[gentoo-user] media center with gentoo

[gentoo-user] media center with gentoo

[Coert Waagmeester]

Hello all,

Building myself a new media center setup.
I used to have an old xbox with xbmc. But the CPU is to slow for hi-def
video.

Now I have a normal PC with keyboard and mouse in its place.
Normal Gentoo install.

How can I get X to start up without login straight into XBMC?
Which (xdm,kdm,etc) should I use for this?
Or should I just start an xsession with xbmc out of some sort of init
script?

On the XBMC forum I have found this link, and will try to get that going
in the meantime.
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=41739

Any other media center tips would be appreciated!
Also going to try and put a normal USB plug on one of the old xbox
controllers.


Regards,
Coert

Re: [gentoo-user] media center with gentoo

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 08:42 on Saturday 14 May 2011, Coert 
Waagmeester did opine thusly:

> Hello all,
> 
> Building myself a new media center setup.
> I used to have an old xbox with xbmc. But the CPU is to slow for hi-def
> video.
> 
> Now I have a normal PC with keyboard and mouse in its place.
> Normal Gentoo install.
> 
> How can I get X to start up without login straight into XBMC?
> Which (xdm,kdm,etc) should I use for this?
> Or should I just start an xsession with xbmc out of some sort of init
> script?
> 
> On the XBMC forum I have found this link, and will try to get that going
> in the meantime.
> http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=41739
> 
> Any other media center tips would be appreciated!
> Also going to try and put a normal USB plug on one of the old xbox
> controllers.


Inspect /etc/inittab, especially the last section relating to xdm, this refers 
you to /etc/init.d/xdm which uses DISPLAYMANAGER in /etc/conf.d/xdm

Setting DISPLAYMANAGER to a script of your own should work. 
Perhaps /usr/bin/xbmc-standalone could be useful here.

The point being, the xdm function in the init scripts does not have to start a 
full display manager, it can launch anything of your choice

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] media center with gentoo

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 14 May 2011 08:42:38 +0200, Coert Waagmeester wrote:

> How can I get X to start up without login straight into XBMC?
> Which (xdm,kdm,etc) should I use for this?
> Or should I just start an xsession with xbmc out of some sort of init
> script?
> 
> On the XBMC forum I have found this link, and will try to get that going
> in the meantime.
> http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=41739

The way I do it on my mythtv frontend is to have this
in /etc/local.d/mythtv.start

/bin/su - mythtv -c "/usr/bin/startx &>/dev/null" &

Then start mythfrontend from ~mythtv/.xinitrc

That way there's no display manager or window manager getting in the way.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Isn't 'Criminal Lawyer' rather redundant?

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[gentoo-user] Re: media center with gentoo

[James]

Coert Waagmeester <lgroups <at> waagmeester.co.za> writes:


> How can I get X to start up without login straight into XBMC?

There are a multitude of approaches to this sort of functionality.

Searching out keywords, such as "kiosk", "gentoo"  and other relevant
strings will yield some interesting reading and approaches.

Here's one I intend to experiment with, but, it
is KDE4 centric....

http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma/Kiosk


hth,
James

Re: SOLVED [gentoo-user] media center with gentoo

[Coert Waagmeester]

On 05/14/2011 08:42 AM, Coert Waagmeester wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> Building myself a new media center setup.
> I used to have an old xbox with xbmc. But the CPU is to slow for hi-def
> video.
> 
> Now I have a normal PC with keyboard and mouse in its place.
> Normal Gentoo install.
> 
> How can I get X to start up without login straight into XBMC?
> Which (xdm,kdm,etc) should I use for this?
> Or should I just start an xsession with xbmc out of some sort of init
> script?
> 
> On the XBMC forum I have found this link, and will try to get that going
> in the meantime.
> http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=41739
> 
> Any other media center tips would be appreciated!
> Also going to try and put a normal USB plug on one of the old xbox
> controllers.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Coert
> 
> 

Hello all,

Thanks for all the tips!
I got it going with: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?p=266552

Combination of mingetty with autologin.
My ~/.profile script then starts X with
.xinitrc containing 'xbmc --standalone'


Works like a charm,
Coert Waagmeester