Setup to Build

Let’s start with the build. The first step is to ensure that we can divert as much power and memory to the compile as possible. In the core Raspbian we did this with the rapsi-config command, but Pisces doesn’t have that control script, so you have to change this manually by replacing the start.elf file with a different one that will change how the system’s resources are allocated. Run this command:

$ sudo cp /boot/arm224_start.elf /boot/start.elf

This will copy the version that allocates 224 MB to system RAM and 32 MB to graphics into the system to be used. Now we need to make this configuration change registered within the system and then reboot so that the changes can take effect by issuing the following two commands:

$ sudo rpi-update
$ sudo reboot

Once your system has rebooted, and you are back up and running, it is best if you upgrade the OS to ensure it is running the latest versions of software. To do this, we will leverage apt-get by telling it to update itself with the latest version of its configuration from the Internet and then upgrade all available packages on your system. To do this, issue the following commands:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

This execution will take a little bit of time because it needs to download, unpack, and replace a large number of system components. So get this up and running and then go have a coffee; it should be done when you return, and you can move on to the next step.

The next step is to install packages to give us the ability to compile; they include the essential build tools, automatic configuration tools, zip and unzip tools, and so on. To install these tools, run the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf ccache gawk gperf mesa-utils zip unzip
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
build-essential is already the newest version.
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libcdio-cdda0 libcdio-paranoia0 libcdio10 libcelt0-0 libdb4.8 librpmio2
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  automake autotools-dev libglew1.7 libsigsegv2
Suggested packages:
  autoconf2.13 autoconf-archive gnu-standards autoconf-doc libtool gettext distcc gawk-doc glew-utils
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  autoconf automake autotools-dev ccache gawk gperf libglew1.7 libsigsegv2 mesa-utils
The following packages will be upgraded:
  unzip zip
2 upgraded, 9 newly installed, 0 to remove and 187 not upgraded.
Need to get 2,647 kB/3,174 kB of archives.
After this operation, 7,143 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

Once you have installed these basic packages, move on to the far bigger install job. We now need to install a number of packages that will install video and decoder libraries and specialized graphics libraries. In addition to all these, you will need to install a few other packages to enable you to connect remotely to the XBMC. This command is very long, so I recommend you download the source code from the Apress website. There is a script within that package that will execute these commands for you. The command to install this giant number of packages is as follows:

