Several issues with new installation

1st Official Post

    Morning everybody,

    I got a new HTPC and I am messing around with it the last days, but there are some issues I am stucked with and I am even not through with all the planned features.

    So what do I have here:

    J4105-ITX with 4GB Crucial CT4G4SFS824A

    A Samsung SSD 860 evo

    A DD C2T2 TV-Card

    And an Asus BW-16D1HT Bluray drive

    I installed on it the latest Milhouse Build. That was already challenging because of 3 issues.

    1) Because the graphic card in the cpu is too new, the official libreelec will sometimes freeze during installation and also later on when it's installed you have no graphics.

    2) I had some UEFI issues and apparently it can help if you activate Secure Boot.

    3) I plugged the 2 drives into convineant reachable Sata ports. Apparently everything worked after i unplugged the Bluray drive. After plugging it in again it didn't worked again. On the Board there are 4 Sata Ports 1, 2, A1, A2. Using only the ones without A seems to work.

    What is currently working is:

    TVHeadend Server and Client. I can watch and record several channels simultaneousl.

    Netflix

    So now to the problems. I already got soime help in other forums, but I think maybe here in the official forum it fits best.

    1) Video Output

    After getting Milhouse running I figured out that I have no output after the Libreelec screen. Unplugging and Replugging helped. So I found that workaround with the following autostart.sh

    Bash
    #!/bin/sh
xrandr --output HDMI1 --off && sleep 1 && xrandr --output HDMI1 --mode 1920x1080 --rate 60.00

    That worked and after booting I have video output. Even after a second reboot I can select HDMI for audio passthrough.

    However movies were stuttering because the switching of framerate was not working.

    So I got the note that one has to work with the whitelist in Milhouse Builds and edited it. It now has the entries FHD 60, 50, 30, 29,97, 24, 23,98.

    With that I don't have stuttering on TV and Netflix.

    But now comes the big remaining issue. After watching netflix when the output should go back to FHD 60Hz I loose the output. I can revive it manually with xrandr, but even then only the picture but not the sound comes back. I tried out to set a delay of 1, 2 even 3 seconds but it didn't help. With DVB-T2 there is no issue like that.

    2) SMB

    I decided to use from now on Emby and was last night working hours to get the native path option running. I always get the message that the files couldn't be found under the smb path. After some questions from the Emby forum I got note that actually I have a general problem with Samba here.

    Going to filemanager and adding source I can't see my NAS when I browse for smb or Windows network.

    Apparently this is the same for my old Raspberry. I don't remember how I did it back than, but I think I just added the path manually. I tried the same but I get the error Operation not permitted. The Nas is set to SMB2 to SMB3 the same as Libreelec. And apparently with the Raspberry with the official libreelec it is working.

    I have the strong believe that if I fix this the problem with Emby is solved too.

    Thx for reading. I can of course prepare logs, but I would need some guidance how to do this.

    I attached the Log that I could get from Samba share.

    Is there any information included I should worry about being public?

    Edited once, last by tuep (May 18, 2018 at 2:23 PM).

    Ok folks, some update here. I tried to search for the samba problem and found some hint to look at the folder /storage/.kodi/userdata.

    To my surprise the credentials to my shares are there in plain text. Is this really state of the art?

    However, I deleted mediasources.xml, password.xml, and sources.xml and rebooted.

    Afterwords I tried to connect to my smb share via the file manager and it worked like expected. I simply enter:

    protocoll SMB

    Server 192.168.178.45

    Share: Filme

    User: User

    Password: Password

    and the access is there. However, when I go to Emby for Kodi addon and enter there the network credentials:

    IP 192.168.178.45

    User: User

    Password: Password

    and reset the database, I get the error again, that the files are not existing. When I move to the file manager again and try to open the beforehand working share, I get the Operation not permitted error.

    When I then delete password.xml again and reboot, I can access again.

    Hopefully that helps.

    PS: Again the question does any of this logfiles contain sensitiv data?

    PPS: I saw several times in the logs the warning that http instead of https is used, but I could not find an option for that anywhere.

    As a workaround I switched the Emby for Kodi Addon to addon mode.

    Playing a movie there I figured out that the problem with loosing the output occures also there.

    From the logs it seems the system thinks the monitor is disconnected. I don't understand why.

