[olympia]

Finally, as promised recently, I put together a step-by-step guide on how do I got almost everything working on my ASUS P5N7A-VM, using XBMC Live as a base. Please note, that I am far not a Linux pro by any means, so all these are based on some basic Linux knowledge, endless readings of XBMC and ubuntu forums, and a lot of hands-on trying.

With motherboard, equipped with an E7300 C2D CPU, I am able to play killa sample with only 10-13 frame drops at the begining, so I don’t think overclocking to ~3Ghz is necessery.

Features are working:
- AUDIO over SPDIF or HDMI (including navigation sounds, stereo MP3s, DTS, etc)
- Automatically adjust refresh rate according to the refresh rate of the movie
- Plugins (finally)
- CPU Scaling
- Optional usplash change

Remaining issues:
- Suspend is not working (that would require new kernel)
- Shutdown splash is collapsed on this board, but this is the same with standard ubuntu installation as well (didn't find the reason yet)
- because of the 2GB space limit on XBMC Live root partition, XBMC rebuild from SVN is possible only once (after we install ASLA upgrade, there will be no space any more to do an other compilation of XBMC)

STEP1
Download and install XBMC Live 8.10 (I installed to an USB stick, but I would assume, the belows can be used in case of HDD install as well).

STEP2
Download the newest nvidia linux driver from nvidia.com (the file name is „NVIDIA-Linux-x86-177.82-pkg1.run” today)

STEP3
Download ALSA upgrade script (AlsaUpgrade-1.0.x-rev-1.15.tar) from here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=962695

STEP4
Untar the ALSA upgrade sript somehow (eg. Total Commander has a built in feature for this), than you will get a file, named: AlsaUpgrade-1.0.x-rev-1.15.sh

STEP5
Make a new dir and name it „install” on the flash drive and copy over the freshly downloaded nvidia driver and ALSA upgrade srcipt into this dir.

STEP6
Copy over the syslinux.cfg (follow in a separate post) to the root of the flash drive to avoid the need of choosing nvidia manually in XBMC Live boot menu.

If you also want to change the splash screen:

STEP7
Download the choosen one, most probably from duduke. His blog is here

STEP8
Make a subdir in the above created "install" dir and name it to "splash". Unzip the downloaded splash zip into this folder.

STEP9
Boot into XBMC Live, than quit from XBMC (choose exit XBMC in the shutdown menu)
login on the console or ssh in remotely as per your convinience, using the user/pass: xbmc/xbmc

First of all, update the repos, and install all prerequisites using:

STEP10

Code:

#sudo apt-get update

STEP11

Code:

#sudo apt-get install make g++-4.1 gcc-4.1 libsdl1.2-dev libsdl-image1.2-dev libsdl-gfx1.2-dev libsdl-mixer1.2-dev libsdl-sound1.2-dev libsdl-stretch-dev libfribidi0 libfribidi-dev liblzo1 liblzo-dev libfreetype6 libfreetype6-dev libsqlite3-0 libsqlite3-dev libogg-dev libasound2-dev python-sqlite libglew1.5 libglew1.5-dev libcurl3-dev g++ gawk x11proto-xinerama-dev libxinerama-dev libxrandr-dev libxrender-dev pmount libmad0-dev libtre-dev libogg-dev libvorbis-dev libmysqlclient15-dev libhal1 libhal-dev libhal-storage1 libhal-storage-dev libpcre3-dev subversion libjasper-dev libjasper1 libfontconfig-dev libbz2-dev libboost-dev libtool nasm libfaac-dev libenca-dev automake cmake libxt-dev libxmu-dev gperf unzip libpng12-dev libjpeg62-dev bison libpulse-dev wget build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

Obviously it is a bit long to type in from the console, that’s why it would be more convinient to use ssh for that. (than you can use copy-paste). (I tried to use build dependencies from the repo, but I have difficulties with that, that’s why I recommend this manual way)

To upgrade nvidia driver:

STEP12

Code:

#sudo sh /mnt/install/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-177.82-pkg1.run

In the nvidia installer: accept the Licence agreement, choose „YES” for „No precompiled kernel interface...”, choose „OK” for „No matching precompiled kernel interface...”, than choose „NO” to update X configuration file, than finally „OK” again at the end.

