Kodi Community Forum

Here is what I have:

Asrock AM1H-ITX mini-ITX board, AMD CPU/GPU, 8 GB RAM
(TWO SATA controllers, max. 4 drives)
fanless PSU, fanless CPU cooler, generic keyboard + mouse

I am running Ubuntu 14.04.1 64-bit (kernel 4.4.0-31-generic #50) with XBMC 12.3

SATA drive #1 is a BOOT drive - a 480 GB Samsung EVO 850.

SATA drive #2 and #3 are 3 TB spinners, they are in an LVM2 configuration (Ubuntu thinks it is one giant 6 TB drive formatted as btrfs). This is where my content is.

I have set up a shared directory on the LVM and content travels just fine over the network and plays on my Windows 7 machine.

Libdvdcss2 is installed on the Ubuntu machine, and VLC will play the content on the Ubuntu machine, but when I try to add a decrypted ISO to Kodi (Video --> Files) I just see the message "working..." indefinitely in the lower right corner of the Kodi screen; I must use "kill -9" to regain control.

If I set up a shared directory in Ubuntu, what owner/group/chmod do the files AND DIRECTORIES need? What will Kodi (on the Ubuntu machine) require so they will play on the Ubuntu machine? I tried putting some ISOs in /home/mike with owner mike, group mike. I even made the file rwxrwxrwx, and Kodi did not play it.

Somehow, the LVM2 seems to be mounted as "user: nobody" and "group: nogroup". If a file is on the LVM drives, is this going to cause a problem for Kodi to play files on the local Ubuntu machine? (I know permissions of files, directories and PARENT directories are all important in Linux.)

I have Kodi 12.3 on Ubuntu 14.04.5. Please don't tell me to "just upgrade". If the problem is permissions-based, a newer version won't suddenly start disregarding permissions and playing files. I don't want to switch to Windows 7 ("Dynamic Disks", "Shared Directories"), but it would work, and only take a few mouse clicks to set up.

If I set up Kodibuntu over again, I think the installer lets me choose where the LVM2 is mounted (the two 3TB spinning drives). Where should I mount it - should I choose /home/mike/shared instead of /media/mike like it is now? Are there special options I should use?

PLEASE let me know any ideas to get this working.

You only need read permissions on the files (644) and read/execute on the directories holding the files (755). Which user are you running kodi under? Mount point is irrelevant so long as the permissions are setup correctly. What does the kodi log show when you attempt to play one of these files? As an aside, why are you running such a dated version of Ubuntu and of Kodi?

Yes debug log (wiki) needed.

I am running Kodi as the user mike - the only user created for this machine. I am running this older version because I do not have to press the "resize" button on my TV remote - some later Kodi versions cause a little of the image to go off the TV on all four sides until I do this - every single time I want to watch programming (Toshiba 40L5200U, 39.4 inches, LED backlighting, about 10 years old, it has been a very nice set).

I changed permissions to what graysky suggested, and changed the audio so Kodi will send sound to the HDMI port. I set up the scraper, and now have artwork when I navigate to the directory "Cheers". I suspect artwork has also been fetched for my other shows - "Night Court", "Home Improvement" etc.

Here is the pastebin log from 06-10-17

I look forward to getting this working (if I have to switch to JRiver Media Center and Win7, that would be lots more money and setup time.)

EDIT: The last 14 lines of the pastebin may be when I typed <CTRL> <ALT> <F1> and "ps -A" and killed the process ID for "xbmc.bin".

Thanks in advance for your help!

Give it a bit longer...

Also debugging wasn't turned on from kodi startup.

Other than that, 12.3 is well out of support, please upgrade to 17.3.

And turn off overscanning on your TV!

Last time, I started Ubuntu, Kodi logging had been previously turned on before I started Kodi. I did the same thing this time, the pastebin is here. This time I waited about 7 hours for the ISO to play (I slept, actually). When I came back, Kodi still said it was "working...". So clearly it is not working.

Perhaps "overscanning" is the wrong word. Any version of ubuntu displays itself perfectly on my TV at 1920 by 1080. Nothing is cut off. But in some versions of Kodi, Kodi chooses to display itself at a higher resolution, some pixels are cut off, and I must choose the "Pic Size" button on my remote, every time, to force my TV to recognize the weird resolution that Kodi is now putting out (the picture shrinks very slightly so no pixels are cut off anymore).

(I suspect the JRiver product would not even THINK of disobeying the Windows screen resolution.)

I have gotten this combination of Ubuntu and Kodi to work out of the box before. WITHOUT Kodi putting out higher resolution than Gnome/Ubuntu and having pixels cut off.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Are you wedded to ubuntu/a full operating system?

You could try libreelec. In fact you could try it on a usb stick without affecting your current setup, see if you like it.

You are running a non official build that has been patched by debian and is know to have serious issues with DVD playback. It will never work.
I highly suggest upgrading to something recent and vanilla.

Actually, rethinking my last post, I am not sure whether Libreelec handles LVM.

Thanks for the help. I might sound nasty sometimes (especially in person), but I do appreciate it.

(Re-thinking MY previous post, I'm not sure if Kodi 12.3 was working in the past or not.)

I tried the following:

1. Install 14.04 LTS, then
2. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/kodi-old
3. sudo apt-get update

Now I have a good system. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is mated with Kodi 16.1 "Jarvis". The image (both "Confluence" skin and decrypted ISOs played back from my hard drive) exactly fits my Toshiba's 1-meter (39.4 inch) panel without pixels being cut off (1920 by 1080). I have not tried to get the remote IR receiver working yet, or my SiliconDust HomeRun Dual working yet.

Here is the pastebin where I started Kodi, watched several minutes of a decrypted ISO then shut down Kodi (Jarvis) cleanly:

Ubuntu 14.04 / Kodi 16.1 'Jarvis'

I did try Kodi 17.3 -- no pixels were cut off, so I did not need to use the "pic size" button on my remote. But during "CHiPS", where Erik Estrada plays a California motorcycle cop, I would choose "Season 2 Disc 3.ISO" for example. The theme music cycled one time while the screen was completely black. When the music started for the second time, choices came up on my screen to let me choose which episode to watch, subtitles, etc. This could be a fault in the disc's authoring, though it does not happen with Jarvis.

Kodi really is a fine piece of software that usually works pretty well, and isn't too hard to tweak (send sound to HDMI for example). For me (Linux user since July 1998), this is high praise indeed.

I'll stick with this setup for now, but if I have to reinstall in a year or two (hardware failure for example), well, Jarvis might not be in the kodi-old repository anymore (and version 18 might have bugs, I don't know). So some time in the future I'll probably switch to JRiver and Win7 but for now I've got a pretty nice system.

EDIT: Setting up the LVM as a share should let me watch decrypted ISOs over the network with no problems; I have done this before.

Thanks everyone !!!