Kodi (简体中文)
Kodi (formerly known as XBMC) is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub that can be installed on Linux, OSX, Windows, iOS and Android, featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. These can all be played directly from a CD/DVD, or from the hard-drive. Kodi can also play multimedia from a computer over a local network (LAN), or play media streams directly from the Internet. It can also be used to play and record live TV using a tuner, a backend server and a PVR plugin; more information about this can be found on the Kodi wiki.
Installation
The official stable release can be installed via the kodi package. Alternatively, recent alpha, beta, or RC builds are available from kodi-develAUR[损坏的链接:package not found]. Be sure to review/install optional dependencies listed by pacman to enable additional functionality.
All of the official addons in the kodi-addons group are disabled by default and need to be enabled in Kodi's addon menu after installation.
Running
The kodi package supplies two binaries for two different use cases:
-
/usr/bin/kodi
is meant to be run by any user on an on-demand basis. Use it like any other program on the system. -
/usr/bin/kodi-standalone
is meant to be run as the only graphical application, for example on a HTPC. See #Running standalone for more information.
Running standalone
Using standalone mode is advantageous for several reasons:
- The default
kodi
user is unprivileged and cannot access a shell. - When paired with a systemd unit (or equivalent, see below), this setup makes the box on which kodi is running more like an appliance.
kodi-standalone service
The kodi-standalone-serviceAUR package provides kodi.service
and automatically creates the unprivileged user to run Kodi in standalone mode. Although the correct driver is an assumed dependency, no extra Xorg packages are needed.
Start kodi.service
and enable it to run at boot time.
- If
kodi.service
fails to start, see Xorg#Rootless Xorg. - The home directory for the created
kodi
user is/var/lib/kodi/
.
Xsession with LightDM
- This assumes that a kodi user named
kodi
is on the system and that the following file is present as described. -
lightdm does not pull in an X server as a required dependency, it is optional. The X server listed as an optional dependency (xorg-server-xephyr) does not work when run as root by
lightdm.service
(FS#52067, LightDM Bug 852577). Install xorg-server.
To use LightDM with automatic login, see LightDM#Enabling autologin and LightDM#Enabling interactive passwordless login. Kodi includes kodi.desktop
as xsession.
/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
[Seat:seat0] pam-service=lightdm-autologin autologin-user=kodi autologin-user-timeout=0 user-session=kodi
Socket activation
Socket activation can be used to start Kodi when the user issues a Wakeup command from a remote control app like Kore, or makes a connection to Kodi's html control port. Start listening by starting kodi@user.socket
(replace user with the user running Kodi to be started as).
There are no packaged kodi@.socket
and kodi@.socket
files, one must create them manually. Depending on the setup, one can optionally change the ports in kodi@.socket
.
/etc/systemd/system/kodi@.service
# This fails if the user does not have an X session. [Unit] Description=Launch Kodi on main display Conflicts=kodi.socket [Service] Type=simple Environment=DISPLAY=:0.0 Nice=-1 ExecStart=/usr/bin/su %i /usr/bin/kodi ExecStopPost=/usr/bin/systemctl --no-block start kodi@%i.socket [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
/etc/systemd/system/kodi@.socket
[Unit] Conflicts=kodi@%i.service [Socket] # Unset ListenStream= # Start when receiving a TCP request on the http control port ListenStream=8080 # start when receiving an UDP datagram (Wakeup/WOL) ListenDatagram=9 # do not wait for network # (comment out ListenStream and ListenDatagram lines above) #ListenStream= #ListenStream=0.0.0.0:8080 #ListenDatagram=0.0.0.0:9 #FreeBind=true [Install] WantedBy=sockets.target
Start from remote control with LIRC / irexec
Kodi can be configured to start via a key press. Users will need kodi-standalone-serviceAUR and lirc. This can be useful on setups running 24/7 and having kodi up on demand.
See the corresponding LIRC article and create a functional setup with a remote. Also, the package kodi-standalone-serviceAUR has to be installed.
Generate the file /var/lib/kodi/.lircrc
with the following content:
/var/lib/kodi/.lircrc
begin prog = irexec remote = devinput button = KEY_MEDIA config = pgrep kodi-standalone || /usr/bin/kodi-standalone -l /run/lirc/lircd repeat = 0 end
Adopt button
to whatever button on the remote is to start Kodi. One can use irw (see LIRC#Testing) to find out the correct values for remote
and button
.
Create a drop-in for kodi.service
:
/etc/systemd/system/kodi.service.d/lirc.conf
[Service] ExecStart = ExecStart = /usr/bin/irexec
Start kodi.service
and enable it to run at boot time.
