Instructions for building XBMC for Raspbian

[DGreenMan]

shoot me down if im wrong but is this the driver for RTL8188CU you was looking for under unix?
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/dow ... =true#2742

listed under as RTL8188CUS unix (linux)

my wifi dongle displays both RTL8188CUS and RTL8188CU depending on where i look at it (ie via win 7 or via raspberry ssh lsusb)

i dont mind doing a command and apply a script like you suggest just though it may be easier for the end user for plug and play,

i have spent that past hour looking through my history to see the link for the wifi adaptor for £1.50,
it was on a forum that posted to ebay it was on here or openelec i really cant remember now, but i have noit given up looking completely

i even tried seraching on ebay for it on different countrys but just cant find it again

if any one else knows the post im referring to please remind me of it, like i stated it has the RTL8188CUS chip inside and has been confirmed working on debian and raspbmc with MrEngman script, how ever for me it fails with the same script i get error on reboot failed to connect to hub (even though i have tried it without hub installed )

so if a full image would be possible that would be excellent

[silas]

So, a new image is ready

Following the standard set by the official images here is the username/password
Username is "pi"
Password is "raspberry"

This one is based on the official http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 66&t=11365 image.

Autologin is enabled. It will start xbmc if you wait 10 seconds, or you can cancel if you want to go to the console.

The script from MrEngman (http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... =26&t=6256 ) is included, so if you have a wifi adapter with the RTL8188CUS chip, try to run

Code: Select all

 sudo install-rtl8188cus

and follow the instructions.
A big manual is available here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/80256631/install-rtl8188cus.txt

This image is a little bigger, because i left all the official stuff on it.
This time i choose to create both a torrent and a direct download. The torrent will also use the direct download if needed, so i would recommend tho use the torrent.
Torrent:
http://silenz.se/download/xbmc-new.torrent
The direct download for backup:
http://silenz.se/download/raspbian-xbmc ... 2-07-17.7z

Feedback and requests are appreciated!

[john.mills]

Hi Silas,

Thanks for the effort creating this image I am sure you will have helped out a lot of people by doing this! I will download this and test tonight. I will provide feedback in this topic or a wiki if you have one. I encourage everyone else to do the same.

Best regards,

John

[abishur]

Thanks silas!

Autologin is enabled. It will start xbmc if you wait 10 seconds, or you can cancel if you want to go to the console.

How do we disable the autologin entirely?

[silas]

Thanks silas!

Autologin is enabled. It will start xbmc if you wait 10 seconds, or you can cancel if you want to go to the console.

How do we disable the autologin entirely?

Just remove --autologin from /etc/inittab, near the end of the file

So instead of

Code: Select all

1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty --noclear --autologin pi 38400 tty1 
2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2
3:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty3
4:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty4
5:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty5
6:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty6

you have

Code: Select all

1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty --noclear 38400 tty1 
2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2
3:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty3
4:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty4
5:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty5
6:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty6

And if you want to disable the xbmc autorun, open /home/pi/.bashrc
and remove the last line that says

Code: Select all

python menu.py --menu "XBMC will launch in 10 seconds" -1 -1 -1 1 "Cancel and go to console"

[workshy]

Thanks for the download silas.

When playing videos i am getting blue borders...is there any way of getting rid of them?

Also when trying to access using filezilla it is not allowing me in. I am using user raspbian and password raspbian. This also happens when i try to ssh with terminal.

[silas]

Thanks for the download silas.

When playing videos i am getting blue borders...is there any way of getting rid of them?

Also when trying to access using filezilla it is not allowing me in. I am using user raspbian and password raspbian. This also happens when i try to ssh with terminal.

You most likely need to change your overscan settings.
You could ether try this guide:
http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting# ... D_monitors
Or open a movie in XBMC, and then go to video settings, there you choose video calibration, and move one corner at at time.
And everything is easier with images, even if they are crappy
1.2.
3.

I would try xbmc settings first.

And sorry about the password, its now username "pi" and password "raspberry". Thats what the official images are using. I'll update my post

Edit:
Well, if i still could edit my original post...
So here they are:
Username is "pi"
Password is "raspberry"

[abishur]

And sorry about the password, its now username "pi" and password "raspberry". Thats what the official images are using. I'll update my post

Edit:
Well, if i still could edit my original post...
So here they are:
Username is "pi"
Password is "raspberry"

I changed your post to show the new username/password. Also, has any tried changing the resolution to 1920x1800? The last image I was using would show green pixels when I did that, and if this one fixes that problem I was going to swap over to it.

