Posts by Cubytus

Quote from chewitt

No idea, but I'd start with running a scan with Kodi in debug mode and tailing the logs to see if there's anything that can be grep'd in a future scan/run.

That, on a new scan?

Quote from Reddirt

I keep my system very simple and have all of our movies ripped from our DVDs on a hard drive

I have 5 of them, each containing the same folders (each representing a resolution/source). Makes hand-sorting easier. I don't move files between disks as this loses the "watched" state on Kodi and creates duplicates. Keeping few HDDs makes things simpler but riskier should one crash, and my experience of HDD reliability isn't exactly stellar. More HDDs means more noise but more security.

Seems you're using Kodi as a specialized file browser rather than a full fledged media player that fetches additional data. Which is not a criticism btw, but sure doesn't fit my needs.

Quote from Reddirt

friends who like to brag about overclocking

I don't care one bit about bragging. I'd like to be able to play x265 without stuttering / overheating, knowing the RPi3 doesn't have hardware-accelerated x265 decoding.

Quote from chewitt

Kodi Settings > Media > Clean Library should remove anything that's missing.

That's exactly what I don't want to do. I want to keep the missing ones so I can replace them whenever I find them. Like in "Oh, I'd like Mad Genius tonight… Open the tile for details… last button… read path… crap, it was on usb6, don't bother, it's a ghost". Not the most efficient way to find them.

Or, as said, find a way to write the missing filenames in a text file in a given directory, and keep the library clean.

Quote from chewitt

Learn how to do that ^ and Kodi updates from a clean install are trivial and take 5 minutes.

Indeed that looks very clean. I guess I'd have to do that after cleaning up the library, which can only be done when I can get the list of missing files. Any idea on how to do that?

Sure, after all LibreELEC isn't exactly a "productivity" software. Unlike a regular OS upgrade where one must be fully operational within a very short timeframe, it's not unreasonable for a LE user to take a bit of time to reconfigure everything from scratch every year and a half, or whenever a new LE version comes out. There's no such thing as a bug-free software, even a (comparatively) simpler like LE.

Still, while a library scan can run (mostly) unattended and third-party plugins source reconfigured, there are two parts I'd really like to keep:

• "ghost" media that disappeared in a HDD crash. I replace them whenever I can, but not actively looking for them. I know it's not the "cleanest" way to keep a list, but I haven't found a decent tool that would spit out a text list according to a given criteria. How can I extract said "ghost" media?
• The "viewed" state. Can this part of the database be restored over a fresh library scan?

That, and finding the right overclocking settings…

chewitt Worked after a few adjustments. At first the splash screen displayed with the proper ratio, but the GUI required manual adjustment to the TV's native 1360x768 resolution as the picture was cropped on all four sides.

I then proceeded on installing an addon to view some local TV, which required Widevine. This time, it displayed correctly (WIN!)

Then tried to overclock following milhouse's conservative settings, but just got a kernel panic

Reddirt Of course going the clean reinstall method is sure to yield consistent results. But I'm not really sure the average end-user would like to lose its "viewed" state, at the very least, or go through all reconfiguring scraper plugins, correct hundreds of mismatched media by hand, etc.

Ok, done. After setting up the correct time, the few updated plugins installed without a protest.

However, the added "video=HDMI-A-1:1360x768M@60" in cmdline.txt didn't help: logo is still stretched from 4/3.

Weird: when I reboot from the GUI, the LibreELEC logo appears twice in a row. May not be relevant but curious nevertheless.

Now, how would I restore "just enough" settings to make it usable without a lengthy library scan yet avoid common pitfalls?

So your take is that the latest beta is still stable enough to be installed?

1360x768 is old, but not weird! AFAIK this TV has 768 horizontal lines.

How'd I do that without losing the database, painfully corrected in countless instances since the trackers make a lot of mistakes? Source settings, shortcuts, viewed state?

I ported it over the years from Krypton to Nexus, encountered nonspecific problems after upgrading from one version to another (Widevine-protected streams never displaying properly, backup plugin never worked in auto mode…), to the point I am really wary of upgrading anymore, especially to a beta version. I mean, no matter how careful the process, things can get lost.

To add some challenge, I don't currently have a working Linux computer.

Besides, is starting over from scratch really expected when switching TVs?

