Kodi from Debian

The well known XBMC Media Center has been renamed to Kodi with the 14.0 Helix release and following upstream’s decision the xbmc packages are renamed to kodi as well. Debian ships a slightly changed version of XBMC using the “XBMC from Debian” name and following that tradition ladies and gentlemen let me introduce you “Kodi from Debian”:

Kodi from Debian main screen

Kodi from Debian main screen

As of today Kodi from Debian uses the FFmpeg packages instead of the Libav ones which have been used by XBMC from Debian. The reason for the switch was upstream’s decision of dropping the Libav compatibility code and FFmpeg becoming available again packaged in Debian (thanks to Andreas Cadhalpun). It is worth noting that while upstream Kodi 14.0 downloads and builds FFmpeg 2.4.4 by default, Debian ships FFmpeg 2.5.1 already and FFmpeg under Kodi will be updated independently from Kodi thanks to the packaging mechanism.

The new kodi packages are uploaded to the NEW queue and are waiting for being accepted by the FTP Masters who are busy with preparing Jessie for the release (Many thanks to them for their hard work!), but in the meantime you can install kodi from https://people.debian.org/~rbalint/ppa/xbmc-ffmpeg/.

Happy recovery from the holidays! 🙂

update: I have updated the Kodi version to 14.2 in the xbmc-ffmpeg repository also updating FFmpeg to 2.6.1.
The packages can be used with Jessie, but unstable and experimental repositories also have to be enabled due to some dependencies missing from Jessie but present in unstable/experimental.

update 2: Dominique Dumont wrote a nice how-to about automounting optical media (CD/DVD) using Kodi on Debian.

update 3: Kodi is now available from jessie-backports, testing and unstable. Please use the packages from the official repositories instead of my temporary one which contains outdated packages and will be deleted.

44 thoughts on “Kodi from Debian

  1. Frank Matthieß

    Thanks for this work. Besides the x86/64 and mipsel packages i missed armhf packages. The cubietruck, bananapi and olinuxino boards are an awesome hardware base for kodi. So are there any plans to generate armhf for the allwinner a20 soc?

    Reply
    1. Réczey Bálint Post author

      At the moment I don’t have any build nor test system for armhf but I agree they are awesome. I got the mipsel machine from the manufacturer to help packaging XBMC this is why I could provide the mipsel binaries.
      I hope the kodi package will be accepted to experimental in a few weeks and armhf builds will be available directly from the official repositories.

      Reply
        1. Apoth

          Same problem:
          apoth@mediacenter:~$ sudo apt-get upgrade
          Csomaglisták olvasása… Kész
          Függőségi fa építése
          Állapotinformációk olvasása… Kész
          Frissítés kiszámítása… Kész
          0 frissített, 0 újonnan telepített, 0 eltávolítandó és 0 nem frissített.
          apoth@mediacenter:~$ sudo apt-get install kodi-bin
          Csomaglisták olvasása… Kész

          Függőségi fa építése
          Állapotinformációk olvasása… Kész
          Néhány csomagot nem lehetett telepíteni. Ez azt jelentheti, hogy
          egy lehetetlen állapotot kért, vagy ha az unstable disztribúciót
          használja, akkor néhány igényelt csomag még nem készült el vagy ki
          lett mozdítva az Incoming-ból.
          Az alábbi információk segíthetnek megoldani a problémát:

          Az alábbi csomagoknak teljesítetlen függőségei vannak:
          kodi-bin : Függ ettől: libavcodec-ffmpeg56 (>= 7:2.4) de az nem telepíthető
          Függ ettől: libavfilter-ffmpeg5 (>= 7:2.4) de az nem telepíthető
          Függ ettől: libavformat-ffmpeg56 (>= 7:2.6) de az nem telepíthető
          Függ ettől: libavutil-ffmpeg54 (>= 7:2.4) de az nem telepíthető
          Függ ettől: libpostproc-ffmpeg53 (>= 7:2.4) de az nem telepíthető
          Függ ettől: libswresample-ffmpeg1 (>= 7:2.4) de az nem telepíthető
          Függ ettől: libswscale-ffmpeg3 (>= 7:2.4) de az nem telepíthető
          Ajánlja: libhdhomerun1 de az nincs telepítésre megjelölve
          E: A problémák nem javíthatók, sérült csomagokat fogott vissza.

          Reply
  2. Vincent Bernat

    Great work!

    Do you plan to do something for Jessie? As it won’t have ffmpeg, the packages cannot be used as is. Maybe a rebuild with the builtin ffmpeg?

