Upgrade XBMC to OpenELEC

After working for over 2 years, essentially problem free, it was finally time to upgrade. I looked at just upgrading XBMC to Kodi, but found a much easier path of installing OpenELEC. Before doing so, I tested the installation on a spare machine. It worked really well. The things that concerned me, and required further investigation were:

• how to manage machine using SSH?
• can I use cron to perform maintenance tasks?
• will remote work
• will wireless connection work

I must congratulate the OpenELEC team on such an easy installation and configuration. It was simple and painless.

Preparation

Backup media on XBMC host: music, videos onto external USB drive

Prepare installation media. Here I used OpenELEC Stable - Generic x86_64 Version:4.2.1 (tar version) and the installation script to write to a USB flash stick: link

Installation

I just followed instructions on from this link. For setup, I connected a keyboard to make data entry easier. I also selected to enable SSH.
The choices you make are written to a read-only file system. To update these options you will need to use the OpenELEC Configuration Addon.

Post Installation

There really was very little to do:

• remote worked out of the box 
• wireless connection was simple with standard questions

Copying the music and video media back onto system was a two step process:

• use the system file menu to copy music media onto /storage/music
• update album covers

Do the same for videos:

• use the system file menu to copy video media onto /storage/video
• update video covers

Initially SSH used a password. I used the command ssh-keygen to use keys instead. Then used OpenELEC Configuration to switch off use of passwords.

Cron is supported, but I have not yet need to enable anything as the system pretty much looks after itself.

Summary

Apart from the very quick and easy installation, OpenELEC has these Features I love:

• being able to add my ISP’s freezone playlists, so I can use my stereo to stream live music
• on demand YouTube (register your account and you get all your favourites)
• on demand TEDTalks via add-on
• reliable wireless connection (was a problem in my earlier version of XBMC)
• speedy start-up

I can highly recommend this distribution.