Menu/Interface Freezes, Video/Audio keep playing?
#1
Has anyone ever had this issue before?

It is plaguing one of my two very similar Kodi boxes.

Affected:
Haswell Core i5-4570T
8GB RAM
Geforce GT 720

Unaffected:
Haswell Celeron G1840
4GB RAM
Geforce GT 720

The install followed the same approach for both (essentially follow this guide by Fritsch but omit anything that has anything to do with VA, use the stable Kodi PPA, don't use wsnipex repository, and install nvidia binary drivers and vdpau libraries. Essentially a stable branch no-Desktop Environment install on top of Openbox, using Nvidia Binary Blob drivers and VDPAU.

I have scanned through the log files and have seen nothing that stands out to me. It doesn't appear as if the issue results in a proper "crash" of Kodi, just that the menu freezes (usually partially faded out), but the box is clearly still functional with the video and audio continuing to play (but now it can't be controlled, as the UI doesn't take any input.

I usually have to fix this by switching to a text console (ctrl-alt-F1) and then rebooting (ctrl-alt-del)

Some googling for similar issues has only turned up this unresolved reddit post thus far.

Log Pastebin is here

Does anyone have any suggestions?
Livingroom: 65" Panasonic Plasma, Denon AVR-x3300w, Parasound A31, Fronts: RBH SX-6300 Towers, Center: RBH 441-se, Surrounds: RBH 41-se Sub: Dual SVS PC13-Ultra, Source: Custom Kodi Box
Desk: DAC: Schiit Modi Multibit,Headphones: Schiit Jotunheim -> Sennheiser HD650 & Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro, Speakers: Parasound 275v2-> RBH 41-se & SVS SB12-NSD
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#2
After some troubleshooting, I suspect this was related to setting a too large RAM playback cache per the Kodi Video Cache wiki entry.

The wiki page does warn that it needs 3x more available RAM than the cache (which I do not understand why), so I did a "free -h" during video playback, saw that I had 6.5GB free, took 5GB as a safety margin, and divided it by 3, and multiplied by (1024)^4 and thus wound up with a rounded 1789569707, but this was apparently too large as well.

I've dropped it down to about 750MB now, and the problem hasn't recurred since.

Not quite sure why this happened, as I felt I left a more than adequate safety margin, but it is not a big issue either way, as I really didn't need that large of a cache, I just did it because the machine had the RAM.

I'm going to let it go for a couple of days, and if I don't have any recurrences, mark it as solved.
Livingroom: 65" Panasonic Plasma, Denon AVR-x3300w, Parasound A31, Fronts: RBH SX-6300 Towers, Center: RBH 441-se, Surrounds: RBH 41-se Sub: Dual SVS PC13-Ultra, Source: Custom Kodi Box
Desk: DAC: Schiit Modi Multibit,Headphones: Schiit Jotunheim -> Sennheiser HD650 & Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro, Speakers: Parasound 275v2-> RBH 41-se & SVS SB12-NSD
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#3
The internal value is a 32 bit signed variable :-) - it most likely ended up very, very large.
First decide what functions / features you expect from a system. Then decide for the hardware. Don't waste your money on crap.
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