Migrating from OpenElec 6.0.3 to Libreelec on an Intel NUC

1st Official Post

    Dear Experts,

    I am planning to upgrade my OpenElec Installation to Libreelec. But I am afraid I ran into problems quickly. I found this web site: Updating - LibreELEC and it makes a convincing point to do a fresh install after backing up the userdata folder. I guess this folder contains the library data. It says to stop Kodi and then enter commands in a shell:

    cd /storage/backup

    systemctl stop kodi

    tar -czf kodi_userdata.tar.gz /storage/.kodi/userdata

    How do I do that? I mean the first part. How do I "stop Kodi" without shutting down the system? How do I get a shell ? Will I get the shell on the box itself or do I have to ssh into it? Because, I don't remember to have set a password or user name for ssh and it asks me for one. It is some time ago since I set it up....

    While the box usually does what I want it to do, recently it is acting up with the Wifi connection (which is need to connect to the NAS with the media) and I have the hope that this is a software issue that might be solved with the update.

    The box is an Intel NUC, Celeron CPU [email protected] GHz

    Any help would be appreciated.

    • Official Post

    OpenELEC 6.0.3 ... That was many many moons ago.

    It's best to install LibreELEC fresh, since the latest releases use/need a larger system partition than OpenELEC. Simply upgrading wouldn't work because the system 'blobs' have grown in size since then.

    Backups of config files in the userdata folder, such as the advancedsettings.xml & sources.xml file, are best made manually IMO, including the database files in case you are not using a remote MySQL database solution.

    • Official Post

    OpenELEC never offered the option to change the default root/openelec credential, hence you can't remember setting one :)

    I'll update the wiki article to make it clear that you need to enable SSH first, then open an SSH connection to the box to run the commands.

    @Klojum: Yes, indeed, many moons ago. And that is as I think it should be: Install a system (here mediaplayer) and use it for years for its designated purpose, without thinking too much about it. Sorry for not being more clear about my plans: I meant migrating, i.e. new installation but with the user files saved.

    @chewitt: Thanks, that helped! It is even more moons ago that I used a unix shell (I had to look up ls...) but I managed and went through the steps and could put the old settings on the new system. LibreElec 9.2.6 is running. Don't know yet if it actually worked with the user file transfer, because the library is still empty. Now I am struggling to mount my network shares from the NAS, but maybe I am just too tired an miss something. There does not seem to be a wiki page on how to do that. I hope I'll manage tomorrow. Other than that the time zone is not yet set correctly and not time server installed, I'll figure that out eventually. But time to go to bed now around here.

    Thanks again for your pointers