[x86-64] LE in kiosk mode freezes

    Hi!

    I installed LE on an Intel NUC at a friend of mine as a simple kiosk system. It boots up and starts playing the same video file (local storage) over and over again. After a while (hours, sometimes days) the box (and the video) just freezes. I have to power cycle the NUC to start again. I know, that this might be difficult to track down, but does anyone have an idea how to fix this? Here are the logs:

    https://paste.libreelec.tv/musical-gorilla.log

    I would really appreciate some help! Thanks a lot!

    Thorsten :)

    Code
    error <general>: CVideoPlayerVideo::OpenStream - Invalid framerate 300, using forced 25fps and just trust timestamps

    I doubt this ^ is enough to cause problems, but it's a simple task to run the file through "handbrake" and fix the file. You can also bump to a current LE13 nightly and see if that magically solves anything? - otherwise I don't see anything unusual in the log (no obvious freeze, no crashes).

    Thank you very much for taking a look over the logs! I don't know what's going on. Sometimes it does work for days and plays the same video all the time. Then it suddenly just stops. Maybe nothing to do with LE? RAM issue? Heat? Quite hard to figure out this occasional errors. I could try a Raspberry, but I don't think that a Raspberry is more reliable than a NUC...

    Bios update ?

    will/should fix serveral bugs, etc.

    e.g. the last names "Platform issue fix" and I guess there had been more (alas no more viewable since the move Intel > asus)

    see

    NUC8i5BEK - Support

    Warning: double check if this is the correct page

    ===

    you could also turn on (naming ?) permanent logging or keep journals over reboots (somewhere in system settings; might fill your disk !)

    Thanks. The log looks very good, no critical errors. There is a chance that kiosk mode uses more RAM, and when the second RAM bank gets activated, it might causes an invisible error / freeze (I already had that problem many years ago). So I would take a USB stick, and run MemTest86.

    Quote from Da Flex

    There is a chance that kiosk mode uses more RAM

    That's a load of BS because there is no special 'kiosk' mode in Kodi, only 'normal' Kodi being used with a repeating playlist in a kiosk scenario. Ergo there is no difference and thus no magical increase in RAM use.

    isn't the 2cd Ram bank always active when running in dual channel mode (don't know if this the case here or if I'm right)

    a memtest might run several hours.

    bios update is done in ~10 minutes (plus a test run to see if it fixes the problem).

    intel/asus releases bios update not just for fun !

    why I'm saying this:

    well read up the linked docs at the Intel microcode release page [1] for your CPU and realize that they contain serveral bugs.

    some are fixed via microcode and I bet some are fixed with microcode in combination of bios updates

    [1]

    Releases · intel/Intel-Linux-Processor-Microcode-Data-Files
    Contribute to intel/Intel-Linux-Processor-Microcode-Data-Files development by creating an account on GitHub.
    github.com

    I don't use kiosk mode, but when multiple links lead to the same object, then it could also be a dead lock. So when using any tools on top of those lists (media scrapers), then it's worth to check them.

    Over time people wanting to use Kodi in a Kiosk use-case wrote their own scripts to manipulate Kodi .. but .. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS KIOSK MODE. Feel free to prove me wrong with a screenshot from the Kodi GUI - anywhere it says Kiosk.

    I guess what he means is the arrangement of the pictures, when you select a different view mode for a streaming provider. Pictures are bigger then, and arranged in a horizontal row. In that case it could really need more RAM, or Kodi is buffering in (non-existing / too small) graphic memory.

    With “kiosk mode” I meant, that I play the same video over and over again at startup. I achieved this with this kind of autostart.py script:

    Code
    import xbmc
xbmc.executebuiltin('PlayMedia(/storage/videos/schiff.mp4,playlist_type_hint=1)')
xbmc.executebuiltin('PlayerControl(repeatall)')

    So nothing special to mention here…

    Quote from chewitt

    ... THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS KIOSK MODE. Feel free to prove me wrong with a screenshot from the Kodi GUI - anywhere it says Kiosk.

    Some skins have their own notion of "kiosk mode" and have toggles for it in their particular settings menus.
    (Transparency being one I can see, as I still have it installed)

    That might be where the confusion comes from i.e. It's language in some 3rd party skins but *NOT* a core Kodi thing.