Book Image

Raspberry Pi Media Center

By : Sam Nazarko
Book Image

Raspberry Pi Media Center

By: Sam Nazarko

Overview of this book

<p>Low-cost and high-performing, with a massively diverse range of uses and applications, the Raspberry Pi is set to revolutionize the way we think about computing and programming. Using it as a Media Center allows everyone to have a low-cost device that is always on, attached to their TV. <br /><br />Imagine controlling your TV with your smartphone, dynamically streaming content that you have on various devices across your home, as and when you want. Raspberry Pi Media Center will show you how to configure the complete experience using readily available and accessible tools, so that you too will soon be enjoying your media from the comfort of your own sofa. <br /><br />With this practical guide, you’ll discover how you can transform your Raspberry Pi into a powerful media center. Using Raspbmc (based on the XBMC distribution), you'll be shown how you can deploy and configure your own media center, including coverage of all the essentials from controlling your device with a TV remote or smartphone, to the creation and customization of your very own media library (including the conversion of any existing collection). You'll even be able to stream multimedia from your devices or directly from the Internet!</p>
Table of Contents (17 chapters)

Appendix A. Useful Raspbmc Commands

This will give you a short summary of useful commands that can be executed at the command line in Raspbmc either by an attached keyboard or via an SSH connection.

Shown as follows are some useful commands and a description of the task they achieve. It should be noted that this is not a comprehensive list of commands.

Description of command

Command to run on Raspbmc

Exit to a command line

Select the power icon in XBMC, select Exit, and press Escape on your keyboard

Start XBMC

sudo initctl start xbmc

Stop XBMC

sudo initctl stop xbmc

Reboot your Raspberry Pi

sudo reboot

Check your system log and view it in a scrollable manner

less /var/log/syslog

Upload several logs for diagnostics to Pastebin

helpme

Remove XBMC Nightly Build from startup and revert to the default XBMC build instead

rm /home/pi/.xbmc-current

Check free space available

df -h

Check how long Raspberry Pi has been on for

uptime

Delete a file

rm filename

Copy a file

cp filename newname

Move a file

mv /path/to/filename/path/to/newfilename

Show the contents of a directory

ls -llh /some/folder (substitute)

Execute a command with root privileges

sudo command

View CPU usage

top

View memory information

free -m

Install a package via apt

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install packagename (substitute packagename)

Remove a package previously installed via apt

sudo apt-get remove packagename

Edit a file

nano filename

Save a file after editing with nano

CTRL + O then press Enter to save

CTRL + X to exit

Access XBMC userdata folder

cd /home/pi/.xbmc/userdata

Manually disable Raspbmc updates

touch /home/pi/.noupgrades

Manually enable Raspbmc updates

rm /home/pi/.noupgrades

Change the password

passwd

Change the hostname

hostname newname (substitute newname)

Disable Raspbmc updates via command line

touch /home/pi/.noupgrades

Force a Raspbmc kernel update

sudo rm /scripts/upd_hist/kver

Force an XBMC update

sudo rm /scripts/upd_hist/xbmcver