ShowBox Has Stopped Working - Getting Popcorn Time to install on a Kindle Fire Tablet

ShowBox Has Stopped Working! Get a replacement application onto your Kindle Fire or Tablet

By Strictly-Software

Showbox has stopped working.

Hopefully this is a temporary situation but as it provides great TV and Films I needed a replacement. This is how I got Popcorn Time onto my Kindle Fire, a tablet that didn't seem to want to take any .APK file from the web in the first place.

If you have a standard tablet then you should just be able to do a search for the Popcorn time APK and download and install the APK file on your tablet as long as you have turned on the ability to install applications from unsafe locations (e.g the web and not Playstore/Amazon store).

Remember to go to Settings -> Security -> Install Unknown Apps and enable whilst trying to install from a website.

If you want an easy way you can just go to the website https://watch.popcorntime-online.tv and then you can select films or TV shows and watch them directly on your laptop.

If you have a Chromecast you can stream the content to a TV that its plugged into OR if you have a WiFi enabled TV you should be able to select the TV of your choice.

Another way would just be to connect your laptop to your TV with an HDMI cable and get the picture that way. However I wanted the application on my Kindle Fire as its easy to hold and I can take it from room to room and stream it from that device to the main TV or bedroom TV or just watch it on the tablet.

If you want to use a tablet try using the USB cable and connect it to your laptop first and see if it shows as an external device. If it does then just copy the Popcorn APK file across and install it.

I tried this but the Kindle didn't show up despite updating drivers. However try this before the FTP steps below.

Full Requirements for these steps to work...

-A Wifi enabled TV or Chromecast that can handle streamed content
-Kindle Fire or another tablet
-ES File Explorer application working on your tablet (download from PlayStore or web)
-TOR Browser (download from Google to get around blocked sites)
-FileZilla FTP App (or another FTP app - free to download

So to get Popcorn TV onto my Kindle I had to do the following steps...

1. Use TOR Browser and go to https://popcorn-time.en.uptodown.com/android/download (other sites I checked wanted payment for download or had dead links)
2. Download the file to your laptop/PC and remember the location
3. Open the ES File Explorer on Kindle/tablet
4. Go to Remote Manager
5. Press the "Turn ON" button
6. You will be given a local IP address for viewing your tablets files by FTP e.g ftp://192.168.1.125:3725. If you enter that into a web browser you should see the contents of your Kindle however to transfer the downloaded file I used FileZilla a free FTP app for transferring files.
-Open Filezilla and select "New Site"
-Enter the IP address and port number into the boxes
-Chose FTP Plain Insecure
-Chose Anonymous login
-Select the Transfer Settings tab and ensure "Passive" is selected
-Hit connect and as long as the "TURN ON" button is still enabled on your Kindle/Tablet in ES FIle Explorer you should get to see your tablets Hard Drive
-You can then copy the popcorn-time-3-2-2.apk file from the file you downloaded it to on your computer to the downloads folder on your Kindle/Tablet.
-Select the Download folder in ES File Explorer once copied and select "Install"
-It should install the APK
-You can then open it, select a file and hit the Cast button to stream it to your TV or ChromeCast
-I had to open the app a couple of times at first as it was a bit shaky but it is now playing a movie on my TV okay.

Hope this helps people out ....

© 2018 Strictly-Software

Cloudlfare SmartErrors Causes 404 Errors On WordPress Plugin Updates

Cloudlfare's SmartErrors Causes 404 Errors On WordPress Plugin Updates

By Strictly-Software

The other week I wrote a message on the forum on WordPress about an error I was getting when I tried to do an automatic plugin update from one of my sites: Getting A 404 When I Try To Auto Update A Plugin.

The question was:

Hi
I am using the latest software and I haven't had to update a plugin for a while now but tonight I noticed Jetpack was out of date on one site and not on another (both on same server, same plugins and behind CloudFlare with WP Super Cache - which has been having issues lately??)
Anyway when I try to auto update a plugin on this one site the following happens.
1. The password field is full to the brim with *********** on my other site I just have the same number of **** as the word beneath it (inspect and change type="password" to "text" to prove it.
2. When I hit update it goes straight to a /404 page e.g mysite.com/404
3. It then shows a greenish page that says "sorry we couldn't find what you were looking for" here are some suggestions. A cloudflare page.
4. I have asked Cloudflare about this but I have had problems before with Omnisearch being enabled causing similar issues and also I cannot use any JetPack stats as the URL /wp-admin/admin.php?page=stats just takes me to WP-O-Matics dashboard.
I have checked WP-O-Matics source code and CANNOT see anything about going to that URL.
Is this to do with something WP has done or Cloudflare or both. The password box full to the brim with ****** on one site but not the other suggest something with WP is going on.
Thanks for your help
Rob

Now that I have just gone through Cloudflares settings to check what I had on I have realised that the site I didn't have the problem on (also behind Cloudflare) didn't have SmartErrors enabled.

The site that didn't let me auto update plugins from Wordpress DID have SmartErrors enabled.

I disabled the SmartErrors app and then tried an auto update on the broken site. It worked!

So that is the cause of any problems you may get if you try and update your plugins from within WordPress and get a /404 error and a greenish Clouflare page with some links to other pages.

I don't know if it's a Cloudflare issue or a WP issue but if SmartErrors are on it's an issue!

Problem with WAMP Server on localhost with .htaccess file

Problem with WAMP Server on localhost with .htaccess file

If you have read my article Troubleshooting WAMP server on Windows 7 installations you will know that I run both IIS and WAMP on the same Windows computer side by side.