Using a remote control
As Kodi is geared toward being a remote-controlled media center via an official app, physical remote control, or USB/bluetooth keyboard/mouse.
Using the Android or iOS app
Both Android and iOS users can use the official app (currently free of charge) to control kodi once it is correctly setup to do so. Steps to configure both Kodi and the app are detailed on the Official Kodi Remote page.
Using a physical remote control
Any PC with a supported IR receiver/remote, can use LIRC or even kernel supported modules to drive it. Configuring specific remotes with lirc is covered on the LIRC article.
To work properly with Kodi, a file that maps the lirc events to Kodi keypresses is needed. Create an XML file at ~/.kodi/userdata/Lircmap.xml
(note the capital 'L').
kodi
user's home (~
) under /var/lib/kodi/
and should substitute this in for the shortcut above. Also make sure that if creating this file as the root user, it gets proper ownership as kodi:kodi
when finished.Lircmap.xml
format is as follows:
<lircmap> <remote device="devicename"> <XBMC_button>LIRC_button</XBMC_button> ... </remote> </lircmap>
-
Device Name is whatever LIRC calls the remote. This is set using the Name directive in lircd.conf and can be viewed by running
irw
and pressing a few buttons on the remote. IRW will report the name of the button pressed and the name of the remote will appear on the end of the line. - XBMC_button is the name of the button as defined in keymap.xml.
-
LIRC_button is the name as defined in
lircd.conf
. Iflircd.conf
was autogenerated usingirrecord
, these are the names selected for the buttons. Refer back to LIRC for more information. - A very thorough LIRC page hosted on the Kodi Wiki should be consulted for more help and information on this subject as this is out of scope of this article.
HDMI-CEC
With a supported USB-CEC adapter, Kodi can be used to automatically turn on and off the TV and other home theater equipment. Volume control from Kodi can be sent to a supported amplifier, one can manage DVD or Blu-Ray players from inside Kodi, and redirect the active source on the TV to whichever equipment needs it, all from one remote control. For more information see the official Kodi wiki page on CEC and libCEC FAQ.
Install libcec.
When connected, the USB-CEC's /dev
entry (usually /dev/ttyACM*
) will default to being owned by the uucp
group, so in order to use the device the user running Kodi needs to belong to that group. The user also needs to belong to the lock
group, otherwise Kodi will be unable to connect to the device. See Users and groups#Group management for instructions on how to add users to groups.
- Add all users that will use Kodi to the
uucp
andlock
user groups. - If running kodi-standalone, add the user
kodi
to theuucp
andlock
user groups.
Sharing media and a centralized database across multiple nodes
If multiple PCs on the same network are running Kodi, they can be configured to share a single media library (video and music). The advantage of this is media and key metadata are stored in one place, and are shared/updated by all nodes on the network. For example, users of this setup can:
- Stop watching a movie or show in one room then finish watching it in another room automatically.
- Share watched and unwatched status for media on all nodes.
- Simplify the setup with only a single library to maintain.
As well, the media itself can be located in one space thus allowing a lighter footprint of client systems (ie no need for large HDD space).
Several things are needed for this to work:
- Network exposed media (via protocols that Kodi can read, e.g. NFS or Samba).
- A MySQL server.
These assumptions are used for the guide, substitute as needed:
- The media is located under following mount points:
/mnt/shows
/mnt/movies
/mnt/music
. - The network addresses of all nodes are within the 192.168.0.* subnet range.
- The IP address of the machine running both the NFS exports and the MySQL database is 192.168.0.105.
- Each Kodi box is referred to as a node.
- The Linux user running Kodi is 'kodi' on all nodes.
For additional info, refer to the official Kodi wiki.
NFS server export example
This section provides an example using exports, see NFS for install and usage.
Create an empty directory in NFS root for each media directory to be shared. E.g.:
# mkdir -p /srv/nfs/{shows,movies,music}
Bind mount the media directories to the empty directories in /srv/nfs/
.
Setup exports:
/etc/exports.d/kodi.exports
/srv/nfs 192.168.0.0/24(ro,fsid=0,no_subtree_check) /srv/nfs/shows 192.168.0.0/24(ro,no_subtree_check,insecure) /srv/nfs/movies 192.168.0.0/24(ro,no_subtree_check,insecure) /srv/nfs/music 192.168.0.0/24(ro,no_subtree_check,insecure)
Install and setup the MySQL server
See MariaDB for installation and configuration instructions.
