Archive:Install Kodi on Fedora 26 using RPMFusion packages
Installing | Linux | Install Kodi on Fedora 26 using RPMFusion packages |
This page presents an approach to turning a minimal installation of Fedora 25 into a standalone Kodi 17.x (Krypton) installation, with minimal additional software / overhead. The Kodi packages available from RPMFusion are used as the basis for this setup. At the end of this guide you will have a set-top box style of system that, when powered up, will quickly boot and then start Kodi automatically without intervention (e.g. no need to first log in).
Current State of This Guide
As of November 30th, 2016, this guide was recently updated (to Fedora 25 and to Kodi 17.x Krypton). It works on the author's system, but more widespread testing by the community is desired before the guide can be labeled "complete".
This guide has been author-tested on the following hardware/software:
OS | Fedora 25 Server (x86_64) |
---|---|
Kodi | Kodi v17.0 Beta 5 (Isengard) from the rpmfusion-free-updates repository |
Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H (rev 3.0) |
CPU | AMD A6-5400K dual-core 3.8GHz 65W |
Memory | Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz PC12800 |
Graphics | Asus ENGT240 Silent GT240 fanless PCI-E 2.0 card |
Disk | Western Digital 1TB 7200RPM Black HDD |
Case | Antec Fusion Remote Black HTPC Case |
Receiver | Denon AVR-3808ci |
TV | Panasonic 50" VIERA TH-50PZ800U Plasma |
Assumptions
- This guide assumes you have at least a slight familiarity with Linux in general. If you know what a Bash shell is, can cut-and-paste commands, and are comfortable editing files with VI or Emacs, then you should be fine.
- It is assumed that Kodi will be installed into a freshly-installed Fedora 25 Server (x86_64) environment that was set up with no additional software specified. If you already have such an environment then you can skip the steps showing how to do a fresh-install of Fedora.
- This guide was written with the use of an nVidia-based graphics card in-mind, (tested with an Asus ENGT240 Silent GT240 fanless PCI-E 2.0 card). If you have an AMD, Intel or other graphics solution, then either skip the nVidia-specific steps or substitute your own. Also, this guide covers replacing the open-source Nouveau (open-source) video drivers that come included in Fedora with closed-source binary drivers drivers from nVidia (as obtained from Negativo17's nVidia repository) for improved performance. You can skip this if you'd prefer, although your performance mileage may vary.
- It is assumed that audio will be passed via the HDMI port on your video card / motherboard to your TV / sound-system. Kodi can certainly handle other methods of passing audio, however those are beyond the scope of this article.
- Everything is done with the goal of minimizing how many software packages / dependencies are required. For example, since Kodi will be run as a fullcreen application, there is no need for heavyweight desktop environments such as Gnome and KDE, and all the apps/clutter they introduce.
- In order to make things simpler, this guide disables both SELinux and the local firewalld daemon. Ensure that the system is adequately protected by things like your internet router's firewall, and encrypted/passworded WiFi (you DO have your WiFi protected, right?...)
- As of release 25, Fedora comes in three flavours: Workstation, Server, and Atomic. This guide installs the Server edition (with no additional software specified) in order to get the leanest, most minimal install possible. At the time of writing, when tested this installation consumed approximately 410MB of memory (excluding buffers / cache) when playing a 1080p 5.1-channel video. The full installation including Fedora, Kodi and a modest library of thumbnails/artwork consumed about 9GB of disk space. For the purposes of testing, a 20GB partition was used.
Installing Fedora 25
Obtaining the Fedora 25 Server (x86_64) Installation Image
Visit the Fedora 25 (Server) download page at https://getfedora.org/en/server/download/ , and click the download button to start your download. Once your download has completed, burn the .iso image you just downloaded to a DVD. It's also possible to create an installable USB flash drive with this ISO and install from it, or even to perform a network install without having any local DVD media, but these are outside the scope of this guide.
Configure How Fedora will be Installed
Boot from the DVD you just created. If necessary, bring up your BIOS's boot-menu by pressing <F12> (or whatever your BIOS uses) to select booting from your optical drive. When the DVD boots you will be shown a text-menu with several options. Select "Install", and proceed. The system will then boot up into Fedora's graphical installer (Anaconda). Choose your desired keyboard layout and language, and proceed. You will then be shown Anaconda's main installation screen, similar to this:
You can make whatever choices you like for everything in the LOCALIZATION and SYSTEM sections.