I mean, you say that on booting, Kodi should auto-switch by itself, why isn't it doing it this time? The wiki says Kodi should be the first in the chain to be booted, but EDID data is only sure to be available when the TV is turned on first… I'm lost.

Hi there,

I have LibreELEC 11.0.6 running on RPi 3. I recently switched TVs from an unsatisfactory smart 4K down to a half-HD (720p, native resolution is 1360x768@60Hz) I had previously. Now, the problem is, even if I turn on the TV first, then LibreELEC, the TV displays "not supported" because the previous resolution is out of range for this TV. Usually, I leave the LibreELEC box turned on and just turn off the TV when I don't watch it. Of course, as I don't have a working display, everything has to be done through SSH, or the Web interface (which is unaffected).

I came across a similar topic, but the proposed solution (capture EDID and set it up as a boot parameter) didn't work for me.

Another topic gave a slightly different solution, that didn't work wither. It advised to put "video=HDMI-A-1:1360x768M@60" (I adapted from the topic according to my TV) among the kernel parameters in /flash/cmdline.txt

What I tried, in details:

Setting the resolution from the Web interface

1. System > Display > Resolution
2. Selected 1360x768
3. Save
4. The TV briefly flashed and I could see the Estuary skin color, but then turned dark and kept on displaying "Not supported".

Capturing EDID and using it as a boot parameter

The Wiki page doesn't give any specifics for RPi, so I loosely followed the x86_64 Intel instructions:

Mounted /flash with read-write permissions: mount -o remount,rw /flash

Tested display connection: tail /sys/class/drm/*/status

Got:

==> /sys/class/drm/card0-HDMI-A-1/status <==
connected

==> /sys/class/drm/card0-Writeback-1/status <==
unknown

Dumped EDID: getedid create

Got:

successfully installed edid override for HDMI-A-1

Created the path and the actual EDID file:

mkdir -p /storage/.config/firmware/edid
cat /sys/class/drm/card0-HDMI-A-1/edid > /storage/.config/firmware/edid/edid.bin

Then the cpio archive that will be loaded:

cd ~
mkdir -p cpio/lib/firmware/edid
cp .config/firmware/edid/edid.bin cpio/lib/firmware/edid/
cd cpio/
find . -print | cpio -ov -H newc > ../edid.cpio

Moved the file to the boot partition /flash:

mv ../edid.cpio /flash/

There it is:

# ls /flash
LICENCE.broadcom            bcm2711-rpi-400.dtb
SYSTEM                      bcm2711-rpi-cm4-io.dtb
SYSTEM.md5                  bcm2711-rpi-cm4.dtb
bcm2708-rpi-0-w.dtb         bcm2711-rpi-cm4s.dtb
bcm2708-rpi-b-plus.dtb      bcm2712-rpi-5-b.dtb
bcm2708-rpi-b-rev1.dtb      bootcode.bin
bcm2708-rpi-b.dtb           cmdline.txt
bcm2708-rpi-cm.dtb          config.txt
bcm2708-rpi-zero-w.dtb      config.txt.old
bcm2708-rpi-zero.dtb        distroconfig-composite.txt
bcm2709-rpi-2-b.dtb         distroconfig.txt
bcm2709-rpi-cm2.dtb         edid.cpio
bcm2710-rpi-2-b.dtb         fixup.dat
bcm2710-rpi-3-b-plus.dtb    hat_map.dtb
bcm2710-rpi-3-b.dtb         kernel.img
bcm2710-rpi-cm3.dtb         kernel.img.md5
bcm2710-rpi-zero-2-w.dtb    overlays
bcm2710-rpi-zero-2.dtb      start.elf
bcm2711-rpi-4-b.dtb

That's were the instructions for x86_64 don't work anymore: there's no syslinux.cfg or extlinux.conf in /flash on LibreELEC, so I edited cmdline.txt instead. It now looks like this:

boot=/dev/mmcblk0p1 disk=/dev/mmcblk0p2 quiet
initrd=/edid.cpio drm.edid_firmware=HDMI-A-1:edid/edid-HDMI-A-1.bin video=HDMI-A-1:D

According to the Wiki, a reboot is the last step. Except that it doesn't work. In the Web interface, the claimed resolution is correct at 1360x768, even kmsprint gives the correct resolution:

