April 22, 201511 yr Hi All, First time poster. Just finished my unRAID build (in sig), so far everything is perfect -all data migrated from my old WHS. Running CrashPlan, DelugeVPN w Filebot & Plex... Next on the list is replacing (hopefully) my standalone Openelec HTPC with GPU passthrough. I have read on the forums that the latest V6 b15 with KVM VM support might have a Openelec template? -I do no see it. Since OpenElec does not compile an ISO, there is no way to install a OpenElec guest? -I have tried to hack together my own ISO from the OpenElec .img but my Linux kung-fu is not strong enough... I am going to try KodiBuntu v14 today... Question: How are others installing OpenELec as a VM guest under the new KVM hypervisor? (with or without GPU passthrough) Cheers, BR
April 22, 201511 yr I'm not due anyone has OpenElec running in a VM. Although it is a WIP as jonp has noted multiple times for a future release of Unraid. Search the forums for UNVM to get more info. You could try a Kodibuntu install, but I've been having issues getting that to work under the latest beta.
April 22, 201511 yr I've previously installed XBMCBuntu into a GPU passthrough VM and it worked, however I never implemented it into regular usage. I will tell you that in my experience if you attempt to do the install through VNC it hangs and does not allow the install to finish (at least this was what I and other at the time were having issues with), however if you just remove the VNC stuff, passthrough your GPU and do the install, everything went as planned! I do believe there are some issues with hardware acceleration, or something like that, however you should be able to play around and get it setup.
April 22, 201511 yr We have it working and will be releasing it soon. I'm also working to see if the upstream wants to support it natively or if we are going to have to fork the project to support it (which we are willing and able to do). We just tested the latest OE build from source (5.0. and it works really great!
April 22, 201511 yr Author Great news! Let me know if you are looking for testers! I've been a XBMC user since V10. I am new to unRAID, but technical enough... Cheers, BR
April 23, 201511 yr soon. Define this "soon" unraid with VM's and no native XBMC (you heard me, stupid new name...die!... LOL) is sad. It's kind of like this.... Currently, not this happy though! You get the idea
April 23, 201511 yr We have it working and will be releasing it soon. I'm also working to see if the upstream wants to support it natively or if we are going to have to fork the project to support it (which we are willing and able to do). We just tested the latest OE build from source (5.0. and it works really great! Please define the sys requirements (i.e. vt-d) as well.
April 23, 201511 yr We have it working and will be releasing it soon. I'm also working to see if the upstream wants to support it natively or if we are going to have to fork the project to support it (which we are willing and able to do). We just tested the latest OE build from source (5.0. and it works really great! Please define the sys requirements (i.e. vt-d) as well. VT-d is required for GPU pass through, irrespective of OpenELEC. I'll have memory usage / vCPU recommendations when we release it. It's very minimal.
April 23, 201511 yr Thanks Jon, I just bought 8gb ram to replace my 2gb in my current unraid nas (docker apps for cp, sb, trans, mariadb chewed up to 60% with minimal activity on both). My celeron is the next victim! lol.
April 26, 201511 yr I'm hoping that it will be possible to pass through a CEC-Hdmi adapter to work on the new Openelec VM: https://www.pulse-eight.com/p/104/usb-hdmi-cec-adapter The ability to control everything with my tv remote works a treat.
April 27, 201511 yr I'm hoping that it will be possible to pass through a CEC-Hdmi adapter to work on the new Openelec VM: https://www.pulse-eight.com/p/104/usb-hdmi-cec-adapter The ability to control everything with my tv remote works a treat. I looked at one of these a while back as i like the idea of using the existing TV remote to control my xbmc/kodi instance. It then occured to me that for less than the price of these i could just run a raspberry pi which has an onboard CEC controller. Plus for the openelec vm wouldnt you need a dedicated grapics card? I now run a raspberry pi in both my living room and one in my bedroom (also on windows pc and my daughters laptop) with a shared MariaDB instance running in a docker in unraid. Both pi's are happily controlled from their repected TV remotes. Surely raspberry pi's are a cheaper alternative to an openelc vm? with no need for the pulse-eight controller. or is there something i am missing? genuine question.
April 27, 201511 yr I'm hoping that it will be possible to pass through a CEC-Hdmi adapter to work on the new Openelec VM: https://www.pulse-eight.com/p/104/usb-hdmi-cec-adapter The ability to control everything with my tv remote works a treat. I looked at one of these a while back as i like the idea of using the existing TV remote to control my xbmc/kodi instance. It then occured to me that for less than the price of these i could just run a raspberry pi which has an onboard CEC controller. Plus for the openelec vm wouldnt you need a dedicated grapics card? I now run a raspberry pi in both my living room and one in my bedroom (also on windows pc and my daughters laptop) with a shared MariaDB instance running in a docker in unraid. Both pi's are happily controlled from their repected TV remotes. Surely raspberry pi's are a cheaper alternative to an openelc vm? with no need for the pulse-eight controller. or is there something i am missing? genuine question. Well the performance of an arm-based rasp pi is going to pale in comparison to that of a VM that doesn't need to send media over a network and has the horsepower of a server, but some folks might not care about that.