I let IIS run on the normal 127.0.0.1 (Localhost IP loopback address) and I change the PHP.ini file to let Apache run on 127.0.0.1:8888 (same IP but a different port no).

This enables me to run and test PHP files on the same PC without having to toggle IIS on/off before each run of a PHP file

However I also use my WAMP folder C:/www/wamp/test.php as a place to quickly test PHP files or to download files from my Wordpress or PHP sites to debug and test various parts quickly on my local PC with full debugging so I don't effect the live site.

However one of things you may have run into is when WAMP is running but you are getting an error page when you go to to localhost:8888 and just get an error page like this:

Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, admin@localhost and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused theerror.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

So you have no idea what the problem is. IIS is off, you haven't changed PHP.ini config and nothing seems wrong.

Debugging

First thing to do is check your local Apache error log file e.g at C:/wamp/logs/apache_error.log to see if anything stands out.

It might show nothing or it might show something related to the last time you ran the page like this.

[Mon Dec 30 15:41:24 2013] [alert] [client 127.0.0.1] C:/wamp/www/.htaccess: Invalid command 'ExpiresActive', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration

Solution

Now the problem is basic stupidity. I was testing and modifying a sites .htaccess file by downloading it from the site by FTP to the wamp/www folder so I could analyse it and play about with it.

However I had forgotten to change the name of the file back from .htaccess to $.htaccess or delete it altogether. Therefore when WAMP loads with the www folder being the home directory it will automatically load in any .htaccess file and rules it finds.

If the file is full of irrelevant, invalid or old commands this means that the WAMP system on your Windows PC cannot compute and analyse them all and therefore you get the Internal Server Error message.

Just delete or rename your .htaccess file to $.htaccess or BACKUP_htaccess (as Windows won't actually let you rename a file starting with a period e.g .htacess_backup giving the "You must type a filename" error message as it sees the period at the part before the file extension and believes no name exists for the file.

However after renaming or removing the file then this problem should be resolved.

It's happened a few times to me now so I thought I would write it down in case I forgot next time DOH!

To read more about setting up WAMP Server alongside IIS on a Windows machine read my article on it at: Trouble Shotting WAMP Server on Windows 7 Machines.

MySQL Server won't restart

MySQL Server won't restart

Today I went to restart MySQL from my SSH console with the following command:

/etc/init.d/mysql restart

However even though the database server stopped it wouldn't restart.

I tried opening another console and running the status command.

/etc/init.d/mysql status

But this just told me it was stopped and a start command kept failing.

Even when I went into my VirtualMin website that manages my virtual server the service wouldn't restart.

I dug into the services and databases and tried accessing a database from VMIN and saw a message saying the system couldn't retrieve a list of databases. Further digging gave me this error:

can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock'

Now I knew I had changed some settings in the my.cnf configuration file the other day for performance tuning. So I searched the web and found that I had added a command that wasn't supported by my older version i.e MySQL 5.0.51.

The command in question was:

skip-external-locking

Because Java had crashed and I couldn't access the file to edit it easily.

I quickly ran a:

CHMOD 777 /etc/mysql/my.cnf 

command to allow me to edit the file from FTP and then I swapped the new command with the older one which my version of MySQL supported:

skip-locking

I copied the file back and then hey presto a start command got the server back and running:

/etc/init.d/mysql status

I then made sure to CHMOD the file back so it couldn't be written by the website.

However on checking my website I only got to see the theme but NO articles.

It was a Wordpress site and the problem was probably WP-Super-Cache caching a page without data. I needed to run a REPAIR command on my wp_posts table to ensure all posts were visible again.

This is something I have seen many times before with hard reboots. The system comes back up but no articles appear. I always REPAIR and OPTIMIZE my wp_posts and wp_posts_meta table to rectify this.

This obviously locked the database up, as well as consuming 99% CPU whilst it ran - something which really annoys me, but afterwards the site was working.

So if you have been performance tuning your own MySQL database make sure you are not adding commands that your server doesn't support. A failed restart is a sure sign of unsupported configuration commands.

Problem with SFTP after new router installation

Problem with SFTP / SSH after new router installation

This may seem like an obvious one but it can catch you out if you are not aware of the implications of having a new IP address assigned to your house's broadband. You may have moved your laptop to a new house or using a new wifi system to connect to the Internet.

More commonly you may have been given a new or upgraded router by your ISP provider.

Even if you are told the IP address has not changed by BT, Virgin, Sky, Verizon or whoever is giving you the new router you should do a check on any of the many IP checking pages out there on the web.

E.G this script shows you your current IP and ISP details.


Why is this important?

Well if you have your own server being hosted by a company e.g a cloud server somewhere and you have installed DENY HOSTS to block hacking attacks then you might find that you cannot SFTP (Secure FTP) into your server anymore or that using Putty and SSH to access your remote server suddenly stops working for no apparent reason. Obviously you want to access your server so the problem needs fixing.

Symptoms of an IP change causing problems include:

• Your server reporting error messages such as "server unexpectedly closed the connection."
• When you change the file transfer settings to simple FTP from SFTP you can access the server but then experience timeout errors or when the list directory command is run nothing happens.
• Not being able to use Putty or another SSH tool to connect to your server.
• Not having changed any settings on your computer but not being able to connect to your server anymore.

Solution to IP change:

• Check and write down your new IP address.
• Log into your server through WebMin or a web based system or from another computer that hasn't had an IP change.
• Check your DENY HOSTS list to see if your IP address is listed and if so delete the record.
• Add your new IP address in the ALLOW HOSTS list.
• Re-start your server. 

If you don't know how to do this read the 3rd part of my Wordpress Survival Guide about security.