To create a database for Kodi, use the following commands:
$ mysql -u root -p <<enter the mysqld root password assigned in the first step>> MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE USER 'kodi' IDENTIFIED BY 'kodi'; MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL ON *.* TO 'kodi'; MariaDB [(none)]> flush privileges; MariaDB [(none)]> \q
Setup Kodi to use the MySQL library and the NFS exports
Since this example makes use of NFS shares, an optional dependency of Kodi is now required to access them. Ensure that each of the Kodi nodes has libnfs installed.
Setup Kodi to use the common MySQL database
To tell Kodi to use the common database, insure that Kodi is not running, then create the following file:
~/.kodi/userdata/advancedsettings.xml
<advancedsettings> <videodatabase> <type>mysql</type> <host>192.168.0.105</host> <port>3306</port> <user>kodi</user> <pass>kodi</pass> </videodatabase> <musicdatabase> <type>mysql</type> <host>192.168.0.105</host> <port>3306</port> <user>kodi</user> <pass>kodi</pass> </musicdatabase> <videolibrary> <importwatchedstate>true</importwatchedstate> <importresumepoint>true</importresumepoint> </videolibrary> </advancedsettings>
/var/lib/kodi/.kodi
and be sure to chown the newly created file to the kodi user and group, i.e. chown -R kodi:kodi /var/lib/kodi
Load Kodi and define the network shares that correspond to the exports by browsing to the following within the interface Video > Files > Add Videos > Browse > Network Filesystem(NFS).
After a few seconds, the IP address corresponding to the NFS server should appear.
Select /srv/nfs/shows
from the list of share and then OK from the menu on the right. Assign this share the category of TV Shows to setup the appropriate scraper and to populate the MySQL database with the correct metadata.
Repeat this browsing process for the "movies" and "music" and then exit Kodi once properly configured. At this point, the MySQL tables should have been created.
Cloning the configuration to other nodes on the network
To set up another Kodi node on the network to use this library, simply copy ~/.kodi/userdata/advancedsettings.xml
to that box and restart Kodi. There is NO need to copy any other files or to do any other setup steps on the new kodi node. The nfs exports, the metadata for the programming, any stop/start times, view status, etc. are all stored in the MySQL tables.
Tips and Tricks
Keep a log of what is watched
Keep track of every video watched on kodi with kodi-loggerAUR.
Speedup video playback (synchronized audio and video) up to 1.5x
To enable speed-up and slow-down with audio/video sync (0.8x - 1.5x) do the following:
- Create the following file that will map the
[
and]
keys to thetempo down
andtempo up
actions, respectively:
~/.kodi/userdata/keymaps/custom.xml
<keymap> <FullscreenVideo> <keyboard> <opensquarebracket>PlayerControl(tempodown)</opensquarebracket> <closesquarebracket>PlayerControl(tempoup)</closesquarebracket> </keyboard> </FullscreenVideo> <VideoMenu> <keyboard> <opensquarebracket>PlayerControl(tempodown)</opensquarebracket> <closesquarebracket>PlayerControl(tempoup)</closesquarebracket> </keyboard> </VideoMenu> </keymap>
- Restart kodi which will read in these changes.
- Navigate to System > Player > Videos > Playback and enable "Sync playback to display" option.
Play some video content and enjoy the ability to adjust the speed using the keys discussed above.
CLI for kodi
-
kodi-eventclients package provides
kodi-send
which can send valid kodi action or kodi function to kodi from the shell.
- texturecacheAUR can handle many aspects of library management, from clean-up of unused images, to searching, to querying what is currently playing.
Hardware video acceleration
Enable and configure Hardware video acceleration to speed up playback performance.
Restart Kodi and enable the hardware backend(s) in Playback under Settings.
Adjusting CD/DVD drive speed
The eject program from the util-linux package does a nice job for this, but its setting is cleared as soon as the media is changed.
This udev-rule reduces the speed permanently:
/etc/udev/rules.d/dvd-speed.rules
KERNEL=="sr0", ACTION=="change", ENV{DISK_MEDIA_CHANGE}=="1", RUN+="/usr/bin/eject -x 2 /dev/sr0"
Replace sr0
with the device name of the optical drive. Replace -x 2
with -x 4
if the preference is 4x-speed instead of 2x-speed.
After creating the file, reload the udev rules with
# udevadm control --reload
Use port 80 for webserver
Kodi has a webservice that allows interaction through a web-interface. By default, it uses port 8080
as 80
requires root privileges. Use the following to permit it to use low port numbers:
# setcap 'cap_net_bind_service=+ep' /usr/lib/kodi/kodi.bin
Restart Kodi and set port 80
in the configuration menu (Services > Webserver > Port).
