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[HOWTO] Watch Netflix with Kodi on Arch Linux

Sauron

Introduction

I've recently set up Kodi on my laptop to watch Netflix without having to install DRM in my browser. It wasn't as painless as I would have liked and I couldn't find much information on how to get it to work, so I figured I'd write a small guide detailing what I did.

 

This guide is specific to Arch Linux (and Arch based distros) on Intel hardware; it may work on other Linux distros on different architectures with small adjustments (and it probably does), but I haven't tried. If you get it to work on a different setup, let me know and I'll add it to this guide.

 

Requirements

  • Kodi 18 "Leia" (available in the official repositories)
  • Python 3 and pip (available in the official repositories)
  • The cryptodomex python 3 module: pip3 install --user pycryptodomex
  • sudo privileges for your account

Installing the Netflix repository

  1. Download the latest repository .zip from github
  2. Open Kodi
  3. Navigate to the "Add-ons" section
  4. Select the box icon on the top left
  5. Select "Install from zip file" and select the downloaded repository in your file system

Installing the Netflix addon

  1. From the same screen, select "Install from repository"
  2. Select the "Netflix Addon Repository"
  3. From "Video Add-ons" install the "Netflix" addon

Installing the "Inputstream Adaptive" addon

Some guides I've read claim this is shipped with the latest version of Kodi - for Arch, that isn't the case.

 

To get this plugin, you need to install the "kodi-addon-inputstream-adaptive" package from the AUR. If you use an AUR helper like, for instance, yay, you can install it like so:

yay -S kodi-addon-inputstream-adaptive

If you don't have an AUR helper installed and you don't know how to build AUR packages, read the wiki article. When you get the hang of it I would recommend installing an AUR helper, specifically yay, though they aren't officially supported.

 

Installing Widevine DRM

Now comes the "hard" (harder to figure out than to actually do) part; you can now open to the Netflix addon, log in and navigate to a movie or series episode you want to watch. Upon selecting something, the addon will prompt you to install the Widevine DRM, which is necessary to watch all Netflix content.

 

If you go through with it without any additional steps, this will fail and the logs will complain saying: "permission denied". I ran some debugging on the inputstream scripts and I found the problem; the script tries to write to /usr/lib/kodi/addons/inputstream.adaptive which can't be written to by regular users. To avoid this issue, change read/write permissions on that folder:

sudo chmod -R 777 /usr/lib/kodi/addons/inputstream.adaptive

This isn't very safe because any user can now write to that directory; don't do this if you don't trust other users on your computer.

A safer alternative is to change ownership of that directory to your user and set some more restrictive permissions:

sudo chown -R yourusername /usr/lib/kodi/addons/inputstream.adaptive
chmod -R 740 /usr/lib/kodi/addons/inputstream.adaptive

 

Now the Widevine installation should succeed without errors.

 

You're done! Enjoy 🍿

Don't ask to ask, just ask... please 🤨

sudo chmod -R 000 /*

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Request:

Make a guide on running steam on kali linux

 

on a serious note: you may want to inform the readers how to set up yay and use the AUR manually without a helper before telling them to blidnly rely on one. 

Sudo make me a sandwich 

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  • 7 months later...

so, is this basically free netflix?

       Pumas.EXE has stopped responding...

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1 hour ago, Pumas_committed_bottleneck said:

so, is this basically free netflix?

No, you need a subscription. The plugin will ask you for your username and password.

Don't ask to ask, just ask... please 🤨

sudo chmod -R 000 /*

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