Connector 0 (32) HDMI-A-1 (connected)
  Encoder 0 (31) TMDS
    Crtc 3 (90) [email protected] 85.500 1360/256/112/64/+ 768/18/6/3/+ 60 (60.02) P|D 
      Plane 4 (91) fb-id: 296 (crtcs: 0 1 2 3) 0,0 1360x768 -> 0,0 1360x768 (XR24 AR24 AB24 XB24 RG16 BG16 AR15 XR15 RG24 BG24 YU16 YV16 YU24 YV24 YU12 YV12 NV12 NV21 NV16 NV61 RGB8 BGR8 XR12 AR12 XB12 AB12 BX12 BA12 RX12 RA12)
        FB 296 1360x768 XR24

What I want to achieve

Set LibreELEC so it automatically probes for the highest supported resolution or, if probe gives no result (TV is turned off or disconnected), then use the latest one, much like a laptop does when first connecting to an unknown projector.

While at it:

I also wanted to give it a slight overclock and perhaps allocate more RAM to the GPU in order to get a more "fluid" experience and finally allow for basic x265 decoding. How much RAM should I give the GPU in LibreELEC?

I'd like the boot time splash screen to be displayed with a 16/9 ratio. For as long as I can remember, the splash screen LibreELEC logo was always stretched from 4/3. This really is a minor detail.

Another update: the issue appears to stem from the Universal movie scrapper add-on. I originally left the option to "Always use original title". For an unknown reason, it is no longer able to fetch original title from imdb when executed in LE 11.x. I changed the setting to "Use US title", and I now get the American title.

Still is a stopgap measure, but not a decent solution by any means.

An update:

As I thought it may have something to do with profile corruption (I always used the same one across upgrades), I created a second one, not importing anything from the Master profile, added just one folder of media indexed using Universal movie scrapper as a data scrapper. Media are stored on an NFS-accessible hard drive. Otherwise it's a stock configuration with no background indexing taking place. The exact same issue reappeared.

The random freeze issue didn't go away in this new profile, and even occurred during idle times, not just trying to update the library. Symptoms are the usual ones: keyboard is still detected and responds to pressing [Caps Lock], cycling the indicator LED on and off, but the GUI stays frozen. Trying to SSH into LE at these times also ends up in a timeout. If I randomly press keys during while GUI has frozen, most often than not LE reboots by itself, sitting on the LE splash screen for what seems to be an abnormally long amount of time.

Third unexpected symptom: when LE hasn't crashed and SSH is still accessible with LE otherwise idling, Kodi still shows quite a bit of CPU / RAM being used constantly: /usr/lib/kodi/kodi.bin --standalone -fs always hovers around 45% CPU, and RAM taken by the same process takes 65% of the available total over about 45 instances.

Since I now have two profiles, I SSHed into LE while it was sitting on the profile selection screen, and interestingly, process /usr/lib/kodi/kodi.bin --standalone -fs isn't peaking above 8% CPU / 11% RAM. Right after login, the same process sits at about 35% CPU and 15% RAM over 29 instances of the process. Are these numbers considered normal?

A movie I watched yesterday kept on freezing video every 6-7 minutes (much like commercial breaks on public channels!) but soundtrack remained unaffected. Another one I attempted playing displayed the "Play" symbol in the upper right corner as if it were in the background, but didn't show any video not played any sound.

To the untrained eye, it seems as if LE11.x still has unsorted, unrelated, random issues, but that could be just my impression.

Knowing how tricky it was (and still is) to get media properly indexed, I avoided doing clean installs whenever possible. Doing a