Using ALSA
If PulseAudio does not work properly, try using ALSA directly by starting Kodi with the AE_SINK=ALSA
environment variable. The Kodi wiki for NUC devices provides instructions
If using kodi-standalone
, change the APP
variable in /usr/bin/kodi-standalone
to
APP="${bindir}/pasuspender -- env AE_SINK=ALSA ${bindir}/${bin_name} --standalone $@"
Audio Passthrough
To allow the receiver to decode the audio by enabling passthrough. This is useful for files encoded in TrueHD or Atmos. If using PulseAudio, follow the instructions at https://kodi.wiki/view/PulseAudio to first enable passthrough in PulseAudio. Then the passthrough options will appear in Kodi. If using ALSA, the passthrough options will appear in Kodi without modifications.
Fix for delayed startup on wifi
If running with WiFi only (wired network unplugged) while #Sharing media and a centralized database across multiple nodes, kodi will likely start before the wireless network is up, which will result in failure to connect to the shares and to the mysql server. Assuming the network is managed by the default systemd-networkd, this can be fixed by using two Systemd#Drop-in files, one for kodi.service
and another for systemd-networkd-wait-online.service
:
# systemctl edit systemd-networkd-wait-online.service [Service] ExecStart= ExecStart=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-networkd-wait-online --ignore eth0
# systemctl edit kodi [Unit] After=remote-fs.target network-online.target Wants=network-online.target
Run kodi in a window manager
Users running kodi in a Window manager may see a black screen at exit. To fix this, try switching to another tty. A possible solution is to run kodi with this script (running as the root user):
kodi.sh
#!/bin/bash kodi-standalone sudo chvt 2 sleep 1 sudo chvt 1
To make sure that sudo does not ask for password for chvt
add this line to sudoers
file:
/etc/sudoers
UserNameHere ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/chvt
USB DAC not working
Users of USB DAC/sound cards may experience distorted sound/clicks/pops or no sound at all when selecting it from Audio settings. A possible fix:
Open guisettings.xml
(it should be under /var/lib/kodi/.kodi/userdata/
if using the supplied kodi.service
) and change
<processquality default="true">101</processquality>
to
<processquality default="false">100</processquality>
Troubleshooting
Accessing Kodi logs
In case of an error the first point to start investigation can be ~/.kodi/temp/kodi.log
.
Fullscreen mode stretches Kodi across multiple displays
For a multi-monitor setup, Kodi may default to stretching across all screens. One can restrict the fullscreen mode to one display by setting the environment variable SDL_VIDEO_FULLSCREEN_HEAD
to the number of the desired target display. For example, having Kodi show up on display 0, add the following line to the Kodi user's ~/.bashrc
configuration:
SDL_VIDEO_FULLSCREEN_HEAD=0
Video tearing on Intel HD Graphics
Users observing tearing when watching a movie try this: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=176651
Try a different X11 compositor like compton[损坏的链接:replaced by picom] as an alternative with Xfce which reduces video tearing. There is no essential need to install the intel driver. A tutorial how to configure compton with Xfce can be found here.
Soft subtitles not displaying
The ffmpeg package is used to extract the subtitles.
H.264 playback is using only a single core
O
during playback to show codec information and CPU usage. More information about this overlay can be found at https://kodi.wiki/view/Codecinfo.If the hardware does not or cannot make use of acceleration, disable it and explicitly set video decoding to software. This is because H.264 decoding is only multithreaded when video decoding is set to software.
To achieve this, go to System Settings > Video. Set the settings level
to Advanced
or Expert
. Then go to Acceleration and set Decoding method
to software
.
Kodi hangs on exit, fully occupying one CPU core, UI unresponsive
This problem can arise with third-party plugins installed, there is some issue with their termination[1],[2].
Workaround: find proper UI description file (DialogButtonMenu.xml
) and tweak exit button type from internal Kodi's Quit()
function call to sending signal from outside system to Kodi. Here is one-liner that makes modifications to any skin from the default Kodi package:
# find /usr/share/kodi/addons/skin.* -name DialogButtonMenu.xml -exec sed -i 's%<onclick>Quit()</onclick>%<onclick>System.Exec ("killall --signal SIGHUP kodi.bin")</onclick>%' {} \;
See also
- Kodi Wiki - Excellent resource with much information about Arch Linux specifically
- Wikipedia:Kodi (software)
- http://www.hdpfans.com/thread-329076-1-1.html - Kodi/xbmc Chinese plug-in library installation method
- https://github.com/taxigps/xbmc-addons-chinese - xbmc-addons-chinese: Addon scripts, plugins, and skins for XBMC Media Center. Special for chinese laguage.