Cannot get skins, addons, anything to install on LibreElec 10.0.1 / Kodi 19

u144175 · November 11, 2021 at 2:30 AM

Am upgrading my RPi2B 1GB running LibreElec 9.2.6 / Kodi 18 to a new RPi4 8GB. Attempted installation of LibreELEC-RPi4.arm-10.0.1.img.gz; installation went fine however I could get NO addons, skins, anything at all to load once Kodi 19 was running. Every attempt resulted in 'installation failed' error. Messed with various settings to no avail. Eventually tried loading LibreELEC-RPi4.arm-9.2.8.img.gz. This older version LibreElec (w/ Kodi 18) worked flawlessly. Anyone else had this situation? Is there an easy fix? (Go easy on me as I am not well versed in system level programming so step by step instructions would be appreciated . As a part of the troubleshooting steps I took, I downloaded / installed Kodi 19 with a different operating system and everything worked. So, the issue is only with the LE10.0.1 / Kodi 19 combination. Thank you in advance.

**Klojum** · November 11, 2021 at 3:04 AM

Upgrades going from a RPi2 to RPi4 is a dark challenge in itself. For RPi4, fresh installations are recommended, especially with the Python 2 to 3 change. With every major upgrade not all old add-ons are available in the new major version of Kodi.

Install LE 10 on the RPi4, which should very much work. If add-ons still do not work, I'm curious as to which ones these are.

u144175 · November 11, 2021 at 1:04 PM

Sorry I should have been more clear. I did a fresh install on all attempts. It does not matter which add-on I try, none will load. Neither will skins, or services such as subtitles. Unknown sources is turned on. It is like any change whatsoever is disallowed. I have never seen anything like it before.

I realize it is a different process but I also attempted to install Kodi 19 on my Windows PC. It was successful and I could install things like the Confluence skin, The Oath add-on, Opensubtitles, etc, etc. Everything just works. Did a fresh install on the RPi4 of the latest version of OSMC and Kodi 19 and it has no problem installing add-ons, skins, services, etc.

With this and all the above in my first post, it makes me think it is something in LibreElec 10.0.1 (and 10.0.0 because I tried a fresh install of it too and it also would not allow installation of anything) which is causing this issue.

**Klojum** · November 11, 2021 at 1:39 PM

Quote from u144175

Sorry I should have been more clear.

Perhaps we should be more clear as well. Kodi setups with add-ons installed (i.e. the Oath) that, in whatever way, facilitate video piracy, will not get support on this forum or on the Kodi forum. This is as per the rules on both forums, and I'm sure that OSMC has a similar approach.. As far as I know, all add-ons in Kodi's official repository "just work". It also wouldn't be the first time that such 3rd party piracy add-ons are causing havoc with Kodi's core functionality.

u144175 · November 11, 2021 at 2:00 PM

I should be able to install skins, correct? I should be able to install subtitles, correct? Add-ons from the official Kodi repo also will not install. Nothing does.

LybsterKodi · November 11, 2021 at 2:47 PM

I only tried one addon - TVHeadend - and that worked, BUT I'm staying with my dual RPi3 setup for now. I think its KODI that needs a bit more work rather than LibreElec since I've tried OSMC, Raspberry Pi OS and XBian with the same result. My TV remote works flawlessly on the RPi3 but will not work on RPi4 and Fast Forward & Rewind on MP4 videos just doesn't work.

I tried various of the nightlies and encountered ones where there was no audio. My view is it needs more work, I'm going to keep trying releases / nightlies because I'm sure that at some point they will crack it. Until then I'll just dust the RPi4 every so often.

**Klojum** · November 11, 2021 at 4:04 PM

@u144175 Doublecheck your internet connection before you start downloading/installing add-ons. That's all I'm gonna say. Provide a full debug-log of Kodi via pastebin (do not splash into the forum), so we can have a look.

@LybsterKodi I'm not quite sure why you posted in this thread, but whatever.

u144175 · November 11, 2021 at 4:30 PM

I have double checked the internet connection. Also, the other installations of OSMC and LibreElec 9.2.8/Kodi 18 were done using the same hardwired ether connection and no network settings were changed between the various installs so I am sure that is not it. (Plus, the old RPi2 used this same hardwired connection and no settings on the router, etc have been changed.)

I enabled debug logging and attempted to upload the Kodi log file using the Kodi logfile uploader from the Kodi official repo but, you guessed it, it will not install. So, I manually copied it using file manager and placed in pastebin here. If this tells you anything of interest, please advise as I'd be extremely grateful! Thank you in advance.

**Klojum** · November 11, 2021 at 6:02 PM

Apparently Kodi cannot write to its temp folder for some unknown reason.

Code

2021-11-11 09:07:47.719 T:1021 ERROR <general>: Copy - Failed write to file /storage/.kodi/addons/temp/62221650-7f97-48b8-9ad7-1d55652d4766/media/Textures.xbt
2021-11-11 09:10:40.007 T:1021 ERROR <general>: Failed to unpack archive 'special://home/addons/packages/skin.confluence-4.7.13.zip' to '/storage/.kodi/addons/temp/f7d60148-ec42-443f-9588-0bf75075b02e'
2021-11-11 09:12:13.490 T:1021 ERROR <general>: Create - Error creating /storage/.kodi/addons/temp/a3555960-d27b-42fc-805c-a1abdc0ea617/language/resource.language.en_au

So either your SDcard is going EOL, or something else funky is going on.

