we thought it'd be a bright idea to deregister the FireTV from my Amazon account and register it with her account.
Big mistake. Now, the FireTV boots up and gets to the screen that gives you the choice to register or create a new account. I log in with her Amazon info, my Amazon info, doesn't matter--no matter what we do, it goes to a screen saying "The network connection has been lost." The only two buttons are "Try Again" or "Check Network Settings".
It's not a network problem, believe me (I have a home LAN and know what I'm doing, troubleshooted that, it's fine--in fact, I can connect to it via adbFire and see processes on it, etc.). My wife even phoned Amazon, and they made sure to register the FireTV on her account. I can see it in her account on Amazon.com under "Manage Content and Devices".
Even the Amazon tech was stumped. Any ideas? I'd rather not lose root if I can help it, but we can't get past this "network connection lost" screen.
I had blocked Amazon updates on the FireTV and on the router, but I enabled updates on both, thinking that maybe the update blockers were causing an issue. Yet even still, it's not working.

Try to connect using a cable instead a wifi connection, and try registering again.

Tried that, no luck, same thing

Unblock updates on the router or connect to a Hotspot just for the registration time. I have had amazon registration fail when blocking update domains on the router. Root will be safe.

Tried that, still no luck.

Well, I found the solution. I bypassed the router completely and plugged the FireTV directly into the cable modem. Registered first try. Bizarre...I know what I'm doing with routers (I have tomato firmware installed on my Asus RTn16). I had all the update blocks disabled (it's a single checkbox in tomato). Maybe it's a tomato bug? Anyway, works now, and I've since hooked it back up to the router and all is still well. I still have rooted firmware. I did see, when I went into Settings/System, that it was downloading a system update (the menu item said "Cancel System Update"), so I cancelled that.
Interesting...I opened an ADB session and I see that org.xbmc.kodi is still in the files list on the FireTV, as well as folders for a few other Android apps I installed, but none of them appear in the FireTV apps list (because I did a factory system restore). Is there a way to restore these without reinstalling? Some way to maybe have the FireTV "rescan" its own installations?

wifi problem

Unfortunately, I could not look at other routers out there that can do the problem. Mobile Net does not have any problems in the browser game is not over. My router: Asus RT-N18U
If I've done enough video to see how a browser such as Facebook stutters a bit when I scroll down to up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kKIl8Zz1Lc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmLx3XIEI3c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onYEtsenO6I

I tested with other routers and interesting results. My router is not something I Komal. (ASUS RT-N18U) and before that there is a (Dasan H640GW GPON ONT) with the wifi Subscribe refused to join hand. However, the router can connect neighbors and there is not jettisoning it. (TP-Link) And I do not know that you are the drivers of the phone can be a hassle or do not want my my router? Or maybe I should try something Rom?

Any ideas? Or wait for the next system update now? Because it is quite annoying that I can not normally get on the net