    1) Gemini Lake systems seem to have a few issues. Your audio/video issues may be fixed in a future kernel, you could try a community build from escalade based on 4.16.y/4.17.y but my Milhouse builds will be on 4.14.y for the foreseeable future.

    2) Yes, kodi stores the username/password in clear text. It's not ideal, so if you're concerned just use an account that only has very limited access to your media files - ie. don't user your main admin account. If necessary create a new user account with read-only access to your media files.

    As for the Emby Samba issues, I can't really help as I don't know anything about Emby - I'm not even sure what Samba libraries Emby is using. Does Emby support SMB2?

    About the sensitive information, I don't think so - kodi redacts most sensitive information from their log files. I don't think we include in the zip any files that will include credentials. Nobody is likely to hack you based on the contents of the log files.

    The warning about http is a recent change in Kodi 18 which is being addressed - no need to worry about that.

    Hey Milhouse, thanks a lot for the information.

    I already practicing having a user with only read access to necessary folders. But maybe this should be highlited more prominently on the libreelec site.

    The Gemini Lake Issue is really sad. I wayted for this or for ryzen APUs because the issue with passthrough on Apollo Lake sounded bad.

    I could send back the Gemini Lake board and replace it by an apollo lake. Or new 35W Ryzen but this would be very unconvinient too.

    However, if I cannot fix it, it is not usable with libreelec. I need the switching of Frequency in order to avoid stuttering, but I cannot reboot after certain files all the time.

    Any other idea on this?

    I'd send it back. Intel stuff just seems to be getting worse with each generation, unfortunately.

    If you do decide to get a Ryzen APU system you'll also need a recent 4.16.y/4.17.y kernel, so using the latest AMD or Intel hardware with LibreELEC is currently a bit of a challenge and you'll need to find suitable community builds.

    Or use a different operating system, such as Windows (which may also work better with your Gemini Lake, as that's all Intel seem to support these days).

    Depends on your needs. Does it have to be x86?

    Until the dust settles, and Intel fix their new platform, or AMD get their act together with cheap NUC-type systems (and LibreELEC ship a more recent kernel supporting all of this new hardware), you may be better off with a cheap ARM based system.

    If you don't need 4K then get a Raspberry Pi 3+. If you do need 4K then there are slightly more expensive ARM systems that should work.

    x86 is in principle set. I choosed a NUC like thing to replace my raspberry Pi 3. Reason was that I want to get more things done by LibreELEC and make my old noisy PS3 obsolete. So Playing DVDs, Blurays, having a DVB-T2 card, which needs h265 in Germany and playing Netflix was the task. Also having some diskspace to get some tv recordings.

    Therefore I wanted to go away from all this tiny single PCB systems and build an old fashioned HTPC. An ARM system with all this features would become a gigantic hydra. 4K is not needed up to now. The TV doesn't support it and even with a new one at one time I think I have no material for this. The only source would be Netflix but this is not working in 4K. And I don't think that I start spending the extra money on UHD Blurays since the quality gain is not noticable enough.

    Since my needs didn't changed and since I already bought a lot of the needed stuff used before, I really have to stick to x86.

    Problem is, I have to send it back quite soon to get a refund. In principle I have to give note on Monday.

    Alternatives are:

    1) Trying out different Build.

    2) Going away von LibreELEC and use Ubuntu to run KODI. I really don't like this because LibreELEC is really lean and once running you don't have to mess around with the system a lot anymore. Ubuntu could be worse and maybe too heavy for the weak CPU.

    3) Buy an older Apollo Lake like the J3345-ITX. This has some passthrough issues but it seems too work in general as expected.

    4) Buy an AMD 2200GE that comes out just now with one of the cheapes ITX or mATX Boards. It seems they all support HDMI2 with the new APUs. Downside is the hardware support with old kernels, the higher cost and the higher power consumption. Plus is it's AMD and it's really a performing piece of hardware compared to the Gemini Lake stuff.

    4) could be easier combined with 2) I guess.

    If anybody could give me some advice on this that would be really helpfull.

    So 1) didn't worked.

    It is a bug. Still unsure whether I send it back and what to replace it with.

    Memory and Board summed up to around 120€ so waiting and hoping that it will be fixed nearby doesn't feel right.