$ sudo apt-get install autotools-dev comerr-dev dpkg-dev libalsaplayer-dev 
libapt-pkg-dev libasound2-dev libass-dev libatk1.0-dev 
libavahi-client-dev libavahi-common-dev libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev 
libavutil-dev libbison-dev libbluray-dev libboost1.49-dev 
libbz2-dev libc-dev-bin libc6-dev libcaca-dev libcairo2-dev 
libcdio-dev libclalsadrv-dev libcrypto++−dev libcups2-dev libcurl3-gnutls-dev 
libdbus-1-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libdirectfb-dev libdrm-dev libegl1-mesa-dev 
libelf-dev libenca-dev libept-dev libevent-dev libexpat1-dev libflac-dev 
libfontconfig1-dev libfreetype6-dev libfribidi-dev libgconf2-dev 
libgcrypt11-dev libgdk-pixbuf2.0-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libgles2-mesa-dev 
libglew-dev libglewmx-dev libglib2.0-dev libglu1-mesa-dev 
libgnome-keyring-dev libgnutls-dev libgpg-error-dev libgtk2.0-dev libhal-dev 
libhunspell-dev libice-dev libicu-dev libidn11-dev libiso9660-dev 
libjasper-dev libjbig-dev libjconv-dev libjpeg8-dev libkrb5-dev 
libldap2-dev libltdl-dev liblzo2-dev libmad0-dev libmicrohttpd-dev 
libmodplug-dev libmp3lame-dev libmpeg2-4-dev libmysqlclient-dev 
libncurses5-dev libnspr4-dev libnss3-dev libogg-dev libopenal-dev 
libp11-kit-dev libpam0g-dev libpango1.0-dev libpcre++−dev libpcre3-dev 
libpixman-1-dev libpng12-dev libprotobuf-dev libpthread-stubs0-dev 
libpulse-dev librtmp-dev libsamplerate0-dev 
libsdl-image1.2-dev libsdl1.2-dev libslang2-dev 
libsm-dev libsmbclient-dev libspeex-dev 
libsqlite3-dev libssh-dev libssh2-1-dev libssl-dev libstdc++6-4.6-dev 
libtagcoll2-dev libtasn1-3-dev libtiff4-dev libtinfo-dev libtinyxml-dev 
libts-dev libudev-dev libv8-dev libva-dev libvdpau-dev 
libvorbis-dev libvpx-dev libwebp-dev libwibble-dev 
libx11-dev libx11-xcb-dev libxapian-dev libxau-dev 
libxcb-glx0-dev libxcb-render0-dev libxcb-shm0-dev 
libxcb1-dev libxcomposite-dev libxcursor-dev libxdamage-dev 
libxdmcp-dev libxext-dev libxfixes-dev libxft-dev libxi-dev 
libxinerama-dev libxml2-dev libxmu-dev libxrandr-dev 
libxrender-dev libxslt1-dev libxss-dev libxt-dev 
libxtst-dev libxxf86vm-dev libyajl-dev libzip-dev linux-libc-dev 
lzma-dev mesa-common-dev python-dev python2.7-dev x11proto-composite-dev 
x11proto-core-dev x11proto-damage-dev x11proto-dri2-dev x11proto-fixes-dev 
x11proto-gl-dev x11proto-input-dev x11proto-kb-dev x11proto-randr-dev 
x11proto-record-dev x11proto-render-dev x11proto-scrnsaver-dev 
x11proto-xext-dev x11proto-xf86vidmode-dev x11proto-xinerama-dev xtrans-dev 
zlib1g-dev

This list of packages has a number of slashes on the end; they are line breaks that say that the current command should be executed and that there will be another line of command following. Line breaks are very useful when you need to break up long commands over a large number of lines, as I have done here. This command will take a while to run because there are is a large number of packages to be downloaded and installed. So execute this command, go cook dinner, and then come back.

Once you have installed all these packages, you need to copy some special files into place and create other ones that are linked into the correct location so they can be used. Again, they will be included within the script that we have created to help ease the execution of these commands.

The first of these is to copy the VideCoreIV include files from the Raspberry Pi firmware into /usr/include. This directory is a special directory from which the compiler will search for libraries and files that are to be included within a build. To copy all these files into the correct place, execute the following commands:

$ sudo cp -R /opt/vc/include/* /usr/include
$ sudo cp /opt/vc/include/interface/vcos/pthreads/* /usr/include/interface/vcos

Now in addition to copying these files into place, there are a number we need to link correctly into the right location so they can be read. While in the last step we copied include files that are predominantly source code, this time we need to link in precompiled portions of the firmware into the correct spot to be read by the compiler at compile time. Instead of copying, we are linking because we are happy to use the files in their current location and save on some space. Run the following:

$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libEGL.so /usr/lib/libEGL.so
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libEGL.so /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libEGL.so
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libEGL.so /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libEGL.so.1
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libEGL_static.a /usr/lib/libEGL_static.a
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libEGL_static.a /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libEGL_static.a
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libGLESv2.so /usr/lib/libGLESv2.so
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libGLESv2.so /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libGLESv2.so
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libGLESv2.so /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libGLESv2.so.2
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libGLESv2_static.a /usr/lib/libGLESv2_static.a
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libGLESv2_static.a /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libGLESv2_static.a
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libbcm_host.so /usr/lib/libbcm_host.so
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libbcm_host.so /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libbcm_host.so
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libvchiq_arm.a /usr/lib/libvchiq_arm.a
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libvchiq_arm.a /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libvchiq_arm.a
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libvchiq_arm.so /usr/lib/libvchiq_arm.so
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libvchiq_arm.so /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libvchiq_arm.so
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libvcos.a /usr/lib/libvcos.a
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libvcos.a /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libvcos.a
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libvcos.so /usr/lib/libvcos.so
$ sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libvcos.so /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libvcos.so

