Posts by morfik

  • Missing images for movies

    Generally all works well. I add a new movie or tv series, and I update the video collection as usual. For some entries all data is retrieved (from moviedb) except for images (logos and backdrops). I thought it's because no one added such images to the database, but it looks like everything is in place. I tried to refresh the affected entries manually, but I see no remote images that I could choose from. The text and other data seem to be downloaded just fine. This happens just for some of the movies/tv series in my database and not for all of them. One example could be The Outer Limits. So what could be wrong with it and how to fix it?

    I use LibreELEC (Matrix) 10.0.1

  • Pause during phone calls

    Quote from CvH

    can you try if it works with yatse ?

    I've never used this app before, but I could try.

    Quote from chewitt

    The feature is implemented entirely by the Android app sending API commands to the Kodi instance. AFAIK there is no additional setup to be done on an LE box vs. any other supported platform. It's best to ask for support in the app forum support thread in Kodi forums (assuming it has one) as it's really nothing to do with LE.

    Hmm, ok I try to ask about this on Kodi forum.

  • Pause during phone calls

    There's an option in Kore (the Android app) to pause Kodi when you get an incoming phone call. It looks like this feature doesn't work well with LE. There is a notification (in the top-right corner) on the TV screen with the info stating that someone is calling, and the phone rings, but the movie isn't paused. Should this "pause during phone calls" feature be configured in some other parts of the LE system to make it work?

  • Any working VNC solutions for LE 10?

    Quote from Klojum

    You want a tissue?

    I would prefer a VNC server instead. :]

    Quote from Klojum

    Why would you need VNC? I have never needed it with OE/LE for some 7-8 years now..

    I have my rpi box in some other room, sometimes (or often) I have to check something using the regular GUI, for instance a forgotten name of some setting, or just to test/set the UI for a better user experience (not for me, just for other people that live with me). Also VNC is really useful when I add new movies to my collection and I want to see how they get rendered (when LE gets info from the moviedb database). Sometimes the movie description has errors or wrong cover -- I can fix that with ease. I also can edit the movie on the moviedb page because I have the VNC window on my desktop near the web browser. So it's a way easier to do some things using VNC instead of moving my ass from one room to the other and forgetting everything before I get to my PC. :D

  • Please add EXT4 filesystem defrag tools

    But the e2fsprogs package contains other tools which are already present in LibreELEC, here's what's in the package (just binaries from my Debian system):

    So as you can see, the biggest binaries are: e2fsck(340K), debugfs(234K), mke2fs(139K), tune2fs(113K).

    In LibreELEC we have already the following bins:

    Code
    e2fsck/fsck.ext{2,3,4}   (340K)
e2label/tune2fs          (111K)
e2mmpstatus              (31K)
e2scrub+e2scrub_all      (29K)
e4crypt                  (27K)
mke2fs/mkfs.ext{2,3,4}   (139K)
resize2fs                (63K)
chattr+lsattr            (30K)
-------------------------------------------
                         770K

    Also it looks like there's one broken link: e2mmpstatus -> dumpe2fs , because there's no dumpe2fs tool in the image. I'm not sure whether it's a bug or not.

    And see at the defrag tools and their sizes:

    Code
    e2freefrag 15K
e4defrag   35K
filefrag   19K
--------------
           69K

    So even adding all the defrag tools, would be adding just 69K, or if you added just e4defrag (the other tools just give some info), it would be 35K. So it's not that much and you would support the defragmentation process which is a really useful thing.

    There's also the e4crypt binary in the LibreELEC image which takes 27K of space. Could you please tell me whether do "you have any memory of someone demanding (let along actually needing)" a native EXT4 encryption mechanism in LibreELEC? If no, you could just switch e4crypt witch e4defrag, and since they have similar sizes (and names), no one would ever notice the difference, and everybody would be happy. :)

    Quote from chewitt

    On that basis alone I'm confident defrag tools are not a must-have thing for our users.

    Awareness of file fragmentation among even native linux users is low. Maybe because they all repeat that EXT filesystems don't fragment files. :) So I'm not suprised you've never heared about such peope -- but now you have just one example of such person who did hear about file fragmentation and the need of defragmentation.

  • Please add EXT4 filesystem defrag tools

    Quote from lrusak

    ref, An introduction to Linux's EXT4 filesystem | Opensource.com

    I'm aware of the ext4 filesystem features which aims to reduce fragmentation lvl, but it happens and it happens a lot, especially when big files come into play. That's why for instance bigalloc flag was invented, which BTW your article didn't mention. :)

    Quote from lrusak

    You need to setup the LibreELEC build system then add the packages needed to compile the tools. You can try copying binaries from a similar system but YMMV.

