How do I make a system file retain a modification?

1st Official Post

    Hi!

    LibreELEC 8.2.5 on a Shuttle XS35GTV2 fanless PC.

    I'd like to make a persistent change to a Kodi XML file. Does the community have a preferred method of modifying an installed LibreELEC setup? Please forgive me if this is a common question - I'm not active enough on this forum to know.

    Specifically, I'm trying to prevent the skinned overlay appearing each time I pause a video. It looks nice, but rather annoyingly obscures parts of the image. I usually pause as I want to examine a scene. So, I found this post detailing how to change an XML file.

    Can anyone please help me do this? I can modify the required file (/usr/share/kodi/addons/skin.estuary/xml/DialogSeekbar.xml) but need the mod to remain after rebooting. It seems the filesystem has been mounted as read-only.

    Thanks. :cool:

    Code
    # copy skin folder and change it's content
cp -r /usr/share/kodi/addons/skin.estuary /storage/.kodi/addons/skin.estuary.edit

# if name is also changed then new skin must be selected from Kodi settings !!!
sed -i 's/id=\"skin.estuary\"/id=\"skin.estuary.edit\"/' /storage/.kodi/addons/skin.estuary.edit/addon.xml
sed -i 's/name=\"Estuary\"/name=\"Estuary (Edit)\"/' /storage/.kodi/addons/skin.estuary.edit/addon.xml

    And then edit files in /storage/.kodi/addons/skin.estuary.edit.

    • Official Post

    In layman's terms... Make a copy of the Estuary skin, and work on that. Should you get into trouble, there is always the original default skin. :cool:

    Thank you guys, I have made a copy of the skin as suggested by vpeter, then modified it. Rebooted, but still Kodi shows the usual overlay when pausing a video.

    Then it occurs to me that maybe I need to config Kodi to load the new skin. I navigate to Interface Settings but can see only the existing (original) skin. Do I need to select my new modified skin? How do I do that? Should it be detected automatically where it's been copied to?

    I have confirmed that the new skin contains the mods shown by vpeter, and also contains the mods to disable the overlay after 3 seconds as indicated in the linked post.

    Then you did something wrong. Delete folder and copy it again. Don't run sed command because changing name is not required. And after you change the file restart kodi and you will see the difference working (at least I do and it is very nice btw).

    Quote from vpeter

    Then you did something wrong. Delete folder and copy it again. Don't run sed command because changing name is not required.

    Well, I did what you said. :cry:

    Anyway, based on your new advice that a part of your previous advice was not required, I have:

    Code
    cp /usr/share/kodi/addons/skin.estuary/addon.xml /storage/.kodi/addons/skin.estuary.edit/
reboot

    ... and now it works as expected.

    Thank you.

    This, I was wondering if I was just an idiot after I tried to change the core estuary files for advanced weather radar.

    I read somewhere, probably here, that you can just copy the files to your .kodi skin addons but that doesn't seem to be working.

    Sincere Thanks To All For This.

    The OSD (On-Screen Display) during pause has been driving me nuts (obscuring documents and tweets on the news and in documentaries, obscuring sub-titles, spoiling ScreenSaves etc.).

    I just implemented this and it has worked a treat.

    LibreElec Developers: Please consider making this the default condition in Estuary for LibreElec.

    RPi4-4, LibreELEC (official): 9.1.002 (RPi4.arm), Linux 4.19.57 armv7l, Kodi 18.3