To update XBMC to the latest SVN

STEP13

Code:

#cd $HOME

STEP14

Code:

#svn checkout https://xbmc.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/xbmc/branches/linuxport/XBMC

Accept the certificate permanetly with „P”
Wait for downloading XBMC source files, might be long time, depend on your Internet connection. After it downloaded:

STEP15

Code:

#cd XBMC

STEP16

Code:

#./configure --prefix=/usr

STEP17

Code:

#make –j2 [b](use only „make” in case you don’t have a dualcore CPU)[/b]

This is again, can takes a bit more of time, depend on your CPU speed. After it has compiled:

You have to preserve a file from the original XBMC Live system directory in order to have python (plugin) capabilities later:

STEP18

Code:

#sudo mv /usr/share/xbmc/system/python/python24.zip /mnt/install

STEP19

Code:

#sudo rm -r /usr/share/xbmc

STEP20

Code:

#sudo make install

STEP21

Code:

#sudo mv /mnt/install/python24.zip /usr/share/xbmc/system/python/

You will need to delete the source files (free up some disk space for next steps)

STEP22

Code:

#sudo rm -r /home/xbmc/XBMC

Now it’s a good time to an interim check if everything went OK, so reboot the system:

STEP23

Code:

#sudo reboot

STEP24
After the reboot, go to the shutdown menu in XBMC and check system info for compilation date. If it’s today, than you updated successfully.

STEP25
Than quit from XBMC (choose exit XBMC in the shutdown menu) again and log in, as in the very begining. To check if nvidia driver update was OK:

Code:

#grep -i "x driver" /var/log/Xorg.0.log

You will see the driver version here.

I hope, everything is fine, than we can continue with the ALSA upgrade.

To upgrade ALSA and enable digital (SPDIF or HDMI sound):

STEP26

Code:

#sudo /mnt/install/AlsaUpgrade-1.0.x-rev-1.15.sh -d

STEP27

Code:

#sudo /mnt/install/AlsaUpgrade-1.0.x-rev-1.15.sh -snap

STEP28

Code:

#sudo /mnt/install/AlsaUpgrade-1.0.x-rev-1.15.sh -i

Now, you have to edit the following file, using nano for example:

STEP29

Code:

#sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

and add this line to the end:

Code:

options snd-hda-intel model=6stack-dig

than run alsamixer:

STEP30

Code:

#alsamixer

Note that you should see Alsamixer v1.0.18 in the title.
Navigate right with cursor keys until IEC958 and unmute all of them (IEC958, IEC958-D, IEC958-1) with „M” key. You should see in case of all IEC958 a „00” in green background. Press „ESC” to quit from alsamixer.

If you wish to enable CPU scaling feature:

First of all, don’t forget to enable it in the BIOS

STEP31

Code:

#sudo apt-get powernowd

Reboot the computer:

STEP32

Code:

#sudo reboot

STEP33
After booted into XBMC switch to „digital” audio output, than choose the AC3 and DTS capabilities according to your receiver.
For SPDIF: leave audio output device: default and passthrough on IEC958
For HDMI: change both audio output device and passthrough to hdmi (you will loose analog sound eg. navigation sound in case of hdmi)

Configure xorg.conf for proper modes to benefit from auto refresh:

STEP34
This is not an easy part and can differ from display to display.
In my case I configured 3 modes for my FullHD plazma screen, I post the result in a separete post. If you a properly working xorg.conf, than just copy it over to the „config” dir of your flash drive and you are done.

If you want to change the splash screen (thanks to erix):

STEP35

Code:

#cd /mnt/install/splash/

STEP36

Code:

#sudo apt-get install libusplash-dev

STEP37

Code:

#sudo make

STEP38

Code:

#cp /mnt/initrd0.img /mnt/install/splash

STEP39

Code:

#mv initrd0.img initrd0.gz

STEP40

Code:

#sudo gunzip initrd0.gz

STEP41

Code:

#mkdir tmp

STEP42

Code:

#cd tmp

STEP43

Code:

#sudo cpio -id < ../initrd0

STEP44

Code:

sudo cp /mnt/install/splash/xbmc-splash.so usr/lib/usplash/usplash-artwork.so

If you want to change to resolution of the splash, than
STEP45

Code:

sudo nano etc/usplash.conf

change the resolution and save the file.

STEP46

Code:

#find . | cpio --create --format='newc' > ../initrd0

STEP47

Code:

cd ..

STEP48

Code:

#sudo gzip initrd0

STEP49

Code:

#mv initrd0.gz initrd0.img

STEP50

Code:

#sudo mv initrd0.img /mnt/

STEP50

Code:

#sudo cp xbmc-splash.so /usr/lib/usplash/XBMC-theme.so

Now, as a cleanup, you might want to delete the temp, source dirs:

STEP51

Code:

#sudo rm -r /mnt/install/

STEP52

Code:

#sudo rm -r /usr/src/Alsa-1.0.18a/