XBMC LiveUSB (formerly "LiveXBMC") V2 is out

@Topfs2: confirmed that if you have a file called xorg.conf in the root of the USB it will be copied into the live filesystem ato boot and used by Xorg (BTW, I'm l.capriotti)
@djdafreund: try to build LiveXBMC manually using winimage to extract the files from the img file and copy them to the flash disk without reformatting

Hi,

Is it possible to install Envy into the USB version?

"Envy" is an application for Ubuntu Linux and Debian written in Python and PyGTK which will:
1) detect the model of your graphic card (only ATI and Nvidia cards are supported) and install the appropriate driver. However automatic detection can be overridden with the "Manual installation"
2) install the right driver for your card and all the required dependencies
3) configure the Xserver for you

You can find it: http://www.albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html

regards
Jan

you can, but you will need to take into account that in order for EnvyNG to work you need a full build environment; I tried it myself and the additional packages needed 400 MB of additional disk space....
Bottom line: I went for the NVIDIA installer directly and built the binary modules. This means that LiveXBMC kernel can NOT be upgraded via apt-get since Xorg will break, but I found this to be acceptable for a sort of "embedded system"
Nonetheless, if you want to try yourself create a LARGE loopfile, replace the existing ext3fs.img and install whatever is needed.

l.capriotti Wrote:you can, but you will need to take into account that in order for EnvyNG to work you need a full build environment; I tried it myself and the additional packages needed 400 MB of additional disk space....
Bottom line: I went for the NVIDIA installer directly and built the binary modules. This means that LiveXBMC kernel can NOT be upgraded via apt-get since Xorg will break, but I found this to be acceptable for a sort of "embedded system"
Nonetheless, if you want to try yourself create a LARGE loopfile, replace the existing ext3fs.img and install whatever is needed.

That's why I don't use EnvyNG to update the nvidia driver. It's a pig in everything it downloads, builds and installs. I manually remove the restricted driver BS crap and build from the nvidia script. Works every time.

l.capriotti, I don't remember seeing "nvidia-xsettings" on the LiveXBMC. This greatly helps in auto configuring xorg.conf for nvidia cards.

You can do the setup in a ordinary ubuntu live environment and just put the xorg.conf in the root of the USB. (if that helps you)

well I'll be damn... it works perfect on my hardware... good work!!!

(Asus Pundit BareBones, Sempron 3000+, 1GB RAM, geForce 6150)

I did have to copy everything to usb the "old fashioned way" because I don't have any hardware running windows native and the live builder wouldn't work in a vm for some reason. I just fdisk'd the usb drive and created a single fat16 partition, ran mkfs.vfat on the partition and copied the contents of the live image to the device and ran syslinux on it.. wouldn't boot the first time so ran lilo -M on the root of the usb device to fix the boot record.. after that it booted fine..

Ok, just downloaded the img file again to further test. And noticed the extraced image from the 7z file was 518MB, but the other one was only 384MB. So that looks like that was a problem. I searched and found they do have a Winimage version for x64, which i got, but tried with that and still had issues. That's when i re-downloaded.
Now, normally I would've thought to try that 1st, but didn't only since I never got any error's when I extracted the image file (which is the 1st time it's ever successfully extracted an image from a corrupted/uncompleted 7z file), and the same number of files were there even when comparing to the redownloaded 7z image file, so i'm sorry guys. It was my fault on this one. Now i'm trying again.
Thanks for the tip BTW about the 'Just copy over the xorg.conf file made from a normal Ubuntu install onto the USB stick', i may be doing this myself since i have a Geforce 9600 card which only 1 new version nvidia driver works currently, Which only recently got released for Ubuntu.


Update- Yep, it works just fine. 46 seconds from power on too (from USB stick on top of that!!!) Thanks. Well, other then no audio output from my creative X-Fi FPS soundcard, but that's because i have my onboard audio enabled and using also since i use that in windows for Skype with my headset, and my X-Fi card for everything else (games/videos/music), so i think i just have to grab the card info from my normal Ubuntu install so i can change it somehow.
I tried a DVD, plays fine too. Only thing i noticed so far is you can't shut down, shutdown exits XBMC, then shows the nVidia BETA driver screen for a couple seconds again, then runs XBMC again. Not that it's a big deal, power off switch always works, but i prefer not to do that so i don't screw up my data. But how do i properly exit/shutdown with this? And how would i install x desktop (i think that's the default GUI used with Ubuntu 7.10/8.04), so i can update XBMC without having to reboot back into xp just to build a newer svn, or even xbmc update through Ubuntu libraries normally (forgot the name right now.) since i now have 3.2gigs of free space on my 4gig USB stick using this instead of normal Ubuntu install (Hell ya for all that saved drive space). Other normal method Ubuntu install USED about 2.3-2.6gigs out of the 4gigs!!!) BIG DIFFERENCE, thanks again for that. Thats some music and some videos i can use all that space for now on the USB stick itself TO-GO

davilla Wrote:That's why I don't use EnvyNG to update the nvidia driver. It's a pig in everything it downloads, builds and installs. I manually remove the restricted driver BS crap and build from the nvidia script. Works every time.

don't bash tseliot's envyNG, for a normal desktop environment it's a lifesaver!

davilla Wrote:l.capriotti, I don't remember seeing "nvidia-xsettings" on the LiveXBMC. This greatly helps in auto configuring xorg.conf for nvidia cards.

should be there; can't check right now, though

djdafreund Wrote:Only thing i noticed so far is you can't shut down, shutdown exits XBMC, then shows the nVidia BETA driver screen for a couple seconds again, then runs XBMC again.

I remember amending the skin modifying the xml files and including syscalls to shutdown. I may have forgotten to include it in the release, will double check.

Luigi

Tried it on a box with an intel card, i just get a blank screen with an X curor when x windows starts, i can't do anything else... any suggestions?

(--) PCI:*(0:2:0) Intel Corporation 82Q963/Q965 Integrated Graphics Controller rev 2, Mem @ 0xd2900000/20, 0xc0000000/28, I/O @ 0x3410/3