How about doing (again) a REALLY clean/new LE setup, that means, writing the LE disk image onto your SDcard. No repurposing the existing partitions.

Also NO 3rd party addons and NO skins (Confluence will have to wait). Enable "Wait for network" for 30+ seconds for the network setup.

If you still cannot download/install add-on, then your nearest LibreELEC mirror may be faulty.

u144175 · November 11, 2021 at 8:47 PM

Thank you for your response. I have been doing a brand new clean install each and every time. Have formatted the card between installs (I know this should not be necessary since you are then just going to write over the card with an image), and have used two different micro SD cards for each of the installs, one 16GB, the other 32GB. Both cards are SanDisk and both are new. Thus, I do not believe the card(s) (or any of the hardware) is at issue.

As far as I know, I am using the official site to download the LibreElec install file, https://libreelec.tv/downloads/raspberry/. I have located the page showing mirror sites and would be glad to try downloading from the Netherlands, for example, or some other non-US location. However, I now believe this also would not address the issue because...

Based on your comment of the log file indicating the temp file cannot be written to, I went to System Information / Storage, and I see the following:

Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on

/dev/mmcblk0p1 511.7M 141.9M 369.9M 28% /flash

/dev/mmcblk0p2 26.0M 21.4M 3.9M 85% /storage

Given /storage is 85% full, I assume this is why the temp folder cannot be written to. The installation of each skin / service / add-on must be requiring more free space than is available for all the files each pulls for installation. So, the question now becomes, how / why is this happening? It makes no sense to me that the sizes shown above are in MB. The card used this time is the 16 GB card. It was formatted to 16 GB. The Raspberry imager sees it as 16 GB when the LibreELEC-RPi4.arm-10.0.1.img.gz image file is fed to it. Something is causing these partitions to be set too small when the LibreElec image is written to the card. I do not know how to resolve this.

For comparison, on the 32GB card, I presently have loaded LibreElec 9.2.8 / Kodi 18. It shows:

Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on

/dev/mmcblk0p1 511.7M 144.4M 367.3M 28% /flash

/dev/mmcblk0p2 28.3G 168.8M 28.1G 1% /storage

Not apples to apples obviously, but the point of this comparison is that /storage under LibreElec 9.2.8 is using the vast majority of the card's overall space, not a very small portion as I am seeing under LibreElec 10.0.1. This appears to be the issue however I have no idea how to troubleshoot / resolve this. Found some instructions via Google that provided some detail on how to resize partitions but upon attempting, I receive a bunch of messages that such is not allowed under LibreElec for security and stability reasons.

Is there a way to manually force partition sizes during the LibreElec image burn to the card? The only override, if you want to call it that, that I know of is CTRL_SHIFT X which I have used to pervide network credentials, enable SSH, and set time zone as a part of the image burn.

Again, thank you very much you for insight here.

**Klojum** · November 12, 2021 at 9:27 AM

Quote from u144175

Based on your comment of the log file indicating the temp file cannot be written to, I went to System Information / Storage, and I see the following:

Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mmcblk0p1 511.7M 141.9M 369.9M 28% /flash
/dev/mmcblk0p2 26.0M 21.4M 3.9M 85% /storage

LibreELEC needs to expand the storage partition during the 1st boot. If you don't boot from the SDcard or if the partition resize does not happen for some reason , the storage partition is too small and will run out of disk space quickly. Then you can either resize the storage partition manually using tools like Gparted, or have it trigger again (although I cannot remember the trick for that at this moment).

**chewitt** · November 12, 2021 at 10:34 AM

Code

touch /storage/.please_resize_me

^ will trigger the resize of /storage to 100% size. I forget whether we resize the current partition or remove and recreate it.

u144175 · November 12, 2021 at 3:31 PM

I tried the command 'touch /storage/ .please_resize_me' then rebooted. Unfortunately, I received the following error "sizing is not permitted - the system has already been initialised." and the partition remained unchanged.

However, I was able to use Gparted via another system to resize the /storage partition on the card and upon plugging back into the RPi4 and rebooting, voilà, everything is working!

Not a completely satisfying resolution as I would have liked to know why the auto-resizing was not taking place upon first boot of the RPi with LibreElec 10.0.0 & 10.0.1 as it was supposed to, but I am very happy to be back in business with the latest version of LibreElec.

Thank you all very much for sharing your knowledge and for your willingness to assist those of us like me that have relatively little knowledge / experience. It really is uplifting to experience this community spirit.

All the best!

Lorasa · April 22, 2022 at 8:50 PM

hello,

I have the same problem as the guy before.

i can't install skins or other language packs like german right after the first boot.

It took me quite a bit of effort to figure out that it may have to do with the memory partitioning not working.

I have now also tried to use gparted, but I always get a file that is probably for a bootable USB stick. I need a program that has a Windows interface to repartition the memory.

What do you say? Do I have the same problem as the guy before? And if so, how does gparted work and where do I get the right one?