Installing OpenELEC on VirtualBox

'''PLEASE NOTE THAT VIRTUAL BUILDS ARE NOT SUPPORTED BY THE PROJECT TEAM. THEY ARE FREQUENTLY BROKEN (AND LESS FREQUENTLY FIXED) AND ARE NOT INTENDED FOR END-USER CONSUMPTION. IF YOU WANT A SAFE WAY TO EXPERIEMENT WITH OPENELEC THIS IS NOT THE SOLUTION, GO RUN OPENELEC FROM A USB STICK'''

Getting a Virtual Build
In order to get an OpenELEC Virtual build you can download a version from here. Other wise you can build your own virtual build by compiling from source and using this make line PROJECT=Virtual ARCH=i386 make release

If you don't have a build system, or a linux machine, you can grab a stock vmdk image here. If you use this image you can skip down to Creating the Virtual Machine

Creating the Virtual Image
Included within the .tar.bz2 package is a file called create_virtualimage. The usage of this script is as follows: sudo ./create_virtualimage  [ ]

In most cases something like this will work just fine. Virtual Box can use both vdi and vmdk virtual images. sudo ./create_virtualimage /home/user/Documents/VM/OpenELEC 1024

This will create a virtual hard disk in which you can use in your virtual machine. This needs to have it's permissions adjusted. sudo chmod 777 /home/user/Documents/VM/OpenELEC/OpenELEC.vmdk

Creating the Virtual Machine
We can then create the virtual machine from within VirtualBox. Machine -> New


 * 1) Type in a name for your VM
 * 2) Then select linux -> other linux
 * 3) Adjust the Memory size (OpenELEC only needs about 256MB)
 * 4) Select "use an existing virtual hard disk file" and browse to the virtual image we created earlier.
 * 5) Create

Virtual Machine Settings
Before you start up your VM you will want to adjust the VM settings to get an optimal user experience (many settings are subject to the users needs). Machine -> Settings

The main settings I would recommend adjusting are: vboxmanage modifyvm "vmname" --vram 256
 * 1) System -> Processor -> Processor(s)
 * 2) This may depend on your host CPU, usually 2 is enough
 * 3) Display -> Video -> Video Memory
 * 4) Max is recommended
 * 5) 128MB is the max, but you can increase this further via command line (max 256MB)


 * 1) Display -> Video -> Extended Features -> Enable 3D Acceleration
 * 2) Network -> Adapter 1 -> Attach To -> Bridged
 * 3) This will bridge the network interface with the hosts
 * 4) Network -> Adapter 1 -> Advanced -> Adapter Type -> Intel PRO/1000MT Desktop

You can also specify which audio driver to use in
 * 1) Audio -> Host Audio Driver
 * 2) This will change depending on the host system

Hit OK

Starting the VM
Select the VM and Start it Machine -> Start

OpenELEC should boot up quickly.

Configuring OpenELEC for VirtualBox
The first thing you may want to do is adjust your resolution. You may notice that only a few resolutions are present. We can define more resolutions using a custom xorg.conf