    Reply
    1. Réczey Bálint Post author

      The plan is providing back-ported ffmpeg and kodi for Jessie when Jessie becomes stable through official backports.
      There is no builtin FFmpeg as mentioned in the post. 😉

      Reply
      1. Michael

        You might want to update README.html, as it talks about the embedded FFmpeg (and XBMC) and not about the unstable/experimental sources requirement (and Kodi). I feel it should be the other way around. 😛

        -MD (who will probably just wait for the jessie-backports version now that jessie’s released)

        Reply
      2. Vincent Bernat

        It seems that we won’t get ffmpeg in backports anytime soon (due to it being prevented to go in testing). I have tried to compile it myself with the builtin ffmpeg and without libcec but failed. Do you plan to provide a backport on people.debian.org or should I try harder?

        Reply
        1. Réczey Bálint Post author

          Which version failed to compile? You can rebuild the kodi package waiting in NEW from this repo:
          https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-multimedia/kodi.git
          I hope we can get ffmpeg to testing soon, thus I gave it some time.
          There is an ongoing discussion about switching to ffmpeg on pkg-multimedia:
          http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-multimedia-maintainers/2015-May/044366.html

          If you would like to speed up the decision you can share your opinion/cast your vote.

          Reply
          1. Vincent Bernat

            Oh, I thought that the discussion just died on d-d@ldo. I don’t feel involved enough to be able to cast a vote.

            As for backporting, I tried the version on people.debian.org and bundled back ffmpeg. In fact, the first compilation fails when trying to download ffmpeg (in pbuilder) but the second one succeed (when in the shell). However, it seems that it also compiled all other bundled dependencies (because I did put them back all).

            Maybe I should backport ffmpeg from unstable and compile that. It seems that’s what you did for wheezy and it should be even easier for jessie.

          2. Réczey Bálint Post author

            You don’t have to back-port ffmpeg to jessie, the version in unstable should work fine just by installing it. This is why I have not provided a back-port yet.

  3. Ritesh Raj Sarraf

    Hey Balint,

    Thanks for all the work. Earlier, I used XBMC on Debian. But since I bought Raspberry, I’ve switch to it.

    Reply
  4. Yussuf

    hey man, thanks for the update. I’m having a hard time installing kodi on my debian 8 system though. could you please help me out? I followed the instructions inside the link you posted, but that did not work for me. I’m getting errors (Some packages could not be installed…/ unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages). I know I’m missing dependencies, but do I really have to install them manually? anyway, I couldn’t find it in the link provided nor in the official repositories. Have you successfully installed kodi on a debian system? Thanks for your time.

    Reply
    1. Réczey Bálint Post author

      You need to enable experimental repository to install kodi on Jessie/Unstable since it needs updated libCEC packages available only from experimental. If you need more help, please provide error logs.

      Reply
      1. denis

        I am also getting a similar dependency issue on Knoppix 7.4.2 (wheezy). I do have experimental enabled in my synaptic repos. Any ideas would be helpful.

        Thanks

        knoppix@Microknoppix:/etc/apt$ sudo apt-get install kodi
        Reading package lists… Done
        Building dependency tree
        Reading state information… Done
        Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
        requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
        distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
        or been moved out of Incoming.
        The following information may help to resolve the situation:

        The following packages have unmet dependencies:
        kodi : Depends: kodi-bin (>= 14.2+dfsg1-1~bpo70+wheezy+ffmpeg+1) but it is not going to be installed
        Depends: kodi-bin (< 14.2+dfsg1-1~bpo70+wheezy+ffmpeg+1.1~) but it is not going to be installed
        E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

        Reply
        1. Réczey Bálint Post author

          I tried to reproduce your problem, but kodi installed fine for me on wheezy i386 and it also looks on on wheezy amd64.
          The message said you have broken packages. You need to run “apt-get -f install” to resolve these before installing new packages.

          Reply
          1. spongman

            i get the same problem. i followed the instructions on https://people.debian.org/~rbalint/ppa/xbmc-ffmpeg/.

            the instructions for installing the signing key on that page are also incorrect.

            $ uname -a
            Linux laptop 3.16.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt9-3~deb8u1 (2015-04-24) i686 GNU/Linux

            $ cat /etc/os-release
            PRETTY_NAME=”Debian GNU/Linux 8 (jessie)”
            NAME=”Debian GNU/Linux”
            VERSION_ID=”8″
            VERSION=”8 (jessie)”
            ID=debian
            HOME_URL=”http://www.debian.org/”
            SUPPORT_URL=”http://www.debian.org/support/”
            BUG_REPORT_URL=”https://bugs.debian.org/”

            $ sudo apt-get install -f kodi
            Reading package lists… Done
            Building dependency tree
            Reading state information… Done
            Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
            requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
            distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
            or been moved out of Incoming.
            The following information may help to resolve the situation:

