How to Install SABnzbd on XBMC Live

Written by Josh Lyon

Sunday, 03 January 2010 16:41

Installing applications on XBMC Live is actually much easier than you might think. It does require bashing out some code on a shell prompt, but it's relatively easy. You can access the shell via two methods: directly from the XBMC-live machine or remotely via SSH. See below for the details on both methods.

Directly from the Machine

To access the shell directly from the machine, you will need to plug in a keyboard to the xbmc box then switch to a different window/desktop. You can switch to a different window by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F#. Most people typically recommend switching to window two by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F2. When you are finished (or even if you just need to switch back temporarily), you can get back to the main XBMC window by going to window 7 (Ctrl+Alt+F7).

Via SSH

I personally prefer to use SSH as it keeps me untethered from the box. My XBMC machine is in a media cabinet, so I don't keep the keyboard connected and don't like having to pull one out. Most people will probably want to follow along with this blog post while they do the steps anyway so it's probably just easier to use SSH for you as well. If you don't already have an SSH client, I would recommend puttyTRAY. You can download it by visiting this website, then dragging the large icon from the left to the right.

To access the box via SSH, open up putty then enter the IP address (or name) of your XBMC Live machine in the Host Name box. The default port 22 and connection type of SSH will work. Press the open button at the bottom to connect.

2010-01-03_161517

At this point you will be prompted for a username (then the password). By default this is XBMC/XBMC, but if you may have selected something different during installation. When you type the password, you won't see the cursor moving. Don't worry, it is getting what you are typing but it hides passwords. After entering the username and password, you will get to a window that looks similar to the following:

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SABnzbd+ Installation

At this point, you are now connected to the shell (either via SSH or directly on the machine). Use the following instructions to update your apt-get repository and install SABnzbd+.

Update the repository (not necessary, but a good idea):
```
sudo apt-get update
```
Install the application. Type the following at the command prompt, then enter the password of the super account (if you are prompted for it) and type "Y" when prompted to continue. The system will automatically grab all the dependencies and install them for you.
```
sudo apt-get install sabnzbdplus
```
Configure the base application. If you read through the messages from the apt-get installation, you'll see a line that says "Not configured, aborting. See /etc/default/sabnzbdplus". This means we need to setup the configuration (via command line) before we can start the main application. We'll do this using a basic editor called nano (you can use vi or emacs if you prefer them). We'll use the sudo command so we can ensure we edit the file with an account with appropriate access.
```
sudo nano /etc/default/sabnzbdplus
```
You should now see a file that looks similar to the following on your screen:
```
# This file is sourced by /etc/init.d/sabnzbdplus
#
# When SABnzbd+ is started using the init script, the
# --daemon option is always used, and the program is
# started under the account of $USER, as set below.
#
# Each setting is marked either "required" or "optional";
# leaving any required setting unconfigured will cause
# the service to not start.

# [required] user or uid of account to run the program as:
USER=xbmc

# [optional] full path to the configuration file of your choice;
#            otherwise, the default location (in $USER's home
#            directory) is used:
CONFIG=

# [optional] hostname/ip and port number to listen on:
HOST=
PORT=8080

# [optional] extra command line options, if any:
EXTRAOPTS=
```
You'll need to change two settings to get the application to work properly: USER and PORT. I usually just set the USER to the account XBMC runs on by default 'XBMC' and set the PORT to '8080'. This means you will later access the web interface via http://XBMCIP:8080/sabnzbd/
Press Ctrl+O (then enter) to save the file, then Ctrl+X to exit out of the editor.
Restart the SABnzbd service with our new configuration. Type the following to restart the service.
```
sudo /etc/init.d/sabnzbdplus restart
```
You now have the application installed and the baseline configured. You can now access the web interface via http://XBMCIP:8080/sabnzbd/ (where XBMCIP is the IP address of your XBMC machine)
You can configure the rest of the settings via the web interface. Just click on the configuration tab of the web interface (http://XBMCIP:8080/sabnzbd/)

Other Thoughts

If you don't already have a usenet provider, I would highly recommend Astraweb. They often have a special for 11.99 which can typically be found by googling 'Astraweb Special'.

There is also an XBMC plugin which I haven't fully tested which you can find on this thread on the SABnzbd+ forums. The latest version at the time of writing this is 1.5.4 and can simply be unpacked into the /home/xbmc/.xbmc/plugins/programs folder then run from the Programs tab of XBMC.

You can install three more themes for SABnzbd+ using the sudo apt-get install method used above.

sabnzbdplus-theme-iphone - iphone interface templates for the SABnzbd+ binary newsgrabber
sabnzbdplus-theme-plush - plush interface templates for the SABnzbd+ binary newsgrabber
sabnzbdplus-theme-smpl - smpl interface templates for the SABnzbd+ binary newsgrabber
sabnzbdplus-theme-mobile - mobile (phone) interface

For example, to install the iphone interface, use:

sudo apt-get install sabnzbdplus-theme-iphone

Just like above it will ask you to enter the password for the super account (XBMC) if you haven't already used the sudo function in your current session... and it will require you to press 'Y' to install the package.