April 27, 201511 yr Well the performance of an arm-based rasp pi is going to pale in comparison to that of a VM that doesn't need to send media over a network and has the horsepower of a server, but some folks might not care about that. Although that is true at one level, if one is playing h264 encoded video on a Raspberry Pi then the decode is done in the hardware of the GPU and that has excellent performance for that particular task, so the limitations of the ARM processor are less relevant.
April 27, 201511 yr Well the performance of an arm-based rasp pi is going to pale in comparison to that of a VM that doesn't need to send media over a network and has the horsepower of a server, but some folks might not care about that. Although that is true at one level, if one is playing h264 encoded video on a Raspberry Pi then the decode is done in the hardware of the GPU and that has excellent performance for that particular task, so the limitations of the ARM processor are less relevant. I'm speaking more in terms of the performance / responsiveness of the interface itself. I've tried Kodi on a number of platforms that are arm based and they all seem a little sluggish compared to the x86 versions. Not unusable, just sluggish. Maybe that's just me and maybe some folks don't care. That said, not sure how a RPI would handle 4k content...
April 27, 201511 yr One thing that has always confused me is that the RPi is just a board without a case or shell, what did you guys do with that??
April 27, 201511 yr One thing that has always confused me is that the RPi is just a board without a case or shell, what did you guys do with that?? You can get mini enclosures for them. It ups the price point, but it's not a bad idea.
April 27, 201511 yr I'm hoping that it will be possible to pass through a CEC-Hdmi adapter to work on the new Openelec VM: https://www.pulse-eight.com/p/104/usb-hdmi-cec-adapter The ability to control everything with my tv remote works a treat. I looked at one of these a while back as i like the idea of using the existing TV remote to control my xbmc/kodi instance. It then occured to me that for less than the price of these i could just run a raspberry pi which has an onboard CEC controller. Plus for the openelec vm wouldnt you need a dedicated grapics card? I now run a raspberry pi in both my living room and one in my bedroom (also on windows pc and my daughters laptop) with a shared MariaDB instance running in a docker in unraid. Both pi's are happily controlled from their repected TV remotes. Surely raspberry pi's are a cheaper alternative to an openelc vm? with no need for the pulse-eight controller. or is there something i am missing? genuine question. Well the performance of an arm-based rasp pi is going to pale in comparison to that of a VM that doesn't need to send media over a network and has the horsepower of a server, but some folks might not care about that. I does not have the horsepower of a desktop, but the rpi 2 is very fast both starting movies and changing tv channels without buffering popping up! It beats my desktop amd 4 core something in performance. It is also plays back mkv mvc I haven't noticed any sluggishness navigating compared to my desktop.
April 27, 201511 yr I'm hoping that it will be possible to pass through a CEC-Hdmi adapter to work on the new Openelec VM: https://www.pulse-eight.com/p/104/usb-hdmi-cec-adapter The ability to control everything with my tv remote works a treat. I looked at one of these a while back as i like the idea of using the existing TV remote to control my xbmc/kodi instance. It then occured to me that for less than the price of these i could just run a raspberry pi which has an onboard CEC controller. Plus for the openelec vm wouldnt you need a dedicated grapics card? I now run a raspberry pi in both my living room and one in my bedroom (also on windows pc and my daughters laptop) with a shared MariaDB instance running in a docker in unraid. Both pi's are happily controlled from their repected TV remotes. Surely raspberry pi's are a cheaper alternative to an openelc vm? with no need for the pulse-eight controller. or is there something i am missing? genuine question. Well the performance of an arm-based rasp pi is going to pale in comparison to that of a VM that doesn't need to send media over a network and has the horsepower of a server, but some folks might not care about that. I does not have the horsepower of a desktop, but the rpi 2 is very fast both starting movies and changing tv channels without buffering popping up! It beats my desktop amd 4 core something in performance. It is also plays back mkv mvc I haven't noticed any sluggishness navigating compared to my desktop. Nice! Must be getting better and better. I've tried Kodi on the Ouya and didn't have the same feeling. I've also experimented with a number of other devices and had similar issues. Nothing unusable like I said, just enough to be annoying. With 4k content though, would RPI support that?