Now that you have linked all the files into the correct place, go ahead and get the source code. Change the directory into your home directory with this:

$ cd ∼

If you can’t type a tilde (∼), you can try reconfiguring the Pi keyboard layout with dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration and then rebooting the Pi. You can also just use cd with no arguments because it will also take you to your home directory. The tilde is just a symbol to reference the current user’s home directory.

Now that you have changed into your home directory, it is time to download the source code so you can work with it and correctly compile everything. Thankfully, a modern tool has appeared that makes doing source code downloads much easier: Git, which is named for Linus Torvalds of Linux Kernel fame. Git is used for source code management and version control; all users can download the current source version of a set of source code and submit modifications back to the central repository.

All we want to do at this point is download the source code into our home directory to work with it. To do this, use the git command and tell it to clone the repository of source code onto the system. We have also added the –-depth 1 to the command to say that we only want to clone the most recent 1 revision of the source code (the absolute latest version of the code) and avoid getting a lot of extra and unwanted historical code.

Start your clone by running the following:

$ git clone --depth 1 git://github.com/xbmc/xbmc-rbp.git
Cloning into 'xbmc-rbp'...
remote: Counting objects: 35172, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (22895/22895), done.
remote: Total 35172 (delta 15265), reused 27885 (delta 10698)
Receiving objects: 100% (35172/35172), 158.26 MiB | 385 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (15265/15265), done.

Now that we have cloned the source code of XBMC, we need to start building the application. This is the part that will take the longest by far. Change the directory into the newly created xbmc-rbp directory because there are a few last steps we need to take.

Changing Files with Sed and Regular Expressions

Before we go ahead and kick off the build of our XBMC application, we need to make a few minor adjustments to the source code so that it compiles in the exact manner we want it to. Instead of making these changes by hand, we will use a tool called Sed (short for Stream Editor). It does just as its name implies: it takes a stream of text and then performs edits on that text. The tricky part of Sed is that it makes use of a highly specialized language called regular expressions, which are used to perform the equivalent of a find-and-replace function.

Regular expressions evolved out of the need to validate a given set of data to see if it conforms to a given standard and to edit when the given example is found. While a simple find and replace is enough for most people when editing text, how do you perform a find-and-replace when you want to edit only words that start with T as the third letter in a given sentence? Probably one of the easiest cases for a regular expression is e-mail. You want to confirm that a given string is a valid e-mail: an e-mail will contain a username (who it’s from), a domain (where it’s from, e.g., Hotmail or Gmail), and there will be an at (@) symbol in between. Okay, we can do that with just a wildcard like *. So something that looks like *@* will be an e-mail, right? Well the * that we use to denote anything will pick up anything. Even spaces, numbers, strange symbols, and so on. So we need a way to pick up something that is made up of a string of valid e-mail characters (letters, numbers, period, underscores) and then @, and finally a valid domain. This will be a collection of letters, followed by a period and then perhaps another set (or a few sets) of letters. Describing this is exhausting, which is why we have a specialized language for performing them.

