Raspberry Pi 4 B - Kodi Media Center + Raspberry Pi OS

At the beginning of 2014 I had read some article about Kodi (XBMC) on the Raspberry Pi. When i try the distribution XBian, OpenELEC etc., they could not convince me - too many mistakes eg. not booting, no CEC and limitations. At the same time I came across the website XBMC for Raspberry Pi by Michael Gorven. It offers ready-Debian packages of Kodi for Raspbian Wheezy & Jessie. The XBMC Frodo version at this time ran on the Raspberry Pi very stable and without problems. Meanwhile, there is the Official Raspbian Jessie Repository Kodi in the current version.

The installation can be completed in a few steps:

Installation: Kodi - Raspberry Pi OS Repository

1. Setup for Raspbian Bookworm / Bullseye (Lite & Desktop)

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-get update
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-cache madison kodi

#Debian Bookworm (Kodi: Nexus v20)
      kodi | 3:20.5-4~bookworm | http://archive.raspberrypi.com/debian bookworm/main arm64 Packages
      kodi | 3:20.5-4~bookworm | http://archive.raspberrypi.com/debian bookworm/main armhf Packages

#Debian Bullseye (Kodi: Matrix v19)
      kodi | 2:19.4-2~bullseye | http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian bullseye/main arm64 Packages
      kodi | 2:19.4-2~bullseye | http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian bullseye/main armhf Packages

2. Update and install Kodi 

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-get install -y kodi

3. Check groups settings for the user pi 

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo usermod -a -G audio,video,input,dialout,plugdev,tty pi

4. Setup udev rules 

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/99-input.rules

SUBSYSTEM=="input", GROUP="input", MODE="0660"
KERNEL=="tty[0-9]*", GROUP="tty", MODE="0660"

5. Setup: GPU Ram

for older Raspberry

  • 4 Performance Options -> P2 GPU Memory -> 256
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo raspi-config
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo reboot

6. Run 

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ kodi

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  • icon_user

    27.06.2017 01:33 - Chris

    I keep getting /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/kodi/kodi_v7.bin: error while loading shared libraries: libbrcmGLESv2.so: cannot open shared object file; No such file or directory .. this happens every time I try to launch koi from terminal using a pi3 with Jesse

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  • icon_user

    12.12.2016 22:20 - Mike

    Having the same issue as Ben and zsolt. Went through all the steps (great instructions, BTW), but when I try to run Kodi from either the GUI or terminal, nothing happens. The process is visible in task manager, but no Kodi window ever shows up.

    Any ideas?

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  • icon_user

    22.11.2016 18:32 - Ben

    I followed your instructions but when I run kodi nothing happens it just hangs. I have also tried logging into the GUI console to run kodi and nothing happens either. Please help, tried multiple guides to get this working and nothing is working.

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  • icon_user

    01.03.2016 09:05 - zsolt

    Hi. I was glad as I found your description. I tried to install kodi another way as I did.

    Unfortunately the result remains the same. kodi is installed in the /usr/share and /bin dirctories after the kodi command or initialising from the menu the kodi and kodi.bin run - checking in the task manager - but nothing happened. In the command window I don't get back the prompt. I have RPI 2 with raspbian jessie as I know. Could you write me any suggestions ? Thanks. Zsolt

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  • icon_user

    21.01.2016 23:22 - orDian

    Have you tested this on Raspbian Jessie Lite (no desktop environment)?

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  • icon_user

    22.01.2016 09:12 - Björn

    Yes, this version runs without desktop environment.

    You can boot all Raspbian Wheezy & Jessie & Jessie (Lite) to console and start kodi.

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  • icon_user

    22.01.2016 15:42 - orDian

    Wow this is awesome, it worked the first time. I have tried it with startx but it failed. This is awesome :D

     

    Btw you should add:

    sudo usermod -a -G audio pi

    sudo usermod -a -G video pi

    sudo usermod -a -G input pi

    sudo usermod -a -G dialout pi

    sudo usermod -a -G plugdev pi

    sudo usermod -a -G tty pi

    Makes it more userfriendly for the people that don't know how to add the group in the /etc/group file.

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  • icon_user

    04.02.2018 10:54 - Viktor6

    pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/kodi.service

    [Unit]

    Description = Kodi Media Center

    After = remote-fs.target network-online.target

    Wants = network-online.target

     

    [Service]

    User = pi

    Group = pi

    Type = simple

    ExecStart = /usr/bin/kodi

    Restart = on-abort

    RestartSec = 5

     

    [Install]

    WantedBy = multi-user.target

     

    pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo systemctl enable kodi.service

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