            The following packages have unmet dependencies:
            kodi : Depends: kodi-bin (>= 14.2+dfsg1-1~rbalint0) but it is not going to be installed
            Depends: kodi-bin (= 7:2.4) but it is not installable
            Depends: libavfilter-ffmpeg5 (>= 7:2.4) but it is not installable
            Depends: libavformat-ffmpeg56 (>= 7:2.6) but it is not installable
            Depends: libavutil-ffmpeg54 (>= 7:2.4) but it is not installable
            Depends: libpostproc-ffmpeg53 (>= 7:2.4) but it is not installable
            Depends: libswresample-ffmpeg1 (>= 7:2.4) but it is not installable
            Depends: libswscale-ffmpeg3 (>= 7:2.4) but it is not installable
            Recommends: libcec2 (>= 2.1.4) but it is not going to be installed
            Recommends: libcrystalhd3 (>= 1:0.0~git20110715.fdd2f19) but it is not going to be installed
            Recommends: libhdhomerun1 but it is not going to be installed
            Recommends: libmodplug1 but it is not going to be installed
            Recommends: libmpeg2-4 (>= 0.5.1) but it is not going to be installed
            Recommends: libnfs4 (>= 1.9.3) but it is not going to be installed
            E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

            $ sudo apt-get update
            Hit http://security.debian.org jessie/updates InRelease
            Hit http://security.debian.org jessie/updates/main Sources
            Hit http://security.debian.org jessie/updates/contrib Sources
            Hit http://security.debian.org jessie/updates/non-free Sources
            Hit http://security.debian.org jessie/updates/main i386 Packages
            Ign http://dl.google.com stable InRelease
            Hit http://security.debian.org jessie/updates/contrib i386 Packages
            Hit http://security.debian.org jessie/updates/non-free i386 Packages
            Hit http://security.debian.org jessie/updates/contrib Translation-en
            Hit http://security.debian.org jessie/updates/main Translation-en
            Hit http://security.debian.org jessie/updates/non-free Translation-en
            Hit http://dl.google.com stable Release.gpg
            Hit http://http.debian.net jessie InRelease
            Hit http://http.debian.net jessie-updates InRelease
            Hit http://dl.google.com stable Release
            Get:1 https://people.debian.org xbmc-ffmpeg-unstable/ InRelease [321 B]
            Hit http://http.debian.net jessie/main Sources
            Hit http://http.debian.net jessie/contrib Sources
            Hit http://dl.google.com stable/main i386 Packages
            Hit http://http.debian.net jessie/non-free Sources
            Ign https://people.debian.org xbmc-ffmpeg-unstable/ InRelease
            Hit http://http.debian.net jessie/main i386 Packages
            Hit https://people.debian.org xbmc-ffmpeg-unstable/ Release.gpg
            Hit http://http.debian.net jessie/contrib i386 Packages
            Hit https://people.debian.org xbmc-ffmpeg-unstable/ Release
            Hit http://http.debian.net jessie/non-free i386 Packages
            Hit https://people.debian.org xbmc-ffmpeg-unstable/ Packages
            Hit http://http.debian.net jessie/contrib Translation-en
            Get:2 https://people.debian.org xbmc-ffmpeg-unstable/ Translation-en_US [321 B]
            Hit http://http.debian.net jessie/main Translation-en
            Hit http://http.debian.net jessie/non-free Translation-en
            Get:3 https://people.debian.org xbmc-ffmpeg-unstable/ Translation-en [318 B]
            Hit http://http.debian.net jessie-updates/main Sources
            Hit http://http.debian.net jessie-updates/contrib Sources
            Get:4 https://people.debian.org xbmc-ffmpeg-unstable/ Translation-en_US [321 B]
            Get:5 https://people.debian.org xbmc-ffmpeg-unstable/ Translation-en [318 B]
            Hit http://http.debian.net jessie-updates/non-free Sources
            Get:6 http://http.debian.net jessie-updates/main i386 Packages/DiffIndex [367 B]
            Get:7 https://people.debian.org xbmc-ffmpeg-unstable/ Translation-en_US [321 B]
            Get:8 https://people.debian.org xbmc-ffmpeg-unstable/ Translation-en [318 B]
            Get:9 https://people.debian.org xbmc-ffmpeg-unstable/ Translation-en_US [321 B]
            Get:10 https://people.debian.org xbmc-ffmpeg-unstable/ Translation-en [318 B]
            Get:11 https://people.debian.org xbmc-ffmpeg-unstable/ Translation-en_US [321 B]
            Ign https://people.debian.org xbmc-ffmpeg-unstable/ Translation-en_US
            Get:12 https://people.debian.org xbmc-ffmpeg-unstable/ Translation-en [318 B]
            Ign https://people.debian.org xbmc-ffmpeg-unstable/ Translation-en
            Hit http://http.debian.net jessie-updates/contrib Translation-en
            Ign http://dl.google.com stable/main Translation-en_US
            Hit http://http.debian.net jessie-updates/contrib i386 Packages
            Get:13 http://http.debian.net jessie-updates/main Translation-en/DiffIndex [229 B]
            Hit http://http.debian.net jessie-updates/non-free Translation-en
            Ign http://dl.google.com stable/main Translation-en
            Hit http://http.debian.net jessie-updates/non-free i386 Packages
            Fetched 596 B in 7s (79 B/s)
            Reading package lists… Done

          2. Réczey Bálint Post author

            You need libcec from experimental and ffmpeg from unstable in addition to packages available in jessie.
            Please add unstable and experimental repos at least temporarily to install kodi on jessie.
            What was the problem with the signing key instructions?

