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kodi-standalone-service

Systemd service units to run Kodi in standalone mode without the need for a DE. X11, Wayland, and GBM are supported.

Which one to choose?

In terms of functionality, X11 is probably the most mature and feature rich. Wayland is next in line and should be considered on-par with X11, however, a known limitation of Wayland is having the resolution and frame rate set in the compositor rather than in kodi's GUI. As well, Wayland currently does not support VT switching. GBM has some known features it lacks compared the X11 and Wayland. A complete list can be found in Kodi issue 14876.

Another factor that may affect choice is the number of dependencies required to run which will vary distro-to-distro.

Installation

Arch Linux

Arch Linux users (likely users of Arch clones) can find a PKGBUILD in the AUR that will take care of everything. Simply install and use.

Other distros/manual installation

Users of other distros can just run make install as the root user. Then, as the root user, run:

  • systemd-sysusers
  • systemd-tmpfiles --create

Note that the kodi user's home directory is /var/lib/kodi/ in this example, NOT /home/kodi/ like a regular user.

Notes for users of non-Arch Linux distros

  1. Arch Linux ships three discrete Kodi packages, each providing a different Kodi executable (kodi-x11, kodi-wayland, and kodi-gbm) but other distros may not do this and may ship a combined Kodi binary (called kodi.bin). If your distro ships kodi.bin rather than the discrete executables you must adjust the name of the Kodi executable in the ExecStop= line accordingly. Failure to do so will result in Kodi getting killed before it can perform exit tasks and can result in data loss to your profile.

Do this modification using a systemd drop-in.

Example:

# systemctl edit kodi-x11

<< you are creating a drop-in >>

[Service]
ExecStop=
ExecStop=/usr/bin/killall --user kodi --exact --wait kodi.bin

  1. Users of Ubuntu ≥20.0 will need to copy the contents of sysusers.conf to /etc/sysusers.d/kodi.conf and uncomment the line adding kodi user to the render group.

  2. Users of Ubuntu wishing the kodi user to access devices on /dev/ttyxxxx, will need to copy the contents of sysusers.conf to /etc/sysusers.d/kodi.conf and uncomment the line adding the kodi user to the dialout group.

Usage

Simply start/enable the requisite service.

Dependencies

  • kodi (x11 or wayland or gbm)
  • libinput and cage (for running wayland)
  • libinput (for running gbm)
  • xorg-server and xorg-xinit (for running x11)

Passing environment variables to the service

Should the need arise, one can pass environment variables to the service by creating /etc/conf.d/kodi-standalone and populating it with the needed variables.

Notes on system shutdown/reboot

Be aware that these services run Kodi in systemd's user.slice not in the system.slice. In order to have Kodi gracefully exit, the system should be called to shutdown or to reboot using the respective Kodi actions not by a call to systemctl. Failure to do so will result in an ungraceful exit of Kodi and the saving of GUI settings, Kodi uptime etc. will not occur. In principal this is no different than data loss occurring from a user doing work when a sysadmin issues a reboot command without prior warning. While it is possible to run Kodi in systemd's system.slice instead, doing so makes it difficult to use USB mounts within Kodi and to use pulseaudio for Kodi sessions.

Recommended methods to reboot/shutdown

Here are several options:

  • Select the corresponding option under Power menu in the Kodi GUI.
  • Use the official Android/iOS remote app.
  • If a CLI option is preferred, use kodi-send to issue a Reboot or ShutDown() like so:
$ kodi-send -a "Reboot"
$ kodi-send -a "ShutDown()"

Acknowledgments

Much of the credit for this service goes to the Arch Linux maintainers of the official kodi package. Note that they removed it upon the 1.16-1 release of Xorg.

Tips and Tricks

Service not starting

Most users should not need /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config since the created X server becomes the controlling process of the VT to which it is bound. Most users does not mean all users. There have been reports of some AMD users still requiring this file. As well, users of Xorg's native modesetting driver may also require it.

The recommendation is to first try starting kodi-x11.service without it, but if the service fails to start X, you may need to create /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config which should contain the following:

needs_root_rights = yes

Running Kodi web service on a privileged port

Users wishing to run the kodi web service on a privileged port (i.e. <1024) can simply use a systemd drop-in modification as follows:

[Service]
AmbientCapabilities=CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE