View Full Version : Can't install to virtual machine
mishathegoat
2009-01-12, 04:33
Hey everyone,
I just downloaded and installed the latest (live) ISO to a virtual machine. Everything seems to load fine up to the point where a login prompt appears (command-line). After this it switches to a screen with an "X" in the center.. then back to the login prompt. It continues doing this in a loop with 2 second intervals.
Welcome to the magical world of XBMC screen loops. It's a common theme here in the forums. It won't run under the MS virtual PC. If you want to run it on your windblowes PC, I would suggest you download the actual windows installer. I've been fighting it for a week now trying to get ANY sort of Linux build to work without success. I don't think the actual Linux stuff is even out of alpha yet!
mishathegoat
2009-01-12, 04:43
Well I'm actually using VirtualBox on Ubuntu Intrepid.. I can get the "Linux Version" of XBMC working just fine, no problem, but I'd rather have a dedicated install of XBMC instead of a standalone program. Does this screen looping problem only happen in virtual machines?
Nope, it has happened with every install of the thing I have tried, with the exception of the windows version. It appears to me that somehow they have rewritten X to start XBMC, or some sort of X shell (only way i can describe it). I can run X without XBMC just fine, but try and load XBMC and I get the screen loops from hell.
miked2024
2009-01-12, 04:55
Well I'm actually using VirtualBox on Ubuntu Intrepid.. I can get the "Linux Version" of XBMC working just fine, no problem, but I'd rather have a dedicated install of XBMC instead of a standalone program. Does this screen looping problem only happen in virtual machines?
this has been discussed a million times before. you can't run xbmc in a virtual environment because the VM doesn't allow access to the graphics hardware.
if you want to have a dedicated install, you could install xbmc to a usb flash drive. whenever you want to run xbmc, connect and boot from the flash drive.
mishathegoat
2009-01-21, 21:43
Sorry, I'm still a little confused.
Thanks for telling me XBMC can't run on a virtual machine, I understand that now. However, I'm going to have a dedicated (physical) machine to (hopefully) install XBMC on. I don't want to have to boot from a flash drive or from a DVD to run XBMC. I'd as might as well just use the standalone program if that's the case (though, I'd rather not). Does anyone succeed in installing XBMC to the hard drive? Or is that just something unheard of? XBMC is probably the most appealing, free, multimedia center "OS", I'd really prefer to install this over MythTV, GeexBox, or LinuxMCE.
rwparris2
2009-01-22, 00:24
XBMC Live will install to a Harddrive.
It will also eat all of your partitions and destroy all your data, so make sure that drive is only for XBMC and doesn't have anything you want on it.
miked2024
2009-01-22, 17:48
Sorry, I'm still a little confused.
Thanks for telling me XBMC can't run on a virtual machine, I understand that now. However, I'm going to have a dedicated (physical) machine to (hopefully) install XBMC on. I don't want to have to boot from a flash drive or from a DVD to run XBMC. I'd as might as well just use the standalone program if that's the case (though, I'd rather not). Does anyone succeed in installing XBMC to the hard drive? Or is that just something unheard of? XBMC is probably the most appealing, free, multimedia center "OS", I'd really prefer to install this over MythTV, GeexBox, or LinuxMCE.
you can install the Live version to a hard drive, just like you can to a flash drive (e.g. the entire drive is used). the advantage is that you don't have to install the OS yourself, XBMC takes care of it. or, if you prefer, you can install ubuntu yourself and then add XBMC as a package. see the xbmc.org/download page for details on that.