Operation Manual

The Programs menu on the home screen provides access to the Rasbmc Settings menu (shown in Figure 7-7) where network
settings, software upgrade settings and various system settings can be adjusted. Normally, this menu can be ignored—however,
if you’re having problems connecting to the Internet or the Rasbmc system is continuously crashing, the Programs menu can
provide important tools for resolving the issue.
Clicking the Rasbmc Settings option under the Programs menu will open a window with three tabs. The first tab allows you to
adjust the network settings, including disabling DHCP and setting a manual network configuration (see Chapter 4, “Network
Configuration”, for more details). If you needed to set the Raspberry Pi to use a manual network configuration in other
distributions, this is the place to do the same in Rasbmc.
Figure 7-7: Configuring Rasbmc in the Settings menu
The second tab, marked XBMC, allows you to install the nightly build of the XBMC software. The nightly build is so called
because it is created from the program’s source code automatically every night, and contains the latest changes made by the
software’s developers. As a result, it can have fixes for any bugs you may encounter—but it can also have untested changes that
may make matters worse. This same screen allows you to switch between different versions of XMBC, making it easy to test the
nightly build and return to the default version if a problem is found.
Finally, the System tab allows you to set a new password for the pi user account to secure Rasbmc for network access. As with
the general-purpose Debian distribution, this password is set to raspberry by default. The System tab also allows you to disable
automatic upgrading of the Rasbmc software. This should be left enabled where possible, as it will ensure you get the latest
security and bug fixes delivered automatically, but if you’re on a per-megabyte metered Internet connection, you can disable the
feature.