Arexibo

Arexibo is an unofficial alternate Digital Signage Player for Xibo, implemented in Rust with the GTK GUI components, for Linux platforms.

It is currently quite incomplete. Don't expect any particular feature to work unless tested.

Installation

Currently, no binary builds are provided.

To build from source, you need:

• The Rust toolchain, version >= 1.54. Refer to https://rustup.rs/ for the easiest way to install, if the Linux distribution provided package is too old.

• Development headers for dbus (>= 1.6), webkit2gtk (>= 2.22), and zeromq (>= 4.1), as well as a normal build system including pkg-config.

To build, run:

$ cargo build --release

The binary is placed in target/release/arexibo and can be run from there.

To install, run:

$ cargo install --path . --root /usr

The will install the binary to /usr/bin/arexibo. It requires no other files at runtime, except for the system libraries it is linked against.

Builds have been tested with the available dependency library versions on Debian bullseye, Ubuntu focal and RHEL 8 with EPEL. Debian/Ubuntu don't provide a new enough Rust compiler though.

Since webkit2gtk uses gstreamer to play media, you might have to install additional plugins such as gst-libav; they are not required at build time.

Usage

Create a new directory where Arexibo can store configuration and media files. Then, at first start, use the following command line to configure the player:

arexibo --host <https://my.cms/> --key <key> <dir>

Further configuration options are --display-id (which is normally auto-generated from machine characteristics) and --proxy (if needed).

Arexibo will cache the configuration in the directory, so that in the future you only need to start with

arexibo <dir>

Log messages are printed to stdout. The GUI window will only show up once the display is authorized.

Standalone setup with X server

The following example systemd service file shows how to to start an X server with Arexibo and no DPMS/screensaver:

[Unit]
Description=Start X with Arexibo player
After=network-online.target
Requires=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/xinit /usr/bin/arexibo /home/xibo/env -- :0 vt2 -s 0 -v -dpms
User=xibo
Restart=always
RestartSec=60
Environment=NO_AT_BRIDGE=1

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target