Now that you understand what we are trying to achieve, run the following two commands to alter the file tools/rbp/setup-sdk.sh. These sed commands make use of the –i option, which says to edit the given file:

$ sed -i 's/USE_BUILDROOT=1/USE_BUILDROOT=0/' tools/rbp/setup-sdk.sh
$ sed -i 's/TOOLCHAIN=/usr/local/bcm-gcc/TOOLCHAIN=/usr/' tools/rbp/setup-sdk.sh

These commands change the USE_BUILDROOT variable from a value of 1 to a value of 0 wherever it is found within that file and to replace any instance of the phrase TOOLCHAIN=/usr/local/bcm-gcc with TOOLCHAIN=/usr. Once you have edited the tools/rbp/setup-sdk.sh file, you should execute it with the following command:

$ sudo sh tools/rbp/setup-sdk.sh

The command will generate a makefile, but won’t display anything onscreen. Once it is finished it’s time to edit the newly created tools/rbp/depends/xbmc/Makefile. All you need to do then is run one last sed on the file to add a # to the start of any instance of cd $(SOURCE); $(CONFIGURE):

$ sed -i 's/cd $(SOURCE); $(CONFIGURE)/#cd $(SOURCE); $(CONFIGURE)/' tools/rbp/depends/xbmc/Makefile

What we did is change the way our system will compile the XBMC software and make it use some of our system libraries rather than use the ones that can be found within the XBMC source code.

Now that the Makefile is created, it is time to compile!

Compiling Source Code

Most compilations use a very simple logic: you run the command ./configure to generate a configuration file that knows about the makeup of your system. This generates a file that is called a makefile. This file is in a slightly specialized language that describes the way in which a compile for a collection should be performed. It is not a script that executes code in and of itself; it is a collection of directions that will be used by the make application.

Unfortunately, this compile is slightly more advanced. We need to make our configuration tools to match the setup we are trying to do before we run the configuration and the compile. This will take a little while to execute, so kick off and go have another cuppa.

The command to execute is this:

$ make -C tools/rbp/depends/xbmc/

This command will run the make within the directory tools/rbp/depends/xbmc/, which will generate the config file. The output for this is very long, but when it’s done successfully, you should see something like this on your console window:

examples/Makefile.am: installing './depcomp'
Makefile.am: installing './INSTALL'
autoreconf: Leaving directory 'lib/libdvd/libdvdnav'
Please (re)run configure...
#cd ../../../../; ./configure --prefix=/opt/xbmc-bcm/xbmc-bin --build=i686-linux --host=arm-bcm2708-linux-gnueabi --enable-gles --disable-sdl --disable-x11 --disable-xrandr --disable-openmax --disable-optical-drive --disable-dvdcss --disable-joystick --disable-debug --disable-crystalhd --disable-vtbdecoder --disable-vaapi --disable-vdpau --disable-pulse --disable-projectm --with-platform=raspberry-pi --disable-optimizations --enable-rpi-cec-api
#cd ../../../../; make -j 1
#cd ../../../../; make install
make: Leaving directory '/home/raspbian/xbmc-rbp/tools/rbp/depends/xbmc'

Now that the compile of the configuration utility has gone through its time to perform the configure. This configure command is very long and again, you will find code that will perform this for you in the Apress source code repository, the configure command is this:

$ ./configure --prefix=/usr --build=arm-linux-gnueabihf --host=arm-linux-gnueabihf 
--localstatedir=/var/lib --with-platform=raspberry-pi --disable-gl --enable-gles 
--disable-x11 --disable-sdl --enable-ccache --enable-optimizations 
--enable-external-libraries --disable-goom --disable-hal --disable-pulse 
--disable-vaapi --disable-vdpau --disable-xrandr --disable-airplay 
--disable-alsa --enable-avahi --disable-libbluray --disable-dvdcss 
--disable-debug --disable-joystick --enable-mid --disable-nfs --disable-profiling 
--disable-projectm --enable-rsxs --enable-rtmp --disable-vaapi 
--disable-vdadecoder --disable-external-ffmpeg  --disable-optical-drive

Specify a number of arguments to the configure command that specifies where this installation should go (−−prefix=/usr), which architecture to build (−−build=arm-linux-gnueabihf), where to keep its running files (−−localstatedir=/var/lib), and which platform (−−with-platform=raspberry-pi), along with a whole host of disable and e-mail options to remove features such as CD drives and joysticks and enable things such as optimizations and Avahi automated detection of peripherals. Ultimately, when the command has finished executing, the output on your screen should look like this:

