Updating Kodi

1st Official Post

    Hi

    I am using LibreELEC on an android box . I need help in updating kodi on my system but I haven't a clue what the procedure is guidance would be appreciated many thanks in advance

    with the limited info you've provided i would say this...

    If your just trying to update Kodi on Android then you need to just find the newest Android version of Kodi and do it within Android like a normal app...

    If your talking about the version of Kodi within LE then you will need to find the newest version of LE for your particular box and go from there...

    Keep in mind the with Os's like LE the version of Kodi is integral to LE so to update kodi itself requires the whole OS to be upgraded...

    Assuming your talking about using Kodi from LE then you'll need to know what box your using and start looking around here for the appropriate version of LE for you box...

    Sorry I should have said I was using Kodi within LE. I am using an android T8-S but I can't find an up to date version of LE for kodi 18 for the box. Does anybody know where to find one?

    • Official Post
    Quote from geezer_dave

    I am using an android T8-S but I can't find an up to date version of LE for kodi 18 for the box.

    You say you run LibreELEC, but as per Google info I can only find that it's running Android 4.4.2, which way tool old for today' Kodi.

    Not sure your going to find a current regular LE anymore as that box if i remember right is a older S905 box and current Amlogic's not really supported in LE these days...

    but with that said there should be some other builds around that work on the older S905's... You may have to look for a alternative build that has got the current Leia version of kodi in it and play around with the dtb files of that build to find the right one that works with it... I don't have any of that particular device but have a bunch of older original Netbox A95x which was the S905 (not the x) and compiled LE to run on them aways back and have seen builds by other developers make builds for other boxes with the same SoC.. you may just have to look around a bit.

    sorry for the late reply...

    think of it like this.... in the old days most of the hardware/peripheral setup was done discretely by including and compiling things like drivers and support firmware into the kernel, which basically kept a kernel almost unique to the hardware you were compliling the kernel for... or in the cases of most linux distributions they created kernels that included everything including the kitchen sink built in to allow their linux distro to run on a wide variety of hardware platforms without having to compile a smaller tighter kernel...

    Over time as linux moved forward they now use a hardware database file (device tree or dtb file) that when used with loadable kernel modules allows developers to compile their basic kernel with supported modules that can be loaded in at boot time... so the dtb is a flattened database file that contains most of the hardware setting required by the device your running on...

    So the dtb or device tree file can be swapped for different devices depending on whats in that device...

    In some ways its kinda like winblows does with the HAL or hardware abstraction layer as a method of dealing with different hardware in a system...

    WIth modern linux kernels the idea now is for manufacturers and developers to get their hardware/software support implemented into the mainstream kernel structure that way moving forward any one using a device already implemented in the mainstream kernel can adjust their overall implementation of a linux os on their device or product simply by adjusting their Device Tree File (dtb) which gets read into ram when the device boots up allowing the device to find and make use off all the peripherals employed on the device...

    Theres more to the whole mechanism but thats a simplistic way of thinking about it...

    Currently that is part of what separates LE from most of the other distro's originally forked from LE...

    Forks like CE and AE and others are basically working off OLD manufacturer proprietary kernels to keep their forks running, tho currentlly some are trying to migrate upward newer kernel revisions by dragging pieces of the older proprietary kernel forward and trying to implement them in the newer kernel revisions with varying degrees of success...

    Still tho they are not mainstream kernels in the same manner as LE is trying to accomplish...

    Anyways hopefully i have not confused you, but the idea in the end is to make things easier from one device to another by allowing the Device Tree Database Files to simply be adjusted without having to rely on a manufacturer or vendors proprietary kernel to have all the hardware properly recognized by the device...