Table of Contents
How To Build A Slackware Mediacenter (HTPC) With Kodi (formerly: XBMC)
My Situation
I wanted a stand alone media center and everything pointed to XBMC. I tried the various LiveCD versions of XBMC but each had problems that either prevented the system from working or were too annoying. The solution turned out to be a S lackware 14 box that boots right into XBMC.
Here's What I Did
- Install Slackware. Optionally, use an old PC; you might be surprised at how powerful even an older PC can be for media playback.
- To keep the install as light as possible, use a lightweight GUI environment. You probably don't need a traditional desktop; copy
/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.twm
to~/.xinitrc
to set twm as the default window manager. - Create a user named
kodi
and login as the userkodi
to create the essential window manager configuration files. - Edit
~/.xinitrc
to simplify the window manager even further. At the bottom, change:/usr/bin/twm & /usr/bin/xclock -geometry 50x50-1+1 & /usr/bin/xterm -geometry 80x50+494+51 & /usr/bin/xterm -geometry 80x20+494-0 & exec /usr/bin/xterm -geometry 80x66+0+0 -name login
to:
/usr/bin/twm & #/usr/bin/xclock -geometry 50x50-1+1 & #/usr/bin/xterm -geometry 80x50+494+51 & #/usr/bin/xterm -geometry 80x20+494-0 & #exec /usr/bin/xterm -geometry 80x66+0+0 -name login exec /usr/bin/xbmc -geometry +0+0
- Edit /etc/rc.d/rc.local and add:
sudo -u kodi startx
this is instructing the system to login as the
kodi
user on boot and start the default window manager.
After you reboot the machine, it should boot right into kodi, and you should have a working media center/HTPC.
Some Other Things to Configure
If you keep your media files on other machines and they are accessible via Samba or NFS, make sure you enable file sharing:
- To enable Samba file sharing:
chmod 755 /etc/rc.d/rc.samba;/etc/rc.d/rc.samba start
- To enable NFS file sharing:
chmod 755 /etc/rc.d/rc.nfsd;/etc/rc.d/rc.nfsd start
For NFS, you'll have to do some other configuration but all that is explained in the NFS wiki pages.
Sources
* Originally written by arfon