[brulsmurf]

I have XBMC Live Dharma final installed (clean install from the Live CD) on a USB flash drive. When it boots, the TV screen that it is attached to goes black after the XBMC startup dots have gone. I found out (putty) that the TV's resolutions are not recognised correctly and a wrong default resolution is chosen. I need to change the AMD graphics card's database entries, but this will only work if X is not running at the time. Since I have found it impossible to kill XBMC standalone without it re-appearing instantly (great feature in any situation but this one) and thus cannot get rid of X once the machine has booted in normal mode, I figure I need to boot in safe mode.

How do I do this?

Holding down the shift and/or escape key has no effect. Has anyone actually succeeded in booting in safe mode from a fresh Dharma install?

[darkscout]

SSH is probably your best bet.

[brulsmurf]

SSH is probably your best bet.

So the question should be "How do I kill XBMC standalone from SSH so that it stays dead"?

[Ludeboy12]

Alt + Shift + F2 at start up should give you the option to boot into safe/recovery mode.

[darkscout]

Exit XBMC's .bashrc, .bash_profile or .profile so that it doesn't start x.

[lcapriotti]

you have two options: either you edit kernel cmdline at boot (via grub's gui) and remove the "autostart" token, or once the system is booted log on via ssh and type

Code:

sudo service xbmc-live stop

Remove ~/.xsession if there, and type startx.

[brulsmurf]

Alt + Shift + F2 at start up should give you the option to boot into safe/recovery mode.

I don't think this is correct. You can press Alt + Shift + F2 to switch from X to a console - but it leaves X running in the background.

[brulsmurf]

Holding down the shift and/or escape key has no effect.

Yes it does. No idea why it didn't work before - maybe I just was too impatient.

[brulsmurf]

you have two options: either you edit kernel cmdline at boot (via grub's gui) and remove the "autostart" token, or once the system is booted log on via ssh and type

Code:

sudo service xbmc-live stop

Remove ~/.xsession if there, and type startx.

Excellent advice, thanks a lot. I was uncomfortable with editing the kernel cmdline, but stopping the xbmc-live service was exactly what was needed to complete the job.

To end the story: with xbmc-live running and a black screen on my TV, I SSH'd into the XBMC Live box. Once xbmc was stopped and X was running, I was able to add the correct modeline ans switch to it via xrandr commands (see this page). To make it permanent, I had to run Catalyst Control Center and save the settings, otherwise the added modeline was gone after restarting xbmc-live. Once the modeline was there permanently, I restarted xbmc-live and switched to that mode using xrandr again. Then I finally had a visible XBMC GUI, although the GUI was shown in an incorrect resolution (in my case 1600x1200), so part of the GUI was invisible. Entered the "Settings" section, switched to 1360x768, and ... presto.

[brulsmurf]

Is there a way for me to add "SOLVED" to the topic title?

Edit: Yes there is, never mind.

Edit 2: No there isn't, or at least I didn't find it. I was able to change the first post's title, but it does not change the title in the threads list.