OpenElec

[Just17]

I ran my first successful version of XBMC today ........  live from a USB stick!

I must say I was impressed.

http://openelec.tv/get-openelec

Graphics looked good ....  even on a large screen TV ....  out of box.

All from a 150MB OS ......  now that is impressive for what it does.

Maybe it is time to think about building a dedicated box with Sat & DTT tuners .....

[gandy]

I stumbled upon that a few weeks ago. I haven't installed it on my HTPC yet because I have XBMC running on it in WinXP. Since it's working for you, I may just take a chance on it.

[Just17]

I stumbled upon that a few weeks ago. I haven't installed it on my HTPC yet because I have XBMC running on it in WinXP. Since it's working for you, I may just take a chance on it.

It was my first working XBMC and i ran it live on the test PC and a laptop, so I did not do anything much with it ....  but it worked!

Be sure to grab the OS image to suit your hardware.

Please let us know what results you get and how it compares with what you are running  

[gandy]

I think I have the correct image. I didn't know it would run live. I thought it had to be installed. I will report back when I know more. 

[Just17]

I think I have the correct image. I didn't know it would run live. I thought it had to be installed. I will report back when I know more.  

To run it live I created two partitions on a USB stick - both ext3 in my case. The first about 400MB (250MB should be sufficient) and the second the rest of available space.
The second partition is used to contain files to be played ....  audio, video etc.
I put Grub files on the first partition and installed it to the MBR.
I copied the OpenElec files to this partition.

The menu.lst entry looks like this

Code: [Select]

 title OpenElec
  root (hd0,0)
  kernel (hd0,0)/KERNEL boot=UUID=39546ab1-c19d-4897-9426-931047895b87 disk=UUID=fd1234a6-1d2d-485f-9492-cd90e258fb13
Your UUIDs would of course be different.

That was it I think .....  I had followed some instructions prior to this which did not work for me .....  and even used the installer that comes with it, but for some reason the USB stick was not recognised as bootable.
That may have been caused by the 'mbr.bin' or some other reason.
So I reverted to what I am familiar with, used Grub as above, and this worked well.

[gandy]

Well, I did try to boot off the USB stick only to find that the old IBM won't boot from USB. It is about 10 years old so I shouldn't be surprised.

I could do a manual install but I think I'll leave it like it is for now since it's working fine the way it is. I don't use it much anyway.

Thanks for the info.

[Just17]

Well, I did try to boot off the USB stick only to find that the old IBM won't boot from USB. It is about 10 years old so I shouldn't be surprised.

I could do a manual install but I think I'll leave it like it is for now since it's working fine the way it is. I don't use it much anyway.

Thanks for the info.

OK 

There is a method --- if you are determined -- to boot the USB stick using a floppy diskette or CD.

[Just17]

I have intermittently used Openelec on my 'soon to be' PVR (I hope).

Initially I used it from USB stick, but later put it on the HDD.
Putting it on the HDD was very simple .....  copy two files (KERNEL and SYSTEM) from the downloaded image to the partition and create a menu.lst entry pointing to the KERNEL and also specifying another partition for the configuration files which are stored in hidden directory  .xmbc.

I have though become somewhat fed up with the limitations of Openelec .....  so I think I might use a more complete Linux running XMBC instead .....  in the future.

I miss being able to do other things, like multicast live TV from the DTT tuner and some other things too.

Openelec is designed for embedded use, and therefore runs, as best I can describe it,  'live with persistence'.

It is too difficult to install other packages I might want, so not for me I think.

Also, with the tvheadend package installed to manage the DTT tuner stuff it must be administered from a separate PC.

So my view is that this is nice, useful, but very limiting.
Great if it suits your requirements out of box, but if you want to do other stuff, it is not suitable IMO.

It would be great for lower spec hardware I guess.