[ejsolutions]

Having trouble downloading from the direct link - it cancelled mid-way through. Trying the torrent (7 peers at the moment.)

[DGreenMan]

Great work silas

ive not managed to check the wif yet as im not at home

but i have just downloaded your new image and tried it on my friends

the blue boarder issue i beleive is because the back screen is blue as when the screen saver apperas that is also blue

so if there is a way to change the back screen / screen saver from blue to black that will stop the blue boarders at a guess

also i can not seem to find enable air play, is it included ??

[workshy]

Thanks for the updated password info

I think DGreenMan is correct regarding the blue screen issue. I haven't tried it again just yet but i do remember when xbmc was idle and the screen faded, there was a blue tint to the screen.

[tomaz]

Hi all,

my first post, don't kill me for asking stupid question here, but it is concerning this image (raspbian-xbmc.img-2012-07-17.7z) I want to write to SD card.

I have SanDisk Extreme (Class 10) 4GB SD card (BH1026314382G).
When I want to write image to card with Win32DiskImager I receive this error "Not enough space on disk: Size: 7812096 sectors Available: 7744512 sectors Sector size: 512".

My firs idea after some calculation was to delete last 34603008 bits, they are 00 anyway, but not all! So this is no go.
Next idea: I should backup my 8Gb SD card write this image to it and then re-size partition, write image to file and then write image file to 4Gb card.

Can I do something else? I have also virtual Ubuntu... but not enough knowledge, not jet

Regards,
Tomaz.

[DGreenMan]

Hi all,

my first post, don't kill me for asking stupid question here, but it is concerning this image (raspbian-xbmc.img-2012-07-17.7z) I want to write to SD card.

I have SanDisk Extreme (Class 10) 4GB SD card (BH1026314382G).
When I want to write image to card with Win32DiskImager I receive this error "Not enough space on disk: Size: 7812096 sectors Available: 7744512 sectors Sector size: 512".

My firs idea after some calculation was to delete last 34603008 bits, they are 00 anyway, but not all! So this is no go.
Next idea: I should backup my 8Gb SD card write this image to it and then re-size partition, write image to file and then write image file to 4Gb card.

Can I do something else? I have also virtual Ubuntu... but not enough knowledge, not jet

Regards,
Tomaz.

i had this same issue sorry to say i did not find i fix other than using a bigger sd card partitioned

UPDATE ON BLUE BARS

i was going to try calibrate but first i finished off installing all the packages my friend required,
iplayer 1channel itv player 4od and 5demand
i then weant back to the same source that had the blue bars to calibrate but when it started the blue bars was no longer there ??

so at a guess one of these plugins managed to change something what i do not know
and also i have left the device to kick in the screensaver and it is now black not blue ,

so if calibrate does not work and you are stuck with blue screen i would suggest installing these one by one and keep testing to see when the blue bars disappear either start a video or change your screensaver to come on after one minute which ever is easier for you

[silas]

I changed your post to show the new username/password. Also, has any tried changing the resolution to 1920x1800? The last image I was using would show green pixels when I did that, and if this one fixes that problem I was going to swap over to it.

Thanks for that

I have no possibility to try that as my biggest screen is 1680x1050. But if you can get lxde to run at 1920x1800 on raspbian, then i see no reason why XBMC shouldn't work. I guess the only thing you can do is to try it out.

Having trouble downloading from the direct link - it cancelled mid-way through. Trying the torrent (7 peers at the moment.)

No idea what happened there. My server is on wifi (yea, I know how stupid that is ) so it might have had a little nap at that moment
Thats why I'm using torrent now. The torrent will actually use the direct download if needed. So if don't have any problems with torrents, you should use that.

Great work silas
ive not managed to check the wifi yet as im not at home
but i have just downloaded your new image and tried it on my friends

the blue boarder issue i believe is because the back screen is blue as when the screen saver appears that is also blue
so if there is a way to change the back screen / screen saver from blue to black that will stop the blue boarders at a guess

also i can not seem to find enable air play, is it included ??

Just check the wifi when you get home, nu rush
Is the blue border the same color as the background of the menu you get at boot. That one where you choose between LXDE and XBMC?

If it's that color i need to find a way to either change the color or kill the python script when xbmc has started.
That fix should be possible without another big image update

About Airplay, for some reason it doesn't seem to be included.
Maybe i should have installed avahi-daemon before I compiled. But I think airplay was missing in the last image too?

