Posts by chewitt

I've boot tested a C2 running the AMLGX (mainline kernel) image and from tonight or whenever the next balbes150 image gets pushed the HK remote works OOTB including power on/off (i've added device-tree keymap configuration and a kernel driver for the HK remote this morning). I have no idea about Harmony compatibility but it's a standard NEC protocol device so it probably isn't a big challenge for a learning remote.

I'm not implying anything, and I don't know what your MX3 variant is .. you were talking about C2 before.

It's been broken for a long time. I'm honestly not sure why it's still not marked as such in the Kodi repo.

What is hosting/providing the SMB server?

KyleS at this point there is no technical solution for S905X2 wifi on the mainline kernel. If that changes, then we can negotiate the project decision on how ugly the patch is and what to support.

LE has a browser which is semi-production ready. It works, but starting it requires Kodi to be stopped before it runs, and restarted after it closes. As Google frequently changes things that impact GPU hardware acceleration it has a history of only supporting software decoding at times (until someone fixes things). So it may or may not fulfil your needs for a browser. SteamLink is technically possible but requires a large number of hoops to be leapt through and is fragile at best. If those are major requirements a conventional distro (or Windows) would be better for you.

I haven't tested on WP2 for aeons but will dig one out and have a look over the next couple of days. WH (which has the same WeTek boot firmware) is working but you will need to use the "reset" process to reloads the boot instructions from SD card. If this is not done it will definitely not boot.

N2 is nice hardware although like most HK devices it has some quirks. It'll be even nicer when it doesn't run an obsolete franken-kernel, but mainline support is progressing swiftly. So far the G12A/B devices i've been playing with are noticeably quicker than GX devices. If you're not sold on the N2 there will be some other S922X devices in the market soon.

The USB/SD Creator app will write to any removable device. Some USB > IDE/SATA adaptors might not show up as removable, but the majority do and you should be able to write the image direct to the drive. The "USB" (or drive) should boot into installer mode by default, but it you hit any key at the syslinux prompt it will stop boot and you can type "run" to "USB boot with persistent storage" but it's not USB specific, it just creates a persistent /storage partition and changes the boot config from "installer" to "run" permanently. You might need to fiddle with boot settings to enable/disable UEFI or legacy boot support and in rare cases the BIOS/firmware might object to syslinux in which case you can always install grub as an alternative. The grub boot config is slightly different but extlinux.conf has all the details you need to set something up. As a general rule systems with problem firmware tend to be a bit too old and since (as a distro) we don't focus on old hardware at all, you may find drivers are missing.

.img or .img.gz files are used for install (but can also be used as updates) while .tar files are used only for updates

You can use "textmode" to prevent Kodi from starting and access a local on-screen console to poke around. Check the Ethernet port is full-duplex and share the URL generated by "dmesg | paste" so we can see the boot log (Kodi log isn't useful).

btw, "activate universal multiboot" means to put the device into update mode again, e.g. toothpick reset to force it to look for boot media on SD or USB ports. It has to read and "update" the u-boot instructions in new *autoscript files, then you have a working configuration.

LE images do the same thing .. except the AMLGX mainline kernel (test) image avoids the need for 1G/2G/3G RAM variants.

The only difference between updating from .tar file (in-app or external file) or using the .img.gz or .img (external file) is that we have to unzip and loop mount the .img file first. With the .tar file all we need to do is unpack it. There is no other difference, and Kodi handles migration of data not the LE (OS) update process. Add-ons are often a problem when updating to a new Kodi version, but that's nothing LE specific.

You're welcome to test the AMLGX mainline kernel test images on a C2 board.. balbes150 is creating them until official nightly releases start. I can't speak for how CEC works as I never test it or use it, but if there's a defect there people will be actively interested in understanding the problem and finding solutions (maybe not immediately, but it will go into the general mainline work-pile).

Two suggestions:

a) Add "ssh" to kernel boot params in syslinux.conf (extlinux.conf on some systems) and the SSH daemon is forced to start, so you can login, rename /storage/.kodi to /storage/.kodi-old and reboot to boot to a clean Kodi configuration.

b) If there's a network issue add "textmode" instead of SSH and connect a USB keyboard. Kodi will not start but you'll boot to a local console where you can run commands.

As a general rule OE installs have a ton of extra crap installed (as the result of some dubious packaging decisions by OE's creator) so it's probably best to start with a clean /storage/.kodi install and migrate back on the essential things from the previous install (thumbs, sources, etc.). Also beware that most OE installs have a 235MB /flash partition and LE 9.0 images are now around 240MB so you might need to make a backup, clean install LE to get a 512MB boot partition, then restore the backup. The backup/restore process is normally a lot quicker than trying to resize the boot partition.

First step would be to tell us what driver is used by the USB tuner?

Create an installation USB. Boot from it. Hit the keyboard at the syslinux boot prompt and type "run" and it will run from USB instead of installing.