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 audio
adduser xbmc plugdev

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

Autostart Xorg

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

TBD

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

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

(to be continued)