Hi all,

my first post, don't kill me for asking stupid question here, but it is concerning this image (raspbian-xbmc.img-2012-07-17.7z) I want to write to SD card.

I have SanDisk Extreme (Class 10) 4GB SD card (BH1026314382G).
When I want to write image to card with Win32DiskImager I receive this error "Not enough space on disk: Size: 7812096 sectors Available: 7744512 sectors Sector size: 512".

My firs idea after some calculation was to delete last 34603008 bits, they are 00 anyway, but not all! So this is no go.
Next idea: I should backup my 8Gb SD card write this image to it and then re-size partition, write image to file and then write image file to 4Gb card.

Can I do something else? I have also virtual Ubuntu... but not enough knowledge, not jet

Regards,
Tomaz.

Nah, we wont kill you, yet
Welcome to the forums!

Your SD might be a few bytes smaller then mine, or you have some other stuff taking up place (but it "should" be overwritten).

Could you try to format your sd card from ubuntu?
Run Disk utility and press "Format drive", keep it at "Master boot record" and press format. If you get errors you will need to unmount the volumes before. Then try to write the image again.

Don't try messing with deleting parts of the image, that will never go well

Your 8GB card will work just fine.

UPDATE ON BLUE BARS

i was going to try calibrate but first i finished off installing all the packages my friend required,
iplayer 1channel itv player 4od and 5demand
i then weant back to the same source that had the blue bars to calibrate but when it started the blue bars was no longer there ??

so at a guess one of these plugins managed to change something what i do not know
and also i have left the device to kick in the screensaver and it is now black not blue ,

so if calibrate does not work and you are stuck with blue screen i would suggest installing these one by one and keep testing to see when the blue bars disappear either start a video or change your screensaver to come on after one minute which ever is easier for you

Seems really strange.
Maybe they go away after some time? Try rebooting and see if they appear again.

So, end of this long post, and have a nice evening all, or morning or whatever it might be

[Beini]

Doh, just realised that the first debian source files I uploaded were wrong ones (and probably non-working ones, too) Sorry if anyone tried to build those and it failed.

Here's the files for the current git head. Biggest change is that now the .orig tarball is generated with the upstream script and that shaves it's size to 45MB. Other changes are that now it actually builds when HAL is enabled and AirTunes support is now disabled because libshairport in Raspian is probably too old. (This is the breaking commit)

Files are now shared on my Google Drive:
https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B9B_C ... UwaVE/edit

[DGreenMan]

Hey again Silas

Yes you are right I rebooted and the blue bars appeared again

Also yes when first boot the XBMC will load in 10 sec the back ground is the same blue so I would guess if you can change that to black then we should be good from go

I'm not going to be able to get back home late on to be able to tes the wifi


@beini

Does this mean that AirPlay (airtunes) will never be supported then
This raspbian image is by far the fastest method of XBMC out there and I have found all my plugins work as for on other os like openelec and raspbmc had some issues with some plugins,


But for me AirPlay is a must its the main reason I will be using it aswell as my friends if it does not end up being supported we will have to go back to openelec wich would kill me after the testing raspbian

[tomaz]

Hi Silas, DGreenMan and others,

thanks for not killing me, yet :)

Here is what I have done to your image (I wanted to use my 4Gb card :)
- write your image to 8Gb SD card
- use virtual machine with gparted bootable cd, resize partition to - 100Mb.
- read 8Gb SD card to file
- split this big file at size 3965190144
- write new file to 4Gb card, jupi :)

I have created Torrent (see attachment) for someone with problems to write image on 4Gb card.

raspbian-xbmc.silas.Jul.17.2012-4Gb-card.7z.torrent

Torrent for people with problem to write sila's image to 4Gb card.

(16.28 KiB) Downloaded 267 times

Now more people can use this image, with 4Gb Cards (or little less:)
In this image at the end now it is 66,5Mb unallocated space. Checked with gparted. It means you can safely delete 66,5Mb at the end of the .img, if image is still to big to fit on your 4Gb SD card.

Or you can use this for swap partition (with gparted I saw there is no swap partition) or use this space to enlarge your primary partition.

