[Bram77]

@thethirdnut LOL

[un1versal]

@thirdnut

my unborn children never forget passwords they dont com(e) near the keyboard haha

I guess you answered your own question? which way is best, fastest or even will work without extra additions to setup, I cant answer that.

[thethirdnut]

I'll try Hack_Kid's found solution when I get a chance - seems more straightforward.

Thanks both for your info.

[un1versal]

I would be indebted to you for the rest of my natural live if you could sort out the internal receiver for this, Si haven't much experience sussing things out but I will test the hell out of all of it...

Think How many people be able to benefit form a script that does it all., moreover if it is integrated into the disk. Gives us internal CIR support please!!! I beg u. :p

Ill accept if you tell me to bugger off

Yes if you look at the script I palm off there's tons in there that can still be used...

I will test this script tomorrow on a secondary HDD I have.

I agree with you but problem is no one maintains this info regularly, but I can see it on the wiki....

Do you a deal, You do the script and add options to make script more user friendly Satisfy a few punters, And I volunteers for the kiwi ooops wiki typing duties??

Deal

uNi

[un1versal]

this was ripped from script but its part how to install and configure remotes with little or no user input:

http://pastebin.com/vAdTs4zc

I am knackered but ther;s stuff for assigning xbmc all permissions only I cant see it anymore.

Ah never mind you prolly think Im nuts, and you wont be wrong haha

Bram77 what you say?

[Hack_kid]

@uNiversal

Agreed, but the main benefit that using Upstart gives us is that if XBMC crashes - which can happen often when switching display rate, development branches, etc - is that'll automatically restart / respawn XBMC for you.

The /etc/init.d/ SysV implementation works well on startup + very lightweight, but most of us don't want to have to reconnect to box to reload XBMC.

My 3 & 6 yr-old's for instance often forget the ssh pass-phrase.

---

The startx command uses .xinitrc in the home directory of the user it is running under. In this case, I simply start xbmc, no window manager is needed. Note that the user you use to run startx might need to be a member of certain groups for this to work. I believe at least the video group is needed for X to work, but I'm not sure.

Agreed on this too - I believe with Hack_Kid's approach you'll still need to have an .xinitrc or .xsession file defined at some point too since as you say that's what startx uses...have to define this on FreeBSD for instance since it doesn't come with a Desktop installed either...

yes it will reboot if it crashes thats what the respawn line is for. i used startx as xinit wasnt working, maybe i need to write the full path like in the old script i found. if so i'll try that as yes using xinit instead of startx although yelds no performance or user expierence difference calling xinit directly is just that, more direct

[thethirdnut]

@Bram77:

I'd suggest going with Hack_Kid's Upstart solution - easier to understand and it works: loads properly on startup + restarts XBMC if killed or crashed.

What I did is the following:

-- replaced /etc/init/xbmc.conf with Hack_Kid's find:

Code:

# xbmc-upstart
# starts XBMC on startup using xinit and the startx command. Runs as xbmc as user
description     "XBMC-barebones-upstart-script"
author          "Matt Filetto"

start on (filesystem and stopped udevtrigger)

stop on runlevel [016]

# tell upstart to respawn the process if abnormal exit
respawn

script
  exec su -c "startx /usr/bin/xbmc --standalone :0" xbmc
end script

-- deleted /usr/bin/runXBMC
-- deleted /home/xbmc/.xsession

I kept the following in place since I don't see that symlink doing any harm for legacy purposes.

Code:

sudo ln -s /lib/init/upstart-job /etc/init.d/xbmc
sudo sh -c 'echo "allowed_users=anybody" >> /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config'

Thanks all.

[Hack_kid]

yeah just for refernce you can change startx to xinit and it works as well

[Bram77]

Thanks people. That looks a lot cleaner then the current upstart method. The script is becoming more mature every week thanks to you.
I'm extremely busy at the moment (I have my own little company and it's going very well). I'll replace the current upstart method with the new one this weekend.

---

@uNiversal: I will have another look at the CIR support for the ASROCK ION 330, but I can't promise anything. What you're asking is very specific for this hardware. There are probably some people that still use the ION330 (I'm one of them), but on the other hand it's relatively old and a lot of those people won't be using the internal IR receiver.

I should have an external USB IR receiver or two laying around somewhere. If I can find it I'll send it to you. What country do you reside in? I'm not using it anyway. But if I can't find them... these thinks cost almost nothing and are universal. Any remote will work with as good as any receiver.

[Jbravo]

Some question about X and the start up scripts, still using the old init.d script but I will give the new startup script a try.

- Normally X is started on tty7, but in this case XBMC starts on tty1 on boot. But if XBMC is manually stopped/started (etc/init.d/xbmc stop), XBMC ends up in tty7 as expected. Why is that?

- When XBMC is stopped either with "exit" within XBMC or via etc/init.d/xbmc stop, X seems to still be running on the tty (tty1 in my case). When XBMC is started again (on tty7), the login prompt becomes visible on tty1. Preferred behaviour would be that when XBMC is stopped, X is stopped and the normal login prompt becomes available directly. Perhaps someone can manage to fix this?

You can switch between the different tty's with ctrl+alt f1-f6.

If you don't need all tty's you could easily disable them, and save some memory and some ms on boot. Just do:

Code:

#sudo mv /etc/init/tty6.conf  /etc/init/tty6.conf.bak

[Bram77]

Thanks for point that out Jbravo. It's a subject I've never done anything with yet. I'll see what I can do with it asap

[Jbravo]

BTW I'm currently running a dual boot system (Atom/ION2), Ubuntu Minimal (obviously) and Win7 Home x64.

Boot times, from Grub to XMBC started;
Ubuntu ~30s,
Win 7 ~50s

[Bram77]

Ubuntu minimal will always boot faster then any windows installation. But 30 sec is quite a lot longer then it takes on my ION1 system. Maybe because I use a SSD drive?

[Jbravo]

Well, the SSD may have some impact on the boot time

[Hack_kid]

yeah dude its the solid state

---

heres finished version with user variable and i got rid of startx since xinit does the same thing ?

Code:

# xbmc-upstart
# starts XBMC on startup by using xinit.
# by default runs as xbmc, to change edit below.
env USER=xbmc

description     "XBMC-barebones-upstart-script"
author          "Matt Filetto"

start on (filesystem and stopped udevtrigger)
stop on runlevel [016]

# tell upstart to respawn the process if abnormal exit
respawn

script
  exec su -c "xinit /usr/bin/xbmc --standalone :0" $USER
end script