What is the safest way to close my raspberry pi media center?
Can I simply unplug it or are there big risks of getting corrupted data on my SD card.
It is safe to unplug after doing a proper shutdown in XBMC, just select the shutdown command in XBMC before powering off the Raspberry Pi. Failure to do so can corrupt the XBMC library databases, other databases, or even other OS files, so to be sure, just wait a few seconds after the shutdown.
In case you don't have the shutdow option, you can get it by creating the following file:
sudo nano /var/lib/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/xbmc.pkla
And add:
[Actions for xbmc user]
Identity=unix-user:xbmc
Action=org.freedesktop.upower.*;org.freedesktop.consolekit.system.*
ResultAny=yes
ResultInactive=yes
ResultActive=yes
Just Ctrl+X and save, and that should give you the option to properly shut down.
Note: Most users leave the Raspberry Pi on all the time, as its main feature is the low energy consumption.