And now some more interesting stuff about what I have seen on this .img:

In config.txt I have seen, nothing to worry, just to let you know:
arm_freq=880

First time just after starting XBMC after one minute stopped responding (freezes).
Next reboot, after starting XBMC nothing happened just blue background. If I pressed enter it showed me prompt. Next reboot unknow error on blue background again enter showed me prompt ... So lot of problems, unusable for me.

It was crashing till I commented/deleted arm_freq=880 line. Maybe my 0.7A charger is not enough or I should also overclock something else, who knows...

I didn't recapture my 4Gb card, so if anyone have this problems, they can try to delete arm_freq line.
For me it is enough speed (it is armhf:), I think I don't need overclocking.

Now it is working constantly for cca 2 hours without problems, playing from PS3 media server (just for test, not best choice to use PS3 media server, but it was already on my computer) over network with no problem.

Sound is working with HDMI and analog. Default it was set to analog.

Thanks you all for good work :)

Regards,
Tomaz.

[Beini]

@beini

Does this mean that AirPlay (airtunes) will never be supported then
This raspbian image is by far the fastest method of XBMC out there and I have found all my plugins work as for on other os like openelec and raspbmc had some issues with some plugins,


But for me AirPlay is a must its the main reason I will be using it aswell as my friends if it does not end up being supported we will have to go back to openelec wich would kill me after the testing raspbian

No. One way is to use the internal libshairport and that's just one configure option, but I didn't want to take that route as I don't know how to use libshairport internally BUT everything else externally. Another way is to update the libshairport debian package.

And there's always a change that I have just somehow borked my libshairport.

[silas]

Hey again Silas

Yes you are right I rebooted and the blue bars appeared again

Also yes when first boot the XBMC will load in 10 sec the back ground is the same blue so I would guess if you can change that to black then we should be good from go

I'm not going to be able to get back home late on to be able to tes the wifi

I will hopefully be able to make the background black tomorrow. At least i know whats going on now

Hi Silas, DGreenMan and others,

thanks for not killing me, yet

Here is what I have done to your image (I wanted to use my 4Gb card
- write your image to 8Gb SD card
- use virtual machine with gparted bootable cd, resize partition to - 100Mb.
- read 8Gb SD card to file
- split this big file at size 3965190144
- write new file to 4Gb card, jupi

I have created Torrent (see attachment) for someone with problems to write image on 4Gb card.

raspbian-xbmc.silas.Jul.17.2012-4Gb-card.7z.torrent

Now more people can use this image, with 4Gb Cards (or little less:)
In this image at the end now it is 66,5Mb unallocated space. Checked with gparted. It means you can safely delete 66,5Mb at the end of the .img, if image is still to big to fit on your 4Gb SD card.

Or you can use this for swap partition (with gparted I saw there is no swap partition) or use this space to enlarge your primary partition.

And now some more interesting stuff about what I have seen on this .img:

In config.txt I have seen, nothing to worry, just to let you know:
arm_freq=880

First time just after starting XBMC after one minute stopped responding (freezes).
Next reboot, after starting XBMC nothing happened just blue background. If I pressed enter it showed me prompt. Next reboot unknow error on blue background again enter showed me prompt ... So lot of problems, unusable for me.

It was crashing till I commented/deleted arm_freq=880 line. Maybe my 0.7A charger is not enough or I should also overclock something else, who knows...

I didn't recapture my 4Gb card, so if anyone have this problems, they can try to delete arm_freq line.
For me it is enough speed (it is armhf:), I think I don't need overclocking.

Now it is working constantly for cca 2 hours without problems, playing from PS3 media server (just for test, not best choice to use PS3 media server, but it was already on my computer) over network with no problem.

Sound is working with HDMI and analog. Default it was set to analog.

Thanks you all for good work

Regards,
Tomaz.

Nice work with the "bad" 4GB cards. Strange your one is smaller then mine...

There actually seems to be some swap enabled, if you check with "free -m" you see 99MB. I bet this is located in some file on the main partition.

I thought every raspberry pi would support at that speed so i left it there. But thanks for pointing that out, might help someone else with that kind of Raspberry Pi, or a small charger
I'm using a kindle charger, which I believe is at 0.85A.
I also watched a bunch of Youtube (which by the way works perfectly fine now, even 1080p) and a few TedTalks. It's really amazing how smooth the video is

[DGreenMan]

Thanks for that Beini but I think that's a little out of my league, I will look into it further tomorrow but I am new to all this

Silas would you consider including it to a future release as airplay is very important to me

[mrjbanksy]

Hi, thanks for the instructions to set up XBMC, I've got it working almost perfectly. The only problem I run into is when I try to exit. No matter whether I choose quit, restart, or shutdown, I'll get a blank screen. I have tried launching XBMC from the command line both on the pi itself and via ssh. If I've launched it via ssh, on the other computer it goes back to the standard prompt, but the pi's screen is still blank. I have to reboot in order to use the pi by itself.
Has anybody else ran into this? Is there some way to fix it?

