Hi folks,

for my Raspberry Pi I made a SlackBuild for OMXPlayer, that now can be downloaded here: http://mirror.modweb.de/slackware/14.1/slackbuilds/

Before making the SlackBuild I tried to use a pre-compiled debian package instead. The video output worked well, but the sound quality over HDMI was horrible.

With my SlackBuild the package is built with soft floatpoint support (default was hard float) and all seems to work well on my raspi.

This Slackbuild is for ARM architectures only, since imho it wouldn't make sense to build it for other architectures, because OMXPlayer was originally made for the Raspberry Pi version of XBMC, to use hardware accelerated video playback.

Building the omxplayer package took about 160 minutes on my Raspberry Pi 1 type B.

Thank your for the SlackBuild! It built fine here. One thing of note, I couldn't get the audio to work until I did this:
I went ahead and added that to /etc/rc.d/rc.local so it will preserve after reboots. It's working great! I can get HD videos to play with no problems.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks, stormtracknole.
You're right. That line I also had to add to my /etc/rc.d/rc.local but forgot to mention it.

Not a problem. Thanks for providing the SBo.

The sources for the OMXPlayer SlackBuild have been moved to github:
https://github.com/Sammyboy/omxplayer-SlackBuild

Thanks for the Slackbuild. I had to do couple of things to make it compile (on Slackware 14.2-arm).
(1) I had to edit the omxplayer.SlackBuild and replace FLOAT=${FLOAT:-soft} with FLOAT=${FLOAT:-hard}.
(2) the compiler would not run unless the firmware files are in /opt/vc. I had to download them from https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware and put them in /opt/vc. It may not need all the files, but it was easy enough to place the whole thing there.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for your feedback, asarangan.

The soft float flag is meant to work with RPI 1. But if you are using RPI 2 or RPI 3 and need hard float, you don't need to change that in the SlackBuild.
Instead you can do

The toolchain generates the correct output - you don't need to specify -mfloat-abi=hard
I only added it during the bootstrap since I was hacking things all over the place and wanted to make sure that it was building correctly, and I just never removed it from the standard set of flags.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks, drmozes!
I committed the removal of the FLOAT variable to my git repository.
Also, I added some info to the README file about the firmware folder.

@slacksam

I could provide you with a working SlackBuild for the latest Kodi (17.1 / 17.3), which includes the omxplayer, if you have a little time to do some cosmetic work on it and publish it. I was just modifying an old SlackBuild for Kodi 15 and was more "patching" the script instead of rewriting it and I don't really have where to publish my work. There are some small issues however, you need a small patch file together with the SlackBuild (could be inlined in the SlackBuild), you also need to compile manually some dependencies including ffmpeg (Kodi should compile ffmpeg on its own but the build scripts are a mess and would work only on Debian/Ubuntu - this could be comprised in the SlackBuild) and the latest TVHeadend HTS Kodi Addon won't compile under Slack (cmake/compiler issues)- I have an older snapshot (some months ago) that does compile and works OK. Finally you need to get the tinyXML (Kodi dependency) from Debian or find a way to generate the libs yourself - I have (prepared) slack packages for both arm HF and SF - you might be able to publish them too.
The total compilation time on a Pi2B is about 3 hours.
PM me if you consider it.

- running the optimized Kodi on a Pi2B is very fast and doesn't take more than 15-20% of system load
- running the optimized (-march=armv6zk -mtune=arm1176jzf-s -mfloat-abi=soft) Kodi on a pi 0 is also OK, although the load is at 100% and you cannot play 720p / 1080p at 50FPS - I'm looking now for a HardFloat option, since the vc (userland) - which includes the RaspberryPi adapted libmesa libs gets a 40% performance boost if compiled HardFloat (they're used by the omxplayer BTW)
- for example, on Pi2B - Kodi (omxplayer) playing a DVB stream 1080p at 50FPS - Servus Deutschland HD, provided by tvheadend that runs on the same box, all (Kodi + all its multimedia dependencies & vc) compiled with -march=armv7-a -mtune=cortex-a7 -mfpu=neon-vfpv4 -mfloat-abi=hard:

bcmstat.sh A
Config: v0.4.4, args "A", priority lowest (+19)
Board: 4 x ARMv7 cores available, ondemand governor (Pi2 Model B rev 1.1, BCM2836 SoC with 1GB RAM by Sony)
Memory: 1008MB (split 752MB ARM, 256MB GPU) plus 200MB Swap
HW Block: | ARM | Core | H264 | SDRAM |
Min Freq: | 600MHz | 250MHz | 0MHz | 400MHz |
Max Freq: | 900MHz | 300MHz | 300MHz | 400MHz |
Voltages: | 0, 1.2000V | +1, 1.2250V |
Other: temp_limit=85
Firmware: Apr 5 2017 11:49:52, version 3ca4cf4a663c5351eaec08b29d50d6e8324981b4 (clean) (release)
Codecs: H264 H263 MPG4 MPG2 MJPG PCM
Booted: Sun Aug 20 08:40:48 2017

