Archive:Configuring XBMC Live

Add restricted user & configure user

As a general security measure, XBMC will run as unpriviledged user. A new user is therefore added to the system with:

adduser xbmc

A new group called 'admin' is to be created:

addgroup admin  --system

and the xbmc user is added to the new group:

adduser xbmc admin

Type the following to configure audio and removable media support:

adduser xbmc admin 
adduser xbmc adm 
adduser xbmc dialout 
adduser xbmc cdrom 
adduser xbmc floppy 
adduser xbmc audio 
adduser xbmc dip 
adduser xbmc video 
adduser xbmc plugdev 
adduser xbmc fuse

Configure IP

Edit the file /etc/network/interfaces copying the following lines. Those will allow automatic DHCP IP assignemt on eth0, or assign a fixed IP is the last block is uncommented:

# Used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8). See the interfaces(5) manpage or
# /usr/share/doc/ifupdown/examples for more information.
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

#iface eth0 inet static
#address 192.168.0.100
#netmask 255.255.255.0
#gateway 192.168.0.1

Configure name resolution

Edit /etc/resolv.conf' copying the following lines:

domain dummy.net 
nameserver 208.67.222.222 
nameserver 208.67.220.220 

This will configure OpenDNS servers for name resolution.

Set hostname

Edit /etc/hostname and replace the default hostname with:

XBMCLive

Edit hosts file

Edit /etc/hosts and replace the existing lines with the following ones:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 XBMCLive

Set proper language environment

apt-get install --reinstall language-pack-en

Edit /etc/environment adding the following two lines:

LC_ALL=en_US.utf8
LANG=en_US.utf8

Configure Xorg to be able to be launched at boot

Edit '/etc/X11/Xwrapper.config' and change the line

allowed_users=console

to

allowed_users=anybody

Enable password-less sudo

Run 'visudo' and add the following lines:

%admin  ALL=(ALL) ALL
xbmc ALL=NOPASSWD: /bin/mount, /bin/umount, /bin/mkdir, /sbin/shutdown

then uncomment

%sudo ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL

Create XBMC init.d start script

Grab the file "xbmc" gom SVN and save it in /etc/init.d. Make it executable and create a symlink in the /etc/rc2.d directory:

ln -s ../init.d/xbmc S50xbmc

Insert xbmc usplash theme

Forum user 'Duduke' has kindly contributed a nice XBMC usplash theme; get it from sourceforge repository, copy the .so file on the target filesystem and type:

cp /tmp/XBMC-theme.so /usr/lib/usplash/
cd /etc/alternatives/
rm usplash-artwork.so
ln -s  /usr/lib/usplash/XBMC-theme.so usplash-artwork.so

There are also some additional variations in thedeveloper's Blog.

Automount local hard drive partitions

Add the script "diskmounter" checked out from the SVN to '/usr/bin'

/usr/bin/diskmounter

and make it executable:

chmod +x /usr/bin/diskmounter

Enable xbmc to execute power-related DBUS calls

1. Allow powerdown

polkit-auth --user xbmc --grant org.freedesktop.hal.power-management.shutdown polkit-auth --user xbmc --grant org.freedesktop.hal.power-management.shutdown-multiple-sessions polkit-auth --user xbmc --grant org.freedesktop.hal.power-management.reboot polkit-auth --user xbmc --grant org.freedesktop.hal.power-management.reboot-multiple-sessions polkit-auth --user xbmc --grant org.freedesktop.hal.power-management.set-powersave polkit-auth --user xbmc --grant org.freedesktop.hal.power-management.suspend polkit-auth --user xbmc --grant org.freedesktop.hal.power-management.hibernate

sed -i '/SystemPowerManagement/s/deny/allow/g' /etc/dbus-1/system.d/hal.conf sed -i "/user/s/0/xbmc/g" /etc/dbus-1/system.d/hal.conf

(to be continued)