[LINUX] Headless XBMC Backend?

hey all

would it be possible to create an headless xbmc build? with headless i mean, run only tge xbmc core (with web frontend) but without any gfx output...

why you may ask... I use a mips "workstation" (openwrt distro) and want to use this machine as AUDIO server. currently i use mpd, lcd4linux, smpc.. etc. and i works fine - but i think xbmc itself would be a better solution. and i would access my xbmc server with my iphone.

thanks in advance
michu

possible? sure.
if anyone want to waste their time on this? doubt it.

not to mention that xbmc doesn't run on mips

I too would love to be able to install and run XBMC without ever going to use the GUI. Is there maybe an easy way to circumvent the OpenGL driver version query?

I could then just install and start it and use the awesome xbmc remote to have a nice audio server.

Would this be difficult? Is it doable at all? If so, could someone point me in the right direction?

I feel that XBMC is the best media center/server/client software out there and I would love to expand it somehow to multiroom capabilities. Without ANY programming knowlegde the XBMC remote controlling several XBMC clients is the only solution I can manage myself, but for audio only I would love to strip down the server to the absolute minimum (with regards to powerr consumption).

Or does anyone have a different idea how to do this?

If you have no programming experience - I say: forget it, the devs aren't likely to be interested at all.

My full system is <45W decoding 1080p. I'm not sure you're going to get lower than that with any current technology, certainly not by ripping out the GUI. The only valid reason to create an xbmc "server" edition, would be for unified db management. But this is far from a trivial task and no one has showed any real interest in actually doing it.

While I truly enjoy using XBMC for my purposes... if you're going to run a box headless and only use it for playback, might you consider something like forwarding an X session and running songbird or some other music player remotely?

Doing some googling I found this... http://ampache.org/wiki/localplay

ampache is music streaming app that runs on a Linux box and allows you to stream music to anywhere using a variety of interfaces. The localplay feature allows you to play that music on another machine (itself for example) and use winamp or something else to control it.

That might do what you want.

I don't think using XBMC as a web frontend for music playback alone is the best option in your case. It's far more than that.

EDIT: More precisely you install Ampache which allows you to play music on linux boxes running MPD (music player daemon). Apparently default installs of Ampache have that on by default anyway. Then you can use Ampache's web interface, winamp, amarok, etc. to control it. Sounds like the perfect solution...

I believe pulseaudio supports this type of behavior. You could install linux with pulseaudio and xbmc and setup another machine on the network to pickup the audio. I'm not sure of the specifics of how it would work.