XBMC Configuration:

  Debugging:    No
  Profiling:    No
  Optimization: Yes
  Crosscomp.:   No
  target ARCH:  arm
  target CPU:   arm1176jzf-s
  OpenGLES:     Yes
  ALSA:         No
  DBUS:         Yes
  VDPAU:        No
  VAAPI:        No
  CrystalHD:    No
  VDADecoder:   No
  VTBDecoder:   No
  OpenMax:      No
  Joystick:     No
  XRandR:       No
  GOOM:         No
  RSXS:         Yes
  ProjectM:     No
  Skin Touched: No
  X11:          No
  Bluray:       No
  TexturePacker:Yes
  MID Support:  Yes
  ccache:       Yes
  ALSA Support: No
  PulseAudio:   No
  HAL Support:  No
  DVDCSS:       No
  Avahi:        Yes
  Non-free:     Yes
  ASAP Codec:   No
  MySQL:        Yes
  Webserver:    Yes
  libRTMP support:      Yes
  libsmbclient support: Yes
  libnfs client support:No
  libafpclient support: No
  AirPLay support:      No
  AirTunes support:     No
  Optical drive:        No
  libudev support:      Yes
  libusb support:       No
  libcec support:       No
  libmp3lame support:   Yes
  libvorbisenc support: Yes
  libcap support:       No
  External FFmpeg:      No
  prefix:       /usr

This configuration specifies all the flags we asked for in our installation, which is designed to get the best from the Raspberry Pi. So, now we have done our configure onto the actual compilation. The command itself highly anticlimactic for what it will do: tell the system to spend the next 12 hours generating code for our system. All these other jobs taking a little time is nothing compared to how long this compile will run for. So saddle up, and execute this simple four-letter command m a k e:

$ make

Don’t be alarmed if you see lines such as the following:

/tmp/ccGvUe1g.s:507: Warning: swp{b} use is deprecated for this architecture

The only thing that will stop the compile is a critical error or success. These warnings are related to some of the functions being used within the XBMC compile being a bit old for our Pi. When the compile has succeeded, you should expect to see this:

This shows that we have successfully build XBMC and can do the last step in this process, which is to install our newly compiled software. The make system will actually take care of installation, too. To install, you simply run make install, which copies all the freshly compiled binaries into the correct spot in your OS. You will need to prefix this with sudo because the location we are copying too (/usr) is a system location, and only root is given write access. Your output should look like this:

$ sudo make install
Copying XBMC binary to /usr/lib/xbmc/xbmc.bin
You can run XBMC with the command 'xbmc'
Copying support and legal files...
Done!
Copying system files to /usr/share/xbmc

And we are done! While it was long and required a little bit of work to begin with, the actual process of compiling is relatively pain-free, you know, beyond the pain of waiting. So now that the XBMC is installed, how do we use it?

Troubleshooting

Before we jump ahead and run XBMC, we should have a look at some of the issues you could have run into. Most of these steps should take care of themselves because this setup is generic and meant to work on any Pi because they all share the same hardware. If you are ever in doubt, remove the xbmc-rbp directory and start over. Ensure that you execute the copies and the linking in full. I found that when doing the git clone, things could sometimes get stuck and not move.

When this is the case, it is best to stop the current job with Ctrl + C, remove the directory, reboot, and start again. It was also better to remove peripherals from the system during the compile and install stages because having too many peripheral devices caused load issues on my system. Additionally, you should ensure that your output for commands such as configure match the ones given as these flags can play a much bigger role when compiling and save you a nasty headache and another 12–hour compile job. Finally, ensure that all your apt-gets run and complete successfully because these packages are required to provide the libraries that your Pi will use when building XBMC.