April 27, 201511 yr I'm hoping that it will be possible to pass through a CEC-Hdmi adapter to work on the new Openelec VM: https://www.pulse-eight.com/p/104/usb-hdmi-cec-adapter The ability to control everything with my tv remote works a treat. I looked at one of these a while back as i like the idea of using the existing TV remote to control my xbmc/kodi instance. It then occured to me that for less than the price of these i could just run a raspberry pi which has an onboard CEC controller. Plus for the openelec vm wouldnt you need a dedicated grapics card? I now run a raspberry pi in both my living room and one in my bedroom (also on windows pc and my daughters laptop) with a shared MariaDB instance running in a docker in unraid. Both pi's are happily controlled from their repected TV remotes. Surely raspberry pi's are a cheaper alternative to an openelc vm? with no need for the pulse-eight controller. or is there something i am missing? genuine question. Well the performance of an arm-based rasp pi is going to pale in comparison to that of a VM that doesn't need to send media over a network and has the horsepower of a server, but some folks might not care about that. I does not have the horsepower of a desktop, but the rpi 2 is very fast both starting movies and changing tv channels without buffering popping up! It beats my desktop amd 4 core something in performance. It is also plays back mkv mvc I haven't noticed any sluggishness navigating compared to my desktop. Nice! Must be getting better and better. I've tried Kodi on the Ouya and didn't have the same feeling. I've also experimented with a number of other devices and had similar issues. Nothing unusable like I said, just enough to be annoying. With 4k content though, would RPI support that? No 4k content on the RPI 2 unfortunately, but there isn't much content yet anyway. I bought a Open Hour Chameleon 150$ android box, but its crap and the RPI 2 outperforms it!
April 27, 201511 yr I have an Asus Chromebox and OE loves it. But then again...no small form factor platform will outperform my VM.
April 27, 201511 yr I'm hoping that it will be possible to pass through a CEC-Hdmi adapter to work on the new Openelec VM: https://www.pulse-eight.com/p/104/usb-hdmi-cec-adapter The ability to control everything with my tv remote works a treat. I looked at one of these a while back as i like the idea of using the existing TV remote to control my xbmc/kodi instance. It then occured to me that for less than the price of these i could just run a raspberry pi which has an onboard CEC controller. Plus for the openelec vm wouldnt you need a dedicated grapics card? I now run a raspberry pi in both my living room and one in my bedroom (also on windows pc and my daughters laptop) with a shared MariaDB instance running in a docker in unraid. Both pi's are happily controlled from their repected TV remotes. Surely raspberry pi's are a cheaper alternative to an openelc vm? with no need for the pulse-eight controller. or is there something i am missing? genuine question. Well the performance of an arm-based rasp pi is going to pale in comparison to that of a VM that doesn't need to send media over a network and has the horsepower of a server, but some folks might not care about that. I does not have the horsepower of a desktop, but the rpi 2 is very fast both starting movies and changing tv channels without buffering popping up! It beats my desktop amd 4 core something in performance. It is also plays back mkv mvc I haven't noticed any sluggishness navigating compared to my desktop. Nice! Must be getting better and better. I've tried Kodi on the Ouya and didn't have the same feeling. I've also experimented with a number of other devices and had similar issues. Nothing unusable like I said, just enough to be annoying. With 4k content though, would RPI support that? No 4k content on the RPI 2 unfortunately, but there isn't much content yet anyway. I bought a Open Hour Chameleon 150$ android box, but its crap and the RPI 2 outperforms it! I think a big value add to running Kodi on unraid as a VM over alternatives will be 4k content and superior playback experience to the primary display in the home. I think 4k, just like previous HD iterations, will first hit us in the living room, then over time, it will be on every display in our homes. During this time where its only on the primary display, finding players that are low cost and can handle the playback over the network may be challenging (I guess it comes down to the size and bitrate of your 4k content at that point). This is where the VM experience can be really awesome. Not to mention that Kodi isn't the only use case for VMs.
April 27, 201511 yr I was thinking to test openelec/kodi in a VM, but the x16 slot is occupied by my hba card. If only KVM had easy igpu pass through...
April 27, 201511 yr I was thinking to test openelec/kodi in a VM, but the x16 slot is occupied by my hba card. If only KVM had easy igpu pass through... No one has easy IGPU pass through and it will likely require new hardware if it ever does get easier. This isn't an issue with KVM, its with the lack of standardization in integrated graphics and the unique nature by which integrated graphics chipsets work. They use system RAM and don't behave like other pci devices. This makes virtualizing with them a hardware specific problem that can't b solved by software.
April 27, 201511 yr I use a PC to run Openelec for my lounge TV setup and several RasPI's around the house for other TV's. They all use TVHeadend and play media files from my unraid server. I find that lossless HD audio files work very from the PC setup. The pulse eight adapter for the PC enables me to hide my AVR and PC in the attic and control all with the Samsung TV remote. It works really well. I think the Openelec VM would work well for me as long as I could pass through the pulse eight adapter. It really is a deal breaker.
April 27, 201511 yr Apparently these are worth looking at as an alternative to the RasPi: https://www.solid-run.com/products/cubox-i-mini-computer/ Don't think they are 4k capable though.
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