  5. martinforester

    Hi, how to eliminate horizontal lines tearing while playback video? I have kodi installed on debian wheezy without gui, only x session for xbmc

    Reply
        1. Sören

          In the meantime, you can easily build the pvr addons for yourself. These steps worked for me:

          1. Remove the old tvheadend plugin in xbmc before upgrading to kodi
          2. install dependencies (apt-get build-dep kodi or xbmc should work)
          3.

          git clone https://github.com/opdenkamp/xbmc-pvr-addons.git
          git checkout 5eea147 # go back to a plugin version that is compatible with 14.0
          ./bootstrap
          ./configure
          make zip

          4. In Kodi settings -> addons -> install from zip -> select xbmc-pvr-addons/addons/pvr.hts-linux-x86_64.zip
          5. Watch some TV 🙂

          Reply
  6. stephen rinsler

    I just installed kodi from your repository on my Debian Wheezy system, replacing an xbmc install that I did from the Debian repository, because of crashes.

    This first time, the program launched fine and updated itself from the prior configuration. After starting to play a song, I launched the Sonos addon and then closed it. At that time, the program crashed with a segmentation fault message.

    I am not sure what to look for in the crash log file. When I looked at the previous crash logs, I didn’t see anything I could interpret as abnormal.

    Appreciate suggestions; happy to upload the log.

    Thanks

    Steve Rinsler

    Reply
    1. Réczey Bálint Post author

      I suggest installing the kodi-dbg package before creating the crash log to have more debugging information.
      The most interesting part is usually the part around the segmentation fault in the backtrace.
      I have just updated kodi to 14.2, please run a test on it and if it still crashes send me an email with the crash-log.

      Reply
      1. stephen rinsler

        Installed kodi-debug and kodi 14.2.

        Still crashes.

        Sending crash log separately by e-mail.

        Steve Rinsler

        Reply
  7. Guillaume

    Thanks so much for maintaining Kodi package for Debian.
    Do you have a Flattr account; or something similar to accept donations to help with that effort?

    Reply
  8. Toniob

    I’ve got 2 questions. Do you plan on pushing your packages to debian unstable now that jessie is released ? And second, it seems that I can’t play x265 videos anymore. I am the only one ?

    Thanks

    Reply
    1. Réczey Bálint Post author

      Yes, the next upload will go to unstable. I had to target experimental due to latest libcec was in experimental, too, but I have updated libcec in unstable recently.
      I have no checked x265, problably a rebuild will solve that, too.

      Reply
  9. ricci

    hello , is there any chance to compile / install KODI for Debian Squeeze / Ubuntu Lucid?

    I would like continue using it.

    thanks
    richie

    Reply
  10. Steve Rinsler

    I installed Kodi from Debian 14.2. I also have ffmpeg 7:2.6.1-1~wheezy1 installed from Andreas Cadhalpun. His package requires libvdpau1 which I therefore installed. It triggers an error message frequently continually when I run Iceweasel, seeking an nvidia drive file. I don’t have such a file because I don’t have an nvidia chipset.

    Does the kodi 14.2 package from your repository (which I have installed) and which is named 14.2+dfsg1-1~bpo70+wheezy+ffmpeg+1 also contain the ffmpeg files? This package lists libvdpau1 as recommended but not a dependency.

    If I have both versions of ffmpeg, can I delete the libvdpau1 package and expect kodi and ffmpeg to continue working?

    Thanks for clarifying this.

    Steve

    Reply
  11. Pingback: FFmpeg and Kodi arrived to jessie-backports! | Obsessed with reality

  12. Frank

    I did a fresh install of Debian Jessie 64 bit and added jessie-backports, but I am not able to install the PVR addons. The only packages listed are (besides kodi itself) kodi-eventclients-*, but I am looking for e. g. xbmc-pvr-tvheadend-hts.
    What am I doing wrong, I thought everything is in the backports now?

    Reply
    1. Réczey Bálint Post author

      I have just pinged Tobias who works on the kodi-pvr-hts package. It is not yet available from Debian, but I think it will change in the next weeks.

      Reply
  13. Frank

    Great, thanks!
    Same for the other pvr addons (e. g. xbmc-pvr-vdr-vnsi), or is it totally independent from hts?

    Reply

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