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Comments (12) add comment

Scott said:

	Thanks Hey just wanted to say thanks for your little guide, I already had the SSH thing down, but wanted to know if you could run sabzbd+ on this badboy, and sure enough, this guide pops up. One problem I ran into was I couldnt set the port for xbmc + sabzbd+ to the same port, so xbmc is now 8080 and sab is 9995, for anyone else who comes across this and runs into that problem. Thanks!
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January 12, 2010 | url
Votes: +1

Tim Osborn said:

	Stuck Thanks for the instructions - can't connect using my web browser i'm afraid. I've tried adding xbmc under user and port 8080. I've also changed the port to 9995 and no joy. Google chrome just reports the link might be broken - any ideas?
	report abuse vote down vote up

January 14, 2010
Votes: +0

Josh Lyon said:

	@Tim: Stuck @Tim- You might try entering the IP address of your XBMC machine in the "HOST" field of the configuration file for sabnzbd. Also, if you change the port to 9995 like Scott, make sure you are using the appropriate web address (eg. http://xbmcip:9995/sabnzbd). You can ensure SABnzbd+ is running by looking at the processes that are running: `ps -eaf \| grep sab`
	report abuse vote down vote up

January 17, 2010
Votes: +1

Tim Osborn said:

...
Thanks for your advice. I've checked my config file and i'm definitely pointing at 192.168.1.8 (my xbmc box).

I try "http://192.168.1.8:9995/sabnzbd" and get nothing.

I've run the command you gave and my output is:

root@XBMCLive:~# ps -eaf | grep sab
xbmc 1392 1 0 Jan14 ? 00:00:08 /usr/bin/python2.5 -OO /usr/bin/sabnzbdplus --daemon
root 2406 2394 0 13:44 pts/0 00:00:00 grep sab

So I think its running - any other ideas? Thanks for looking..

January 18, 2010
Votes: +0

Tim Osborn said:

	... Sorry scratch that, its working. Restarted the service and good to go. Thanks so much for the guide!
	report abuse vote down vote up

January 18, 2010
Votes: +0

Ryan said:

	... Thanks! This guide is great. Had a tiny bit of trouble initially, but read comments and added my XBMC's IP to the config, and made sure I had a different port. One question though: any easy way to now upgrade this to 0.5.0 RC3?
	report abuse vote down vote up

January 24, 2010
Votes: +0

Ryan said:

	Nevermind! Nevermind, I successfully installed 0.5.0 RC3 using aptitude by following this thread: http://forums.sabnzbd.org/index.php?topic=387.0
	report abuse vote down vote up

January 25, 2010
Votes: +0

Josh Lyon said:

@ Ryan: 0.5.0 RC3 Instructions
@Ryan-
Did you have any trouble with using those instructions you pointed out? When I ran the command:

sudo aptitude --with-recommends install sabnzbdplus

...it automatically uninstalled python and a bunch of other libraries it thought were un-necessary. After installing sabnzbdplus with those instructions everything appeared to be working fine, but when I did a full reboot of my machine I couldn't get it to load back into XBMC. It kept giving me an error about "XBMC needs hardware accelerated OpenGL rendering"... I have no idea how the packages that were uninstalled as part of sabnzbdplus were in any way related to that, but it seemed to have caused me an issue on my Nvidia ION based revo.

Anyway, I went ahead and tried installing 0.5.0 RC3 again, but this time I used:

sudo apt-get install sabnzbdplus

...instead of the direct aptitude command. Using apt-get installed the core components, but didn't remove all the other packages. I now have the 0.5.0 RC3 release installed in unison with XBMC Live on my Revo.

February 03, 2010
Votes: +0

Josh Lyon said:

Fix NVIDIA issue on aptitude upgrade
I ran into the issue where my video graphic drivers went out of whack again while trying to upgrade to the latest XBMC SVN... so this time I decided I would try to figure out how to fix the core issue instead of reinstalling. It turns out it just requires a reinstallation (upgrade) of the video drivers to get you back up and running. Check out this blog post for more details on fixing your XBMC video driver woes.

You should be able to use the same video driver fix mentioned in my blog post (on a Revo/Ion chip) if your video drivers went out of whack when upgrading SABnzbd+ using the method mentioned on the SABnzbd+ forums.

February 11, 2010
Votes: +0

Lefty said:

	... Thanks for the guide got sabnzbd installed on my acer revo running xbmc live. Also got the xbmc video plug working as well as the nzbstreamer plugin very happy chappy
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