Kodi Community Forum

Is it possible to start XBMC as a service daemon? I don't want to have to log in to have it start, nor do I want the GUI to pop up automatically. I just want it to run in the background, like mediatomb currently does for me (I typically watch all my episodes via uPNP using either VLC on another PC or my PS3).

I've tried various searches and all I can find is people executing the binary in their startup scripts, which only occurs after login, and it always pops up the window, which I don't want.

Thanks.

If you just want a UPnP server, isn't XBMC overkill? Why not just run MediaTomb?

overkill? sure, for now... but mediatomb gives me some problems on occasion and doesn't appear to be in development anymore. thought i'd try something else and i've heard a lot of good things about XBMC

atm its not possible to start xbmc without the gui, although there is a pull request on git for that.
Either way, if you want a upnp server, go for something thats dedicated for it.

Xbmc is a media center with rather limited upnp server functionality.