Ensure that the INSTALLATION SOURCE section is set to Local Media. If not then click to enter it, and change it accordingly.
Within the SOFTWARE SELECTION section:
- Ensure that Base Environment in the left-pane is set to Fedora Custom Operating System (equivalent to Minimal Install in previous Fedora versions).
- Ensure that none of the add-ons in the right-hand pane are selected.
When correctly set, this screen should look as follows:
Starting the Installation and Creating a Kodi User
When finished setting up all desired installation options, Begin the install.
During installation, set the password for user root by clicking ROOT PASSWORD). You should also create the non-privileged user that Kodi will run as - click USER CREATION. You can choose whatever full-name / username / password you'd like; this guide assumes a username of 'kodi'. When creating this account, check Make this user administrator. (Note: This user isn't granted superuser rights directly; rather it can run privileged commands via tools such as sudo.)
The User Creation screen should looks as follows:
Once you've finished with these two settings, installation will continue. The installation screen should look similiar to:
Rebooting into Fedora
When the installation has completed, remove the installation DVD and click REBOOT to restart the system. The system should reboot and reach a textmode console login screen, as shown below. If you reach this point then you've successfully finished a minimal install of Fedora 25.
Configuring Fedora / Installing Dependencies
Now that Fedora is installed, some configuration needs to be performed, and some dependencies need to be installed and configured.
A Quick Note About DNF vs YUM, Updating Packages To Latest Versions, and Rebooting
Perform a full update of all installed packages (including the kernel if necessary).
sudo dnf update
When you're ready, reboot the system after these steps have completed for changes to take effect (especially any Kernel updates that may have happened).
sudo systemctl reboot
Setting SELinux to Permissive Mode, and Disabling Firewalld
SELinux is a part of the kernel that enforces access control over many parts of the system, including filesystems, processes, sockets, etc. Although Kodi can be made to operate with SELinux active, that is beyond the scope of this guide. Instead, SELinux left active but set to permissive mode. It could also be completely deactivated, but then the entire filesystem would require re-labeling should you later decide to turn SELinux back on.
Firewalld is the local firewall daemon that is included by-default with recent Fedora releases. Because it can interfere with things such as uPnP, file-sharing, remote-control apps, etc., firewalld is disabled in this guide.
Terminate firewalld if it is running, and then remove it from the system permanently. This will also trigger removal of some additional, dependent packages, which are not necessary to the operation of Kodi.
sudo systemctl stop firewalld sudo dnf remove firewalld
Next, reconfigure SELinux to change its policy from enforcing to permissive.
sudo sed --in-place=.bak 's/^SELINUX\=enforcing/SELINUX\=permissive/g' /etc/selinux/config
You will need to reboot afterwards for these two changes to completely take effect.
sudo systemctl reboot
Enable Use Of the RPMFusion Repository
RPMFusion is a set of 3rd-party repositories providing legally redistributable software (including Kodi) which, for one reason or another, is not included in Fedora distributions. This includes a free repository containing open-source software, and a non-free' repository containing redistributable software that is not open-source. Only the free repository is required by Kodi. The release, updates, and updates-testing variants of the free repository for Fedora 25 will be installed and enabled.
sudo dnf install --nogpgcheck \ http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled rpmfusion-free-updates-testing
(nVidia) Install Closed-Source Binary nVidia Drivers
Although the open-source Nouveau drivers that come with Fedora have made great strides recently, the closed-source binary drivers from nVidia still offer better performance/features. There are a variety of places to obtain these binary drivers, including from RPMFusion, however this guide shows how to install them from the Negativo17 nVidia repository.
Enabling the Legacy 340.x nVidia Driver Repository
sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo http://negativo17.org/repos/fedora-nvidia-340.repo
Enabling the Short-Lived nVidia Driver Repository
sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo http://negativo17.org/repos/fedora-nvidia.repo
Installing the Selected nVidia Driver
The following will install your selected nVidia drivers along with VDPAU (hardware-accelerated video decoding and postprocessing) support.
sudo dnf install \ nvidia-driver \ nvidia-settings \ kernel-devel \ dkms-nvidia \ libva-utils \ libva-vdpau-driver \ vdpauinfo
Install Basic X-Windows Support
Kodi requires a functioning X-Windows Server to be present on the system it runs on. However, since it typically runs in fullscreen mode without any X-Windows decorations, it does not require any desktop environments such as Gnome or KDE; It also does not require their display managers (GDM and KDM respectively). In this guide, only a basic X-Windows system is installed.