# tune2fs -l /dev/mmcblk0p2 gives:

tune2fs 1.46.6 (1-Feb-2023)
Filesystem volume name:   <none>
Last mounted on:          /storage
Filesystem UUID:          f9464344-3849-4215-bba3-bd21af023a22
Filesystem magic number:  0xEF53
Filesystem revision #:    1 (dynamic)
Filesystem features:      has_journal ext_attr resize_inode dir_index filetype needs_recovery extent 64bit flex_bg sparse_super large_file huge_file uninit_bg dir_nlink extra_isize
Filesystem flags:         unsigned_directory_hash 
Default mount options:    user_xattr acl
Filesystem state:         clean
Errors behavior:          Continue
Filesystem OS type:       Linux
Inode count:              1916928
Block count:              7659520
Reserved block count:     0
Overhead clusters:        164363
Free blocks:              2750018
Free inodes:              1829737
First block:              0
Block size:               4096
Fragment size:            4096
Group descriptor size:    64
Reserved GDT blocks:      1024
Blocks per group:         32768
Fragments per group:      32768
Inodes per group:         8192
Inode blocks per group:   512
Flex block group size:    16
Filesystem created:       Fri Jun 22 07:11:49 2018
Last mount time:          Wed Dec 31 19:00:04 1969
Last write time:          Wed Dec 31 19:00:04 1969
Mount count:              326
Maximum mount count:      -1
Last checked:             Fri Jun 22 07:11:49 2018
Check interval:           0 (<none>)
Lifetime writes:          70 GB
Reserved blocks uid:      0 (user root)
Reserved blocks gid:      0 (group root)
First inode:              11
Inode size:              256
Required extra isize:     32
Desired extra isize:      32
Journal inode:            8
Default directory hash:   half_md4
Directory Hash Seed:      6e617c07-f8f3-46ed-8b8b-55c4a2abce68
Journal backup:           inode blocks

I thought that LE was supposed to perform an fsck on each boot.

Debug log: http://ix.io/4xq3

Crash log: http://ix.io/4xq4

Any idea what's happening chewitt ?

Any idea?

Here is the last error file after enabling debug mode: http://ix.io/4sRn

The general configuration log couldn't be pasted due to an unspecified error.

Hi there,

I was waiting to the first patch to be released before updating to LE 11 branch. I continually updated this installation since at least version 9.

However, right after migration and updating extensions, I noticed that my titles just wouldn't display when collection is accessed from the "Films" tab. Changing the view type doesn't help as titles remain undisplayed.

Already-indexed titles do display, however, when using the "Videos" tab. Scanning-to-index command from this view updates every field except for the title: only the raw filename is used.

Is that a known bug? And how to solve it?

Huh, one fellow describes a remarkably similar issue: almost identical hardware, he used the nightly build, installed from scratch, not upgraded.

Ok, that's much clearer now. I never thought upgrading would require a clean install, though. I can't recall how I upgraded from 8.x to 9.x.

Will upgrading from 10.x to the future 11.x be supported?

Can the media library be restored? Media files are a real pain to get indexed (tons of missing files that have to be corrected by hand)

Well, Da Flex specified "full debug logs", not "sanitized logs".

Second, nightlies are considered unstable; is it really wise to install an even more unstable version on a "production" machine? After all, this Kodi configuration was stable under 9.2.x, and total runtime isn't all that high.

If I follow your suggestion, will I be able to restore backed-up settings and library?

Edit: it first froze while I was trying to paste the Kodi & configuration journal, then crashed. After it rebooted itself, I atempted to get this to paste, but it would repeatedly fail to paste.

The second item in the menu, pasting the error log and Kodi config, is here: http://ix.io/48U8

It crashed today the 28th of August around 2:48

Yesterday the 27th of August, picture froze during playback while sound was still playing at 12:49.

Since it wouldn't paste, I downloaded /storage/.kodi/temp/kodi.log (as well as kodi.old.log). Is this the file we're looking for?

Hi there,

I've got a pretty similar problems since upgrading to the 10.0.2 version of LibreELEC (Matrix) from the 9.2 version. Hardware is a Pi3B+.

Irritatingly, symptoms are rather non-specific but range from (from the most to the least common):

• Picture freeze during playback randomly every 10 to 20 minutes. Sound is unaffected. Doesn't depend on file format: x264-encoded videos are as likely to be affected than TS files than MPEG-2.
• Browsing through the media sources to find unindexed files randomly result in the GUI freezing and/or crashing LibreELEC altogether.
• Volume setting doesn't seem memorized just before a crash: I usually set it pretty low while browsing movies, but whenever it reboots by itself, it blasts through the speakers if I don't mute the TV itself.
• Randomly loses the connection with the keyboard but keeps on repeating the last received key until connection is restored.
• After these crashes, LibreELEC restarts very slowly, sometimes multiple times, sometimes end up in Safe mode.
• From time to time, cannot even paste logs (non-specific error comes out).
• Sometimes, pressing "O" reveals one of the 4 cores is pegged at 100% for reasons unknown.

SD card still has around 5GB free, and isn't overclocked. No undervoltage or high temperature warning appear at those times. This LibreELEC installation only has about 302 days of use (most of these passive as I don't turn it off).

What could have gone wrong since upgrading?