XBMC on Boot

Although we have started XBMC by hand thus far, most people will want it to occur automatically because what is the point of a media center that you need to plug a keyboard into each time you want to start it up?

The following is a simple start script that will allow you to execute XBMC using a start script. Create this in the file /etc/init.d/xbmc (like all other long files, it can be found in the Apress repository for this book):

#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          xbmc
# Required-Start:    $all
# Required-Stop:     $all
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: Start XBMC
# Description:       Start XBMC
### END INIT INFO
DAEMON=/usr/bin/xinit
DAEMON_OPTS="/usr/lib/xbmc/xbmc.bin"
NAME=xbmc
DESC=XBMC
RUN_AS=root
PID_FILE=/var/run/xbmc.pid
test -x $DAEMON || exit 0
set -e
case "$1" in
  start)
        echo "Starting $DESC"
        start-stop-daemon --start -c $RUN_AS --background --pidfile $PID_FILE  --make-pidfile --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
        ;;
  stop)
        echo "Stopping $DESC"
        start-stop-daemon --stop --pidfile $PID_FILE
        ;;
  restart|force-reload)
        echo "Restarting $DESC"
        start-stop-daemon --stop --pidfile $PID_FILE
        sleep 5
        start-stop-daemon --start -c $RUN_AS --background --pidfile $PID_FILE  --make-pidfile --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
        ;;
  *)
        echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/$NAME{start|stop|restart|force-reload}" >&2
        exit 1
        ;;
esac
exit 0

Once this file is created, run the following commands to make it executable and have it loaded into the Pi’s boot process:

$ sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/xbmc
$ sudo update-rc.d xbmc defaults

Now go ahead and reboot your system; it will bring you automatically into XBMC! Congratulations; at this point, you should have a fully functional XBMC instance complete with working smartphone remote!

Troubleshooting

Because you compiled from source successfully, there shouldn’t be any issues with getting your XBMC instance up and going. The first thing to check is that the compile did indeed complete fully and so did the install. They are the two most likely culprits. If you start your XBMC instance, you might see warnings like the following:

libEGL warning: DRI2: xcb_connect failed

If you do, you have to re-run the previous copy and linking commands. This issue relates to being unable to load those library files.

Troubleshooting

As with XBMC, this process is fairly painless because the Raspberry Pi has a fixed hardware platform, and without all these variables there is not as much to worry about—things should just work.

If you find that no sound is coming out of your speakers when they are attached, check that you correctly issued both the modprobe and the amixer commands because both are needed to make the audio function.

Other than this issue, most of the commands should work. If not, you should delete any downloaded content and start over.

Airport on Boot

As with using the XBMC instance, most people won’t want to have shairport started with their system without needing to manually log in to your Pi and start the application. This is easy for us because the shairport install has all the files needed to do this bundled with it! To perform this, first install the shairport system: run sudo make install, and your output should look like this:

$ sudo make install
install -D -m 0755 hairtunes /usr/local/bin/hairtunes
install -D -m 0755 shairport.pl /usr/local/bin/shairport.pl
install -D -m 0755 shairport /usr/local/bin/shairport

Once the install is finished, you can copy the provided init script into the correct location:

$ sudo cp shairport.init.sample /etc/init.d/shairport

Now that the file is copied, you need to make one small modification: add the modprobe command from earlier—modprobe snd_bcm2835 —into the /etc/init.d/shairport file just before you start the shairport application. The start section should look like this:

start() {
    echo -n "Starting shairport: "
    modprobe snd_bcm2835
    start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile "$PIDFILE" 
                      --exec "$DAEMON" -b --oknodo -- $DAEMON_ARGS
    log_end_msg $?
}

The last commands we need to run are these:

$ sudo chmod +x /etc./init.d/shairport
$ sudo update-rc.d shairport defaults

These commands make the new start script writeable and update the boot sequence to include the new shairport scripts! Reboot your Pi, and shairport should be up and running for you on boot! Congratulations.