Posts by chewitt

  • Audio sync and video stuttering

    I have default config.txt (no hdmi_enable_4kp60=1 or GPU increases) and a LG 4K TV with 23.976/24/50/59.94/60 Hz modes set for 1080p and 23.976/24/25/29.97/30 set for 4K and the desktop defaulted to 1080p. Apart from washed out HDR content (as no HDR support) I have no issues playing anything. I don't have any 4K60 media .. hence no need to force that config.

    fbicknel is playing [email protected] media on a 1080p panel and RPi4 isn't optimised for that kind of thing (and won't be for aeons) so best option for him would be to re-rip that Movie in 1080p.

    NB: The issue witth 25/29.97/30 modes is that Kodi always outputs progressive so interlaced media requires 50/59.94/60 so that each half-frame can be rendered as a full frame. There is no 4K interlaced media so this is only a 1080 thing.

    At the end of the day not all media is ripped properly, not all TVs support all refresh rates, and RPi4 support under MMAL "is what it is" because it was a quick and dirty hack to ensure something worked at launch. The focus of all development is on GBM/V4L2 not MMAL.

  • S805x build (lafrite)

    NB: I'm booting the 1GB LaFrite fine with Linux 5.6-rc6 so there's no issue with the dtb size. LibreComputer pay Baylibre to upstream everything so I doubt there's anything missing from the upstream kernel apart from audio card stuff (will be done for Linux 5.8 probably).

  • S805x build (lafrite)

    It might be an issue with the CMA value in device-tree being too high. I force it to 896MB to facilitate 4K playback but this fails gracefully to 256MB on devices with under 2GB RAM. However, unless it accidentally works with the 512MB version of LaFritte I have no plans to support it. We have the same position with numerous 512MB Allwinner boards. Our experience with them (and older Raspberry Pi devices) is that 512MB is no longer enough for reliable Kodi use and our resources are limited so "pick your battles" applies.

  • Add mdadm

    ^ that seems to build under LE master, so probably builds under LE 9.2.x as well. You'll probably want to extend the package with a default conf that's copied to /storage/.config/mdadm.conf.sample etc. etc. .. lots of prior art for that in the build-system.

  • A LibreElec question

    Two options depending on how ugly you like your script babies to be:

    a) Create /storage/.config/autostart.sh and place some commands there; the script is executed at the start of userspace boot and is blocking but you can (background)& the commands and prefix with a sleep value to have something execute 10 seconds after boot (or whenever, you control the sleep value). This is the ugly kid.

    b) Create a systemd .service file in /storage/.config/system.d to run commands or call a script; systemd gives you precise control of when the service is executed in the startup/boot workflow. This is the better way.

  • Libreelec restarts every 10 minutes

    Is the content new media or old media that has succesfully been played many times before?. It's it's new media the issue most likely lies with the media and its encoding - software update might cure that. If it's old media .. could be hardware. Anything running LE 7.x has been around for a while.

  • LibreELEC (Leia) 9.2.1

    Quote from donbrew

    Be prepared for most of the addons to break. Seems that Python got upgraded AGAIN to something like 3.01 or something, so now Python 3.0 doesn't work. All of the recently updated to 3.0 addons are broken now (notably six is broken).

    This is not relevant for LE 9.2.x releases which are entirely Python2 based. The Python3 changes only impact LE master (will be LE10 in the future).

  • some add'on missing on Linux

    C2 ships with a heatsink which is more than enough for S905 as it never gets particuarly hot - active cooling with fans will not be required unless using something that generates a ton of CPU load. I forget whether the 3.14 kernel supports thermal zones to do more, but if not I am in the midddle of sending a patch upstream to add thermal zones support to all Amlogic GXBB/GXL/GXM devices.

    C2 also has GPIO pins which could be used to interact with external switches and such.. similar to a Raspberry Pi but not as well documented. AFAIK the C2 has no support for ACPI in hardware so not sure that's the direction to chase things in. LE does not package lmsensors but "cputemp" will give you the output from the single (CPU) temperature sensor on the boarad and you can always script around that.

  • Intel 82579V network problem

    Code
    (
sleep 20
if [ ! -f /storage/boot_cold.log ]; then
  journalctl > /storage/boot_cold.log
else
  journalctl > /storage/boot_warm.log
fi
)&

    create /storage/.config/autostart.sh with ^ that content and then run a full cold boot and warm boot cycle to capture dmesg (without network access) 20 seconds after boot. You can then SSH in and "cat /storage/boot_cold.log | paste" and "cat /storage/boot_warm.log | paste" and share the URLs generated so we can see the logs.

    It sounds like a hardware initialisation issue, i.e. the card doesn't power up right from a cold boot. The logs might show something. They also might not and even if they do there might not be anything we can do about driver probing/ordering issues. Also check for BIOS/firmware updates for the device or motherboard.

  • Bricked NAND - how to create a USB bootable SD and LibreELEC on ONE SD?

    S905X3 devices can be (or should be) recovered from broken boot firmware (e.g. flashed the wrong image) using the Amlogic Burning Tool app and an appropriate firmware image (look on freaktab). You need to connect the box to a Windows PC using a USB > USB cable and flash the image directly to internal eMMC (not NAND). It can be fiddly, but with modern Amlogic devices, unless you cause electrical damage to the eMMC chips there's really no such thing as a bricked box.