[osinus]

Hey,

I just had the issue that my (apple) remote control on my mac mini didn't work anymore. The IR woke up the computer from suspend, but that's all.
Neither Volume control, nor switching to Front Row (nor XBMC) worked anymore.
So I started to troubleshoot:
Battery: ok, Settings/pairing: ok, logged in as another user: remote works for that user. Logged back in with my main user: IR didn't work anymore.

Ok, after some angry shouting at my mac mini, I figured: It must be my main's user config, or a running process interfering with the IR.

So I looked at "ps aux" and I see XBMCHelper running. As it's the only suspicious-looking process in there, I tried with

killall -9 XBMCHelper

and voila! it IR works again!

So XBMCHelper breaks the remote control support for any user who ever started XBMC. This seems a regression in 9.11, I didn't have the issue with previous versions. Note I had the option "allow start of xbmc using the remote" turned off (which I think is the default). Now if I enabled the option, the IR's menu button opens XBMC, and front Row if I turn it off. That seems to work even with XBMCHelper killed. So what is that process good for?

Please fix this! It's highly annoying, and impossible to find out for the non-expert user.

[jmarshall]

XBMCHelper could be still running if XBMC has exited abnormally (eg crashed) - it's a separate process.

In normal use this should ofcourse not occur.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[MaestroDD]

Hey osinus,

welcome to this forum and thanks for your valuable feedback!

Hey,
[snip]
So XBMCHelper breaks the remote control support for any user who ever started XBMC. This seems a regression in 9.11, I didn't have the issue with previous versions.

When XBMC is not running, the XBMCHelper helper process should only run if it has been enabled by ""allow start of xbmc using the remote". As jmarshall pointed out, it might be still running if XBMC crashed, but a reboot or logout/login would fix that. Ofc this is something that needs to improve.

Note I had the option "allow start of xbmc using the remote" turned off (which I think is the default). Now if I enabled the option, the IR's menu button opens XBMC, and front Row if I turn it off. That seems to work even with XBMCHelper killed. So what is that process good for?

XBMC can only be started when XBMCHelper is running in the background.

cheers,
MDD