Posts by chewitt

Work on the vdec stalled due to an upstream compliance review of the kernel APIs involved and since rework would be required it was better to wait until it completed before continuing. There are also issues in the firmwares - it's the reason why HEVC is (still) missing. The API reviews are now done and updates for MPEG2 and H264 codec have already been submitted upstream, but those codecs are the easy ones and VP9/HEVC are a lot more complicated. Some work on retooling ffmpeg and Kodi around the compliance changes has already started.

NB: Team Kodi will bring forward the v19 release to get the hugely disruptive Python3 change into public view and the ETA on first alpha is within the next month as Python2 will be EOL on 1st Jan. The GBM/V4L2 work we are championing on ARM platforms will not align with the reschedule so v19 will be an alpha/beta release for ARM devices and v20 becomes the target, on similar dates to the original v19 schedule.

Correct. We reached the point where too many things are not easily compatible with the ancient 3.10 BSP kernel. At some future point mainline kernel support might happen, but the major missing component for that is the HDMI driver, so v9.0.2 is the end of the road for now.

The 9.0.x C2 image runs 64-bit kernel and 32-bit userspace to make use of libwidevine libs which are only available in 32-bit format. It's the same arrangement as 95% of Android installs and doesn't impact anything - apart from the first reboot after updating when you might see some add-on failures due to wrong (userspace) arch. Once add-ons update to 32-bit versions and you reboot those will stop.

You can enable SSH and login, same as any other distro, although most of the filesystem is read-only once you're in.

Quote from okichatan

In my network settings, NTP servers are blank but so far the time has been OK.

Blank means you didn't manually configure some, so it falls back to default (ntp.org) servers.

For kicks .. force the wireless regulatory domain to the same as the router as "5GHz" is only one of 20+ radio properties, e.g.

 echo "options cfg80211 ieee80211_regdom=US” > /storage/.config/modprobe.d/cfg80211.conf

and reboot to effect the change

The PR applies as-is to Leia.

So far 99.99% of the 4k media that I've seen (except for test media) is <= 30fps, so unless you actually have real 4k60 media, remove the 4k60 enable option and it should behave better.

Still some internal debate about whether we punt 9.1.503 (with 18.5) to include some less-tested fixes, or go for 9.2.0 .. but you'll get something soon regardless - although this is allegedly a hobby and people have proper jobs, so be patient please

We do not ship config files that encourage overclocking as it increases the probability of user complaints about unstable systems; different boards and users under different workloads and environmental conditions have different limits on what overclock they will tolerate. So if the lines are missing from the file you add them yourself. If it proves to be unstable your choice is to either experiment and find stable settings; or remove the overclock. The key point being it's your problem not our problem to solve.

Kodi has some controls for sending a second screen to black or .. I forget because I haven't ever used them. The original purpose is to turn off a laptop screen when the GPU mirrors content to screen + external port. It may or may-not be a relevant hint. The target of the feature is normal desktop OS that run on laptops. LE somewhat deliberately doesn't fit the definition of either so YMMV.

Kodi debug log please.

RPi4 hardware supports dual outputs (up to 4k@30, using 4k@60 means a single output) but your ability to use this depends on the OS supporting it, and then applications in the OS being able to use the screens. You can maybe force mirroring in RPi4 firmware via config.txt but LE itself provides no options for configuring anything within the booted OS; and Kodi has no support for dual-screens.

Historically most of the important media drivers that LE depends upon for RPi were 32-bit only. Over time that situation has improved, but there are still missing bits. RPi4 brings more drivers. It is overall more 64-bit capable in software than previous generations but there are still gaps (mostly bits that are common with older Pi kit) and the development focus is on must-have functional items more than nice-to-have capabilities like ensuring everything can run in 64-bit (but where new code is written it should support both). For LE there is also an additional consideration for libwidevine support (needed for Netflix etc.) so even in the future when a 64-bit kernel is hopefully available we'll still be using 32-bit userspace in the same 64/32 arrangement we use on other Aarch64 devices.

The Server and Client functions technically have nothing to do with each other, although in most current generation networks everything will be using SMB2/3 to avoid SMB1 so the settings will happen to be the same. The Kodi settings need a reboot (or restart of Kodi) to effect changes.

The current connman feature is working as designed. It just wasn't designed to do much (2.4GHz) because that's fast enough for data sharing between a phone and a laptop. Enhancement to add support for 5GHz and more config is not impossible, but it's not a simple task and we don't have people on-staff with the skillsets to do it. So your choices are: a) find someone with the skills and willingness to code it, or b) get a proper access point.

The hotspot (not access point, hotspot) feature comes from software called "connman" that manages connections in the OS. It was originally written for a mobile phone OS to provide a tethered hotspot, e.g. laptop connects to mobile and shares the mobile connection. As a result it is deliberately simple and the only configuration options are on, off, and the ability to change SSID and passphrase. If you want an access point with access point features and config options, you need to get an access point.

The file /storage/.cache/services/samba.conf (server) is edited via the LE settings add-on. The contents of guisettings.xml (client) are edited via Kodi Services settings. If Kodi is accessing media from something older or misconfigured that only speaks SMB1 then Kodi settings are correct. If the media host is newer and can handle SMB2/3 then it's better to use them (as SMB1 has large security holes) and Kodi settings are wrong. If media is stored on the LE device there is no need to access anything over SMB so it's irrelevant if the settings are mismatched.