I wanted to use OMV on a i7-4790k that I no longer was using as a desktop computer. Since it sits near my LG smart TV I also wanted to use Kodi and plug it directly into the TV. With my anticipated server load the i7-4790k should handle this setup.
I figured I'd share my experience and why I find its not worth the effort.
OMV installed fine. First thing I read is that Kodi is not an officially supported platform on Debian Buster by Team Kodi.
But there is a package available as described in the Kodi forums in buster-backports.
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=363611
Step 1:
apt-get install {kodi,kodi-bin,kodi-data,kodi-repository-kodi,libspdlog1}/buster-backports
Step 2:
Create a kodi user using the OMV web interface (use nologin shell and groups users, video, aduio, input)
You have to setup a home directory.
mkdir /home/kodi
chown kodi:users /home/kodi/
# as root you can switch to kodi user using "su -s /bin/bash kodi"
Step 3:
Create a session file to start kodi (I found this code snippet online about auto launching kodi):
vi /home/kodi/KODI_alsa_session_starter
#!/bin/bash
# force KODI to use ALSA for proper passthrough support
AE_SINK=ALSA kodi-standalone
chmod +x ~/KODI_alsa_session_starter
Step 4:
Install xserver-xorg and nodm (I chose nodm over most instructions using lightdm).
Using "dpgk-reconfigure nodm" you can setup the kodi user to auto-login and run the KODI_alsa_session_start script.
At this point Kodi was up and running and would auto launch on boot. In the Kodi menu only "exit" was available and this would exit Kodi and immediately restart it.
What didn't work was audio. More than likely it was because I hadn't properly installed ALSA (ALSA, I read, was recommended over PulseAudio).
But the killer for me was that HDMI-CEC did not work. On a RPi 4 with HDMI-CEC, I could control Kodi using my TV remote. I decided it wasn't worth the time to figure the rest of this out or to look into getting a HDMI-CEC adaptor. For Kodi I'll continue using the RPi 4 (libreElec seemed to be a good choice).
