Kodi

Resources

Home

GitHub

Official documentation

Kodi (formerly XBMC) is an open source home theater application.

Installation

USE flags

USE flags for media-tv/kodi A free and open source media-player and entertainment hub

X	Add support for X11
airplay	enable AirPlay support
alsa	Add support for media-libs/alsa-lib (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture)
bluetooth	Enable Bluetooth Support
bluray	Enable playback of Blu-ray filesystems
caps	Use Linux capabilities library to control privilege
cec	Enable support for HDMI-CEC devices via libcec
css	Enable reading of encrypted DVDs
dbus	Enable dbus support for anything that needs it (gpsd, gnomemeeting, etc)
dvd	Enable optical (CD/DVD drive) support
gbm	Use the Graphics Buffer Manager for EGL on KMS.
gles	Enable support for GLES
lcms	Add lcms support (color management engine)
libressl	Use dev-libs/libressl instead of dev-libs/openssl when applicable (see also the ssl useflag)
libusb	Use virtual/libusb for usb device hotplug support. This flag should only be enabled if you're running a non-Linux kernel or you don't want to use sys-fs/udev.
lirc	Enable support for controlling Totem with a remote control using app-misc/lirc
mariadb	Add MariaDB support
mysql	Add mySQL Database support
nfs	Enable NFS client support
opengl	Add support for OpenGL (3D graphics)
pulseaudio	Add support for PulseAudio sound server
raspberry-pi	Enable support for the Raspberry Pi
samba	Add support for SAMBA (Windows File and Printer sharing)
system-ffmpeg	Use system ffmpeg instead of the bundled one
systemd	Enable use of systemd-specific libraries and features like socket activation or session tracking
test	Enable dependencies and/or preparations necessary to run tests (usually controlled by FEATURES=test but can be toggled independently)
udev	Use sys-fs/udev rules to handle devices' permissions and hotplug support. Unless you know what you're doing do not disable this flag on Linux kernels. This is provided as an option for completeness.
udf	Enable UDF support. Required for playing blurays.
udisks	Enable storage management support (automounting, volume monitoring, etc)
upnp	Enable UPnP port mapping support
upower	Enable power management support
vaapi	Enable Video Acceleration API for hardware decoding
vdpau	Enable the Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix acceleration interface
wayland	Enable dev-libs/wayland backend
webserver	Enable internal webserver
xslt	Enable XSLT support using dev-libs/libxslt
zeroconf	Support for DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD)

Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2020-09-20 21:06 More information about USE flags

Emerge

root #emerge --ask media-tv/kodi

Configuration

Create user

First create the kodi user:

root #useradd -m -G audio,cdrom,video,cdrw,usb,users kodi

To add support for HDMI CEC:

root #gpasswd --add kodi dialout

Services

Using lightdm

Emerge

root #emerge --ask x11-misc/lightdm

Configure

FILE /etc/conf.d/xdm

DISPLAYMANAGER="lightdm"

FILE /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

[Seat:*]
autologin-user=kodi
user-session=kodi
session-wrapper=/etc/lightdm/Xsession

Service

OpenRC

Add dbus and xdm to the default runlevel if it needs to be started automatically:

root #rc-update add dbus default

root #rc-update add xdm default

root #rc-service dbus start

root #rc-service xdm start

systemd

root #systemctl enable lightdm

root #systemctl start lightdm

Using inittab

First create the kodi user (see above). This is based on the way the MythTV ebuilds enable the autostart of the MythTV frontend.

Define an .xinitrc file in kodi's home:

FILE /home/kodi/.xinitrc

[ -x /usr/bin/nvidia-settings ] && /usr/bin/nvidia-settings -l
/usr/bin/xset s noblank
/usr/bin/xset s off
/usr/bin/xset -dpms
/usr/bin/evilwm &
exec /usr/bin/kodi

Then create the login scripts:

FILE /home/kodi/.bash_profile

case "`tty`" in
        *tty9) startx; logout ;;
esac

Finally append an inittab entry which does the autologin:

FILE /etc/inittab

# Start Kodi
c9:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty --autologin kodi tty9

Gentoo Hardened

Running Kodi on a Hardened Gentoo installation is possible. To avoid grsecurity interfering with network connectivity, the CONFIG_GRKERNSEC_PROC_USER kernel option must not be enabled.

Should you require a restricted /proc filesystem, use CONFIG_GRKERNSEC_PROC_USERGROUP and set GRKERNSEC_PROC_GID to the ID of a group that the user running Kodi is a member of.

Usage

Shutdown

Allow the kodi user to issue an shutdown via polkit, resulting in a shutdown option in the Kodi menu:

FILE /etc/polkit-1/rules.d/60-kodi.rules

polkit.addRule(function(action, subject) {
        if (( (action.id.indexOf("org.freedesktop.udisks.") == 0) || (action.id.indexOf("org.freedesktop.upower.")== 0) || (action.id.indexOf("org.freedesktop.consolekit.")== 0) ) &&
        subject.user=="kodi") {
        return polkit.Result.YES;
        }
});

Note
Ensure the udev USE flag is set for shutdown to work.

External resources

• Unofficial Kodi Overlay