The following commands install a basic X-Windows setup.
sudo dnf groupinstall "base-x" sudo sh -c 'if dnf list installed nvidia-driver | grep -q fedora-nvidia-340; then dnf --releasever=24 downgrade xorg-x11-server-Xorg --allowerasing; fi'
(nVidia) Removing the Nouveau Driver
Next, remove the open-source Nouveau driver, now that it has been superceded by the closed-source binary nVidia driver.
sudo dnf remove xorg-x11-drv-nouveau
Enabling Kodi Audio and Accelerated Video Within X-Windows
In order for the Kodi user-account to be able to use produce audio and accelerated video within the X-Windows system, it must be added to the audio and video user-groups.
sudo usermod kodi -a -G audio sudo usermod kodi -a -G video
Installing Kodi And Configuring It To Run Automatically
Installing Kodi from the RPMFusion repository
The following command actually installs Kodi from the RPMFusion repository. Any dependencies that Kodi requires but are not yet installed will also be included automatically.
sudo dnf install kodi
Create Systemd Service File For X-Windows / Kodi
By default Fedora uses Systemd to manage services and daemons. The following creates a Systemd service file that, once enabled, will cause the system to autostart X-Windows as well as Kodi as a standalone, fullscreen application whenever the system is booted. Because it is a manually-customized service file that was not installed as part of any package, it gets placed in "/etc/systemd/system" instead of "/lib/systemd/systemd".
sudo bash -c 'cat <<"ENDcat" >/etc/systemd/system/kodi.service [Unit] Description = kodi-standalone using xinit After = remote-fs.target systemd-user-sessions.service [Service] User = kodi Group = kodi PAMName = login Type = simple ExecStart = /usr/bin/xinit /usr/bin/dbus-launch /usr/bin/kodi-standalone -- :0 -nolisten tcp Restart = on-abort [Install] WantedBy = multi-user.target ENDcat'
Install DBUS addon for X-Windows
X-Windows requires that an addon be installed in order to become DBUS-aware, which in-turn is required in order for Kodi to be properly started at boot-time. This step provides the /usr/bin/dbus-launch tool within in the Systemd service file from the previous step.
sudo dnf install dbus-x11
Load and Enable New Systemd Service File
Now that the new Systemd service file has been created, Systemd needs to rescan its configuration to pick up the new file. Afterwards, the service is enabled for future reboots.
sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo systemctl enable kodi
Reconfigure PolicyKit To Enable Poweroff, Suspend and Similiar Functions
In order for Kodi to be able to poweroff the system, enter suspend-mode or initiate hibernation, a PolicyKit Local Authority configuration file needs to be created.
sudo bash -c 'cat <<"ENDcat" >/etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/kodi_shutdown.pkla [Actions for kodi user] Identity=unix-user:kodi Action=org.freedesktop.devicekit.power.*;org.freedesktop.upower.*;org.freedesktop.consolekit.system.*;org.freedesktop.login1.* ResultAny=yes ENDcat'
Install UPower
UPower (formerly DeviceKit-power) facilitates managing power devices attached to the system. It is what allows Kodi to actually manipulate power-related functions such as shutting everything down.
sudo dnf install upower
Configure Xwrapper To Allow Non-Console Users To Start X-Server
In order for the X-Windows server to be started by a non-console user such as the Kodi account, a new Xwrapper configuration must be created. Also set the appropriate file permissions on the new configuration.
sudo bash -c 'cat <<"ENDcat" >/etc/X11/Xwrapper.config allowed_users = anybody ENDcat' sudo chmod 644 /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config
All Finished, and Last Tips
If all has gone well thus far, then the next time you restart the system it should boot all the way into Kodi (fullscreen standalone) without needing to log in first, or perform any other intervention. At this point you should be able to commence configuring your minimal Kodi install as desired. Enjoy!
- As previously mentioned, this method of installing Kodi avoids the need to log into the system for normal operation. However you may still reach the system remotely via SSH, whether or not Kodi is running at the time.
- If you have remotely accessed the system, then Kodi can be easily started / stopped with the following two commands (run as user kodi):
sudo systemctl start kodi
sudo systemctl stop kodi