Time ARM Core H264 Core Temp (Max) IRQ/s RX B/s TX B/s GPUMem Free Memory Free/Used(SwUse) Accum GPU B Mem kB
======== ======= ======= ======= =============== ====== ========== ========== =========== ======================= =======================
18:15:25 900Mhz 250Mhz 250Mhz 57.30C (57.30C) 1,705 1,090 5,046 155M ( 65%) 745,244 kB/22.2%( 0.0%) 0 -220
18:15:27 600Mhz 250Mhz 250Mhz 56.22C (57.30C) 1,612 80 226 155M ( 65%) 745,336 kB/22.2%( 0.0%) 0 -128
18:15:29 600Mhz 250Mhz 250Mhz 56.76C (57.30C) 1,596 81 353 155M ( 65%) 745,096 kB/22.2%( 0.0%) 0 -368
18:15:31 600Mhz 250Mhz 250Mhz 56.76C (57.30C) 1,595 80 228 155M ( 65%) 745,256 kB/22.2%( 0.0%) 0 -208
18:15:33 600Mhz 250Mhz 250Mhz 56.22C (57.30C) 1,598 80 226 155M ( 65%) 745,192 kB/22.2%( 0.0%) 0 -272
18:15:35 600Mhz 250Mhz 250Mhz 56.76C (57.30C) 1,598 80 227 155M ( 65%) 745,160 kB/22.2%( 0.0%) 0 -304^C

htop output:

1 [||||||||||||||| 17.7%] Tasks: 60, 60 thr, 102 kthr; 1 running
2 [||||||||||||||||||||| 25.9%] Load average: 0.64 0.44 0.43
3 [|||||||||||| 13.6%] Uptime: 09:35:23
4 [|||||||||||||| 14.9%]
Mem[|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||186M/735M]
Swp[ 0K/200M]

1 members found this post helpful.

@abga: Thanks.
Unfortunately I can't send you a PM because I can't find any option for that. But feel free to write me an email (adress can be found in the .info file of the SlackBuild).

To be honest, I don't maintain any SlackBuild of programs I don't use on my own, and currently I prefer using my RPi without a GUI. However you could publish your SlackBuild on a git platform, like github.com or notabug.org, and paste a link in here, so others can help you maintaining it.

@slacksam

I guess you should have added me first to your contacts (friendship request), but I did it my side now.
I'm also pretty new with LQ and just learning the buttons/options I have. I checked in my profile settings and all the necessary switches for other users to PM were enabled.

Sorry to hear you're not interested in Kodi. I was guessing that if you already had invested some effort for OMXPlayer, which is pretty useless without a GUI like Kodi, that's if you're using it only for multimedia purposes and not for some specific Video Surveillance / Streaming purposes, you might want to be able to enjoy Media like a PRO
I'm also using Slack without a GUI and Kodi doesn't rely on X to run but solely on the MESA libs. Additionally, for security reasons you could run Kodi as a non-root user and filter all its attempts to "call home".
/usr/sbin/iptables -I OUTPUT -o eth0 -m owner --uid-owner kodi-user -j DROP

I'm not having that much time on my own and TBH with you I'm not that good in scripting anymore, I left the technical IT field for almost 10 years and lost/forgot a lot. I'm still proficient in SQL and Unix/Linux internals however. Furthermore I'm not registered with github&co and I might be able to maintain the SlackBuild as I'm using it but cannot guarantee a long term interest. The SlackBuild, while working perfectly, is full of comments ATM as I used it for several Kodi versions (including Betas) and I literally butchered it from when I started using it.

Und, wir können uns Privat auch auf Deutsch unterhalten.


@ all

I'm also not sure how many people would like to get Kodi and use it on their arm devices - at least on Raspberry it works very well.

Maybe starting a new thread just for Kodi and paste the files would be a better solution, however, I might still need a repository somewhere for an "uncompilable" 78KB dependency that I nicked from Debian.

1 members found this post helpful.

@slacksam

Sorry, it looks like we are not able to use Private Messages on LinuxQuestions unless we pay for the service or wait for the Senior Member statute:
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...essage-754350/

I missed the info file suggestion from your previous post, sorry - I have now your E-Mail Address.

Thanks for the link. So we'll have to wait until I make 150 posts
But if you're using IRC, you can contact me at the freenode channel ##slackware.de (or by sending me an email).

After scaring slacksam privately, just kidding , I'd contacted the original Kodi SlackBuild maintainer and proposed a collaboration for an ARM Raspberry Pi specific SlackBuild.

I wasn't aware that there's an already updated Kodi SlackBuild for Slack 14.2 (x86) and I'm thanking slacksam for pointing me at it:
https://slackbuilds.org/slackbuilds/...odi.SlackBuild

This updated SlackBuild doesn't look to be usable on ARM - Raspberry Pi and I'm waiting for a reply from the original maintainer to see how it goes from here, still not sure how many people are interested in this, but with over 10 million Raspberry Pi units sold and a few looking for multimedia on their devices here on the Slack ARM forum, I guess it's worth the effort.