Recently a  friend of mine asked me, if it would be possible to get a media center or something like that running on his old flat screen TV, that wasn’t a SmartTV. He wanted a kind of SmartTv-like app system (Add-Ons). So I decided to install KODI Mediacenter on Raspberry Pi 2 B+ that I had laying around. Therefore I had to install OpenELEC (http://openelec.tv/), which  is an embaded operating system specially build for KODI (http://kodi.tv/). And yes it’s pretty cool. It hat a very huge community and a plugin system with plenty extensions.

I took the following steps to Install OpenELEC Mediacenter on RaspberryPi 2 B+

1. Download  a appropriate disk image from http://openelec.tv/get-openelec (in our case http://releases.openelec.tv/OpenELEC-RPi2.arm-6.0.0.img.gz)
2. Format the MicroSD card as a single partition of type ext4:
   1. List partitions:

      $> sudo fdisk -l

      This should list something like that:

      Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 15.9 GB, 15931539456 bytes
      4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 486192 cylinders, total 31116288 sectors
      Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
      Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
      I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
      Disk identifier: 0xc16a9ea4
      
              Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
      /dev/mmcblk0p1            2048    31116287    15557120    b  W95 FAT32
      

   2. Delete all existing partitions:

      $> sudo fdisk /dev/mmcblk0

      This should give you another dialog / prompt.

      1. type d to delete partitions
      2. recheck partitions (type p, should show an empty partition table)

         Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 15.9 GB, 15931539456 bytes
         4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 486192 cylinders, total 31116288 sectors
         Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
         Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
         I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
         Disk identifier: 0xc16a9ea4
         
                 Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

   3. Create a new overall size ext4 partition:
      1. Type n for a new partition
      2. Type p to make it a primary partition
      3. Press enter to set partition number to 1
      4. Press enter to set first sector to default value
      5. Press enter to set last sector to default value (use the whole disk)
      6. Now the partition table should look like that (press p to print it):

         Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 15.9 GB, 15931539456 bytes
         4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 486192 cylinders, total 31116288 sectors
         Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
         Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
         I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
         Disk identifier: 0xc16a9ea4
         
                 Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
         /dev/mmcblk0p1            2048    31116287    15557120   83  Linux
         

      7. Write the partition table to disk and exit by pressing w
      8. Format the new partition with ext4:

         $> sudo umount /dev/mmcblk0p1
         $> sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p1

         The result should look like that:

         mke2fs 1.42.9 (4-Feb-2014)
         Discarding device blocks: done                            
         Filesystem label=
         OS type: Linux
         Block size=4096 (log=2)
         Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
         Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
         972944 inodes, 3889280 blocks
         194464 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
         First data block=0
         Maximum filesystem blocks=3984588800
         119 block groups
         32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
         8176 inodes per group
         Superblock backups stored on blocks: 
             32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208
         
         Allocating group tables: done                            
         Writing inode tables: done                            
         Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
         Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done   
         

3. Now you have to unpack the downloaded archive:

   $>  gunzip -d OpenELEC-RPi2.arm-6.0.0.img.gz

4. Afterwards you have to copy the extracted disk image to the MicroSD card:

   $> sudo dd if=OpenELEC-RPi2.arm-6.0.0.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4M

   The result should look like that:

   73+0 records in
   73+0 records out
   306184192 bytes (306 MB) copied, 23,004 s, 13,3 MB/s

   Finally you should call sync once more, to make sure, all data is synced to your card:

   $> sync

5. THAT’S IT! Now you should be able to put the card into your Pi and plug it into your TV to run OpenELEC.