Thanks.

[jeephead]

I have been trying to install the XBMC image from the Raspbian.org site on a 32g SD card. Everything is going fine until I get to step 9 " root@pisces:/xbmc-rbp# make -C tools/rbp/depends/xbmc"
Along the way it says "consider adding 'AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR ([m4]) to configure.in and rerunning libtoolize to keep correct lib tool macros in-tree
When it returns to the root prompt I see

"checking whether the C++ compiler works....no"
"configure: error: in 'xbmc-rbp':"
"configure: error: C++ compiler cannot create executables"
"see 'config.log' for more details"
"make: ***[configure] Error 77"

Sorry in advance if this is the wrong place to post this. Not a Linux guru but also not a noob. I think I am close and have gotten this far. Hoping to get it fixed.
Thanks for any info.
-Z

[tomaz]

Hi Silas,

I would add something about autostart menu.
If I connect via ssh, menu is telling me it will automatically start xbmc in 10 sec. It would be nice to check if person is connecting via ssh or if xbmc is already running, not to show this menu. Now if i connect via ssh and wait new xbmc will start on top of previous. Keyboard and mouse will not work on new xbmc but it respond on ssh windows if I press ctrl+c then it disappear and my previous xbmc is back and everything works as before.

I like new raspi-config (http://elinux.org/RPi_Wheezy_raspi-config).
Maybe this is the way to start raspberry settings for beginners like me
Just to add something, if you change keyboard settings, you should to run also "sudo setupcon", otherwise boot time is much longer. I think raspi-config script is not calling setupcon.

Good night,
Tomaz.

[silas]

Hi, thanks for the instructions to set up XBMC, I've got it working almost perfectly. The only problem I run into is when I try to exit. No matter whether I choose quit, restart, or shutdown, I'll get a blank screen. I have tried launching XBMC from the command line both on the pi itself and via ssh. If I've launched it via ssh, on the other computer it goes back to the standard prompt, but the pi's screen is still blank. I have to reboot in order to use the pi by itself.
Has anybody else ran into this? Is there some way to fix it?

Thanks.

This is a known issue, and i have no idea why that happens.
The only way to do it is to launch xbmc from lxde and then kill the X-server by pressing Crtl+Alt+Backspace

I usually just unpug it and let it reboot.

Hi Silas,

I would add something about autostart menu.
If I connect via ssh, menu is telling me it will automatically start xbmc in 10 sec. It would be nice to check if person is connecting via ssh or if xbmc is already running, not to show this menu. Now if i connect via ssh and wait new xbmc will start on top of previous. Keyboard and mouse will not work on new xbmc but it respond on ssh windows if I press ctrl+c then it disappear and my previous xbmc is back and everything works as before.

I like new raspi-config (http://elinux.org/RPi_Wheezy_raspi-config).
Maybe this is the way to start raspberry settings for beginners like me
Just to add something, if you change keyboard settings, you should to run also "sudo setupcon", otherwise boot time is much longer. I think raspi-config script is not calling setupcon.

Good night,
Tomaz.

I know about that, and i really hate when it happens
Unfortunately i have no idea how to fix that.
About setupcon, I just forgot about that

I should really create a public google docs document with todo list/known bugs, but thats a project for tomorrow...

[mrjbanksy]

Hi, thanks for the instructions to set up XBMC, I've got it working almost perfectly. The only problem I run into is when I try to exit. No matter whether I choose quit, restart, or shutdown, I'll get a blank screen. I have tried launching XBMC from the command line both on the pi itself and via ssh. If I've launched it via ssh, on the other computer it goes back to the standard prompt, but the pi's screen is still blank. I have to reboot in order to use the pi by itself.
Has anybody else ran into this? Is there some way to fix it?

Thanks.

This is a known issue, and i have no idea why that happens.
The only way to do it is to launch xbmc from lxde and then kill the X-server by pressing Crtl+Alt+Backspace

I usually just unpug it and let it reboot.

Okay. Well, hopefully it gets fixed soon. Just a minor inconvenience though. Thanks for the info.