    I think it's a overkill for me. Anyway, is there some howto on this subject?

    But still I think the e2fsprogs package should be present in the default image as LibreELEC supports EXT4 filesystem. It's just 1,5M uncompressed (615K compressed).

  • Is it possible to Defrag and partition HDD's via LibreELEC

    How did you check the fragmentation score?

    Could you post some summary?

    The next thing is that I know nothing about your setup, i.e. what's the capacity of the storage, what kind of files you store there, what's the free space percentage, what's the file rotation level.

    Another thing is this: why did the developers of the EXT4 filesystem make the tool like e4defrag? If you're right, this tool is useless, so why does someone implement online defrag for filesystem which doesn't get fragmented?

    Anyone who uses linux as a main OS knows that files get fragmented with time, and if you don't defrag them, you ultimately find yourself in position I was a few years back, where I had to copy everything to some other drive to deal with really high fragmentation level -- because there was no free contingous space on the drive big enough to defrag any of the files, and the only way to reduce fragmentation lvl was to move the files to some other HDD and copy them back to the original drive with some e4defrag passes from time to time. Since then, I don't have issues with fragmentation on my drives, but files get fragmented and EXT4 file system is no exception.

  • Please add EXT4 filesystem defrag tools

    I noticed that LibreELEC is missing some important EXT4 tools, for instance: e4defrag, e2freefrag or filefrag. Basically they all come from the e2fsprogs package (in the case of the Debian distro). The tools are really great ones when you deal with the EXT4 filesystem fragmentation.

    Currently, I can send files from my laptop to LibreELEC via WiFi, but I have no control over the fragmentation process. From time to time I would like to set some online defragmentation (which is supported by the EXT4 filesystem), but I can't do it now with LibreELEC. I have to unplug the drive from RPI, and connect it to my laptop to initiate the defrag process, which makes my TV useless till the process is finished.

  • Is it possible to Defrag and partition HDD's via LibreELEC

    Quote from vitorp07

    Linux is different than Windows when it comes to disk fragmentation, as long as your HDD isn't completely full don't worry about that.
    After installing LibreELEC, create a bootable USB stick with Ubuntu live and run Gparted to partition the HDD.

    You should start to defrag the drive as soon as possible. It's because the free space framgentation matter a lot. Here's an example

    Pay the close attention to:

    Avg. free extent: 764 KB

    So as you can see, even though the partition is only 50% full, you have thousands of small chunks and just a few big chunks. Try to put in this partition a 1GiB file. How many chunks it will have? Now try to imagine what would happen if you start worrying about fragmentation when the drive was 80%+ full? That's why you should defrag a drive from time to time -- the sooner you start, the better the shape your files will be in.

    Quote from Klojum

    Use the EXT4 disk format when you are going to format the disks, you won't have to worry about defragmentation.

    Where did you get this kind of info?

  • Ext 4 Hard drive 80% rule and Defrag

    Quote from Klojum

    EXT4 basically takes care of itself. Defragmentation is only a problem when lots of small and medium sized files are splattered all over a drive. Whenever you put large files (like videos) onto a HDD for storage, the amount of defragmentation is negligible.

    Here is a YT video explaining how you can check (and defrag if necessary) a HDD:

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    That's actually not true. When you have a storage HDD and you put some big files in there, then the big files can easily get fragmented. I recently moved my entire movie collection to a new 2T drive. When I placed 2GiB file on the empty drive, the file already had bunch of chunks. After running manually e4defrag, the file had 1 chunk. Now, when you place multiple big files, they all will get fragmented and the more files you add, the more fragments you get with each newly copied file. 20-30 fragments for a 2 GiB file isn't a big thing, but if you don't defrag the HDD, and you start to remove some files and add new ones, they easily get 1K-10K fragments, and then it becomes a problem. So when I was moving the movie collection, I copied 300G, then 10 passed of e4defrag, then I copied another 300G, and another 10 passed of e4defrag, and so on. Whenever I copy some movies to the drive (or delete them), I run one or two passed of e4defrag to keep the fragmentation level at minimum. I've once had a situation where files on my drive were in really bad shape 10-100K chunks for 1GiB files, but that was before I knew how things work. So basically defrag the drive once in a while.

  • Suggested buffer settings for Raspberry Pi 4 4GB version

    What's wrong with the default caching mechanism? The following photo shows the actual RAM usage on my rpi box:

    The value of 334M is what you will see in kodi's interface (the green color in the mem bar). It doesn't mean that the box uses at this moment only 334M. You also have the blue and yellow colors, which correspond to buffers and cache respectively. When you access files, the two will grow and at some point they will use almost the whole free RAM space. Even if you don't see it in Kodi interface, it doesn't mean the RAM is wasted because nothing is using it.