[Zxurian]

I'm setting up xbmcbuntu on a virtual box to play with settings before I install into my actual media centers.
Machine has the following settings:

Memory: 4096MB Ram
Chipset: ICH9
Extended Features: IO APIC
Processors: 2, PAE/NX Enabled
Virtualization: VT-x/AMD-V, Nested Paging; both enabled
Video Memory: 64MB
Monitor count: 1
3d acceleration enabled

I can boot to the xbmcbuntu rc3 distro, and it will install, fine. reboot, the xbmc media center loading screen appears, then xbmc frodo splash screen appears, but switches between that and a blue desktop a few times, then I'm back to a login screen.

if I type the account password and login, then it just switches betwen the xbmc splash screen and the blue background again a few times, and dumps me back to the login screen.

Is this an issue with RC3, or the fact that I'm loading it on a virtualbox?

[nickr]

doesn't work in virtualbox - no video acceleration. I did get it to work in vmware (linux host).

If you want to try it, install to a usb thumb drive - 4G or bigger. It will be wiped.

[Zxurian]

doesn't work in virtualbox - no video acceleration. I did get it to work in vmware (linux host).

If you want to try it, install to a usb thumb drive - 4G or bigger. It will be wiped.

hm.. thanks for the info.
As far as the USB method, If I run from USB, does the USB act as the file system? ie, if I make changes while it's running, are the saved to the USB so that if I use that same drive and boot to it again, the changes will keep?

[nickr]

yes that's right. I found it pretty slow, and not a permanent solution IMHO. However it certainly gives you a chance to try on several systems.

Personally I booted the iso in virtualbox and installed to a usb drive which had been passed through to virtualbox. Then put the usb drive into my existing htpc and booted from it.

I added my movies source and updated the library. This was very IO bound with load average around 5 with high wait states (ie waiting for disk IO). Probably not a good usb device.

Anyway this does work Playback was fine. Gave me a chance to test frodo on the actual HTPC without disturbing the current setup.

EDIT: 1 more thing, I found that if I booted the iso into xbmcbuntu live session the "install ubuntu" button did nothing, but the install option immediately after iso boot worked fine.

[jelabarre59]

None of this helps. I don't *have* my potential mediacenter box hooked up at the moment, so my only option is to run inside a VM (for looking at some features and looking at config settings, not actually running as a mediacenter from the VM). I'm not going to even bother hooking up the MC if XBMC isn't going to do what I need anyway, so I want to try this out from my regular system beforehand.

[nickr]

Well install XBMC on your regular system then.

Or if you are unsure what XBMC will and won't do - ask!

[jelabarre59]

Well, I'm actually doing regular work on my primary system, so a little hard to test out the interface if I still need the Mate desktop up. Thus why I wanted to bring XBMC up in VirtualBox, just to look at the layout, plugins, etc. One thing in particular I had wanted to find was if I can bring up a web browser from within the interface (sometimes I might want to bring up NickJr or PBSkids without having to log out and back in). The system will have to do double duty.

[nickr]

You can hack XBMCbuntu to bring up a browser, but the XBMC session is designed without a window manager. XBMC is the only gui program running. So to run a browser you need to bring up, eg, openbox then the browser. Possible, there are plenty of threads on Chrome Browser addon in the forums.

Anyway, you can do what you want in vmware, no problems when I last tried it. I have also now had XBMC working in virtualbox, I will look at my settings tonight if you like. I think it is a matter of giving enough video ram and setting 2d and/or 3d acceleration.

[nickr]

As always of course, keyboard/remote control of the browser will be an issue.

[un1versal]

Depending on the host hardware, i.e. some beefy cpu, you dont really need hardware acceleration to play any file types/resolutions etc all the way up to 1080p, I have it setup for test only on my PC with i7 (not HTPC) and it playsback all files my htpc does, though not via GPU, and unless you need some fancy GPU feature as long as the virtualbox tools are installed, -- even the experimental 3D acceleration does have pretty nifty results.

[nickr]

Come to think of it the installation of the virtualbox extensions are needed, quite right there.