NewzBook is an application I wrote to centrally manage my downloads and media. It has integration points with various indexing sites, SABnzbd, media management, etc. I originally designed the application for the Popcorn Hour, but I am now using XBMC again. I personally use the XBMC Live variant, so I’ve written up some instructions so other XBMC Live users could also use my NewzBook app.If you haven’t heard of NewzBook before, I would recommend checking out this thread on the NMT forums which describes what it does… I’ve also attached a few screenshots after the jump below.
A few more screenshots and then the instructions on how to install NewzBook on XBMC Live…
Installation Instructions
Install Apache2 — enter the below command and press ‘Y’ when prompted to install the pre-requisites:
sudo apt-get install apache2 php5
Download NewzBook and copy the core files to your home directory
>Note: if you get a message saying wget is not installed, first run ‘sudo apt-get install wget‘
cd ~ wget http://newzbook.googlecode.com/files/newzbook127beta.zip unzip newzbook127beta.zip mkdir NewzBook tar -xvf newzbook127beta.tar -C NewzBook rm newzbook127beta.tar newzbook127beta.zip
Create a symbolic link to the NewzBook webui folder from the Apache default website.
sudo ln -s ~/NewzBook/webui /var/www/NewzBook
Note: Apache2 has the concept of sites, which are separate configuration files that Apache2 will read. These are available in/etc/apache2/sites-available. By default, there is one site available called default this is what you will see when you browse to your XBMC machine. The standard configuration for default keeps the content in /var/www. This is where we will create a symbolically linked subfolder for NewzBook.
Make the configuration file writeable:
sudo chmod 777 ~/NewzBook/configuration/config.ini
Verify that apache is running by opening http://YourXBMCIP/
If you don’t see a ‘It Works!’ message then you probably don’t have apache running. You can check by seeing if it’s processes are running (you should see a couple lines with apache started):
ps -eaf | grep apache
Verify that NewzBook is rendering by opening http://YourXBMCIP/NewzBook
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5 sudo a2enmod php5 sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Congrats! NewzBook should now be installed. Visit the configuration page to add in your account details and finish the configuration.
OPTIONAL: Enable SABnzbd to be accessed via Apache2
Install the Proxy Module, load it, then reload apache:
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-proxy-html sudo a2enmod proxy sudo a2enmod proxy_http sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload
Open the apache configuration:
sudo nano /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
Paste in the below content
<Location /sabnzbd="/sabnzbd"> order deny,allow deny from all allow from all ProxyPass http://192.168.1.10:9995/sabnzbd ProxyPassReverse http://192.168.1.10:9995/sabnzbd </Location>
Make sure you update the IP address and port to your own IP address and port (in the above configuration). Save and close (Ctrl+O, Enter, Ctrl+X). Restart apache:
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
You should now be able to go to http://yourXBMC/sabnzbd and see your SABnzbd!
2 responses to “How to Install NewzBook on XBMC Live”
i can’t get NewzBook to work. at first i got ‘Forbidden’ so i assumed it wasn’t working, so i went ahead and ran the OPTIONAL part, but now safari won’t connect to the server. when i run sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart i get this:
* Restarting web server apache2
Syntax error on line 1 of /etc/apache2/httpd.conf:
Invalid command ‘<Location’, perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration
…fail!
apache is still running tho i think as my WebUI transmission server, and squeezebox server still appear
The optional step really is optional as all it does it enable you to access your SABnzbd (if you have it installed) from the same port as NewzBook (80). It creates a proxy so that when you make requests at http://yourserver/sabnzbd it will actually grab the content from http://yourserver:sabport/sabnzbd/
That being said, it looks like my blog converted the < and > symbols into HTML code [code]& gt;[/code] and [code]& lt;[/code]. I’ve fixed the blog article… but you can basically just change your httpd.conf to look like what’s in my blog above.
What page were you going to that said forbidden? I’m thinking there is probably just a permission error on one of the NewzBook files. You could even run the following command on your NewzBook folder (making sure you change ~/NewzBook to the proper location):
[code]sudo chmod -r 777 ~/NewzBook[/code]