Odroid-C2 Media Server

An Odroid-C2 single-board computer makes a decent home media server. It has gigabit ethernet, it runs Linux, and it's faster than a Raspberry Pi.

The Odroid-C2 has the ability to display 4K video and I am hoping to actually have this machine play movies out to the TV. So far, that part is not working.

What does work, however, is serving media to the Xbox 360, iPads, phones, and other computers. This it does without a hitch.

Operating System

There are at least two choices for operating systems on the C2: Ubuntu Linux or Android. Official Odroid-C2 operating system links.

On my system, I chose to go with the microSD-card storage as opposed to the faster eMMC storage. So far, I've had no trouble related to storage speed.

Post O/S Configuration

Once the operating system is installed, it's time to customize the system. We'll do the following:

1. Update the system software.

   # sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade -y
   

2. Install additional software.

   # sudo apt-get install aptitude firefox minidlna samba -y
   

3. Set the hostname.

   # sudo sed -i -e 'iYOUR_HOSTNAME' -e '1,$d' /etc/hostname
   

4. Set the time zone and locale.

   Edit /etc/default/locale to (for example):

   LANG="en_CA.UTF-8"
   LANGUAGE="en_CA:en"
   

   Edit /etc/locale.gen and uncomment your desired locale names. For example:

   en_CA ISO-8859-1
   en_CA.UTF-8 UTF-8
   en_US ISO-8859-1
   en_US.ISO-8859-15 ISO-8859-15
   en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
   

5. Add a new admin user.

   # GRP="$(grep ':.*odroid' /etc/group
            |awk -F: '{print $1}'
            |tr '\n' ',' |sed 's/,$//')"
   # useradd -r -m -G ${GRP}
   

6. Add a regular (family) user. Upon startup, the C2 will auto-login to this account.

7. Create a passwordless SSH configuration from your development machine to the C2.
8. Tighten up SSH security.
9. Connect USB storage containing media (music, videos).
10. Configure MiniDLNA.
11. Configure Samba.