I can't add any skins to Kodi on 9.2.0

1st Official Post

    Here is the situation. I had a working LibreElec Pi running Krypton 17.6 (LibreElec 8.2.5). I had two skins installed Aeon Nox and the default.

    I wanted to update to Leia 18.5 because all my other devices use that version of Kodi. They also use the Amber skin.

    I updated through Kodi to LibreElec 9.2.0. The installation appeared to proceed normally, with no errors. When Kodi started, I did get a message that Aeon Nox wasn't supported and couldn't be updated, which I already knew would happen.

    I went to skins and tried to download Amber, but got an error message that the dependency for xbmc.gui 5.12.0 wasn't met. Then I tried Fire skin and got the same message. And then Xperience 1080 and got the same message.

    This makes no sense to me, because I thought the xbmc.gui 5.12 was for Krypton. Shouldn't the 18.5 Leia distribution be using a newer xbmc.gui. If so, why is it giving me the option to add skins that are looking for 5.12?

    Did updating break my install? Am I missing something? At this point though, it looks like I am stuck with only the default Kodi skin and unable to add any others. But it is clearly running Leia 18.5.

    Please HELP!

    EDIT: And now that I look at it, the list of skins it gives me is full of old skins that don't work with Leia. It appears that even though it did install the new build, if I try to add skins, it is showing me skins for old versions of Kodi, not Leia. How can I fix that?

    Edited once, last by wlnorris (January 5, 2020 at 4:01 AM).

    • Official Post
    Please provide a full debug log.

    How to post a log (wiki)

    1. Enable debugging in Settings>System Settings>Logging
    2. Restart Kodi
    3. Replicate the problem
    4. Generate a log URL (do not post/upload logs to the forum)

    use "Settings > LibreELEC > System > Paste system logs" or run "pastekodi" over SSH, then post the URL link

    Well, through sheer luck, I did stumble on a fix.

    I noticed that when I went to system:add-ons, I could also not install any add-ons from the repository. Each time I tried, it would immediately say install failed. I could download and install with zip files.

    If while browsing the addons, you push the left button, it will bring up options, one of which is check for updates.

    I clicked check for updates, and it just started downloading a bunch of stuff, at least 6 updates. Most of them were things I never heard of before, but one was Python certifi and another was Kodi Six.

    So for some reason, Leia needed these things, but they weren't getting installed/updated by the regular process? I don't know, but now it works 100%. I did check and automatic updates were turned on. Maybe the 9.2.0 Libre install needs to force this update check when it is installed.

    • Official Post

    An educated guess:

    Kodi checks the repo on start, but the repo uses SSL and the certificate has a start/end validity period. RPi has no real-time clock chip to retain the time between boots. On boot the system time starts from the libc compile date which is probably before the SSL certificate start date. So if NTP has not updated system time before Kodi starts (which happens more often with WiFi connections due to slower driver loading) the cert is seen as invalid and the repo check fails. Then you have to wait for another repo check, which will happen automatically eventually, but not if you're rebooting/rebooting to try and see where the problem lies.

    Well, I was on LAN and not wi-fi and my connection isn't great (15 Meg we 35 ms ping), but it isn't horrible. But could be slow NTP servers or something and random luck of the draw. But I did power off (unplugged Pi) and back on again trying to force an update and nothing happened that way.

    But I'm not a super Kodi user (just vanilla stuff) and this is my only Libre install, so I am not the most familiar with either.

    Yea I got the same on my rpi3. Did the update thing, got a load of updates, rebooted. But Im still getting the xbmc gui dependancy not met??? Sounds like a ickle bug?