2015-07-02, 23:49
Kodi "master" is now based on Jarvis, or Kodi 16. See this thread for Kodi 17 testbuilds. For previous Kodi 15 (Isengard) testbuilds, see here.
Fair Warning
Kodi 16 is currently beta and there is likely to be a lot of activity in the coming weeks/months. There will be some breakage.
In addition to Kodi 16, these builds are also based on VideoPlayer, the future replacement in Kodi 17 for DVDPlayer, and some add-ons may be incompatible if they have a hard-coded dependency on DVDPlayer, which is no longer available in Python. For the time being these add-ons will need updating to use whatever player is available at runtime, either VideoPlayer or DVDPlayer.
Many of the newclock5 commits that have been tested over the past few months are now in isengard_rbp_backports and should appear in official OpenELEC builds, so if you favour stability then stick with the official builds.
I will continue with periodic build releases based on master and whatever popcornmix throws our way. Fingers crossed the generally pretty good review procedures and change management will keep problems to a minimum. Your continued feedback and testing is appreciated.
Skin Usage
By all means use third party skins with these builds (if the skins are compatible), but please do not report problems that cannot be reproduced while using the stock Confluence skin that is included with every build.
If a problem is not reproducible with stock Confluence then it's most likely to be a third-party skin problem, in which case contact the skin maintainer.
Installing
You need a working system in order to install a test build. If you are starting from scratch, use an official OpenELEC disk image to create a working system on your SD card. Once you have a working system, install the test build by copying the tar file into your Update folder and reboot.
Recent builds (see next post for older builds):
Feature Requests:
I will not be adding extra add-hoc packages to these builds as that is not their purpose, which is to help test bug fixes and enhancements for existing features/packages/drivers in stock OpenELEC. New functionality may be included for testing purposes if it is considered both beneficial and highly likely to be merged upstream in the near future, and is available as a github pull request or commit.
I have no desire to create builds with unique features upon which someone becomes dependent, as this benefits nobody in the long term not even those using the unique features once I stop creating new builds. In theory, when I stop creating new builds you should all be able to seamlessly switch back to official OpenELEC builds which by then should be including most if not all of the enhancements originally tested in these builds.
If you care about long term support for your favourite package, feature or driver and want to see it included in an OpenELEC build, contact the OpenELEC developers on github and open an issue requesting the addition of support in the base OpenELEC build (or better yet, create a Pull Request with patch). That way everyone building or using an OpenELEC derived system "wins".
Additional Testing Notes:
Fair Warning
Kodi 16 is currently beta and there is likely to be a lot of activity in the coming weeks/months. There will be some breakage.
In addition to Kodi 16, these builds are also based on VideoPlayer, the future replacement in Kodi 17 for DVDPlayer, and some add-ons may be incompatible if they have a hard-coded dependency on DVDPlayer, which is no longer available in Python. For the time being these add-ons will need updating to use whatever player is available at runtime, either VideoPlayer or DVDPlayer.
Many of the newclock5 commits that have been tested over the past few months are now in isengard_rbp_backports and should appear in official OpenELEC builds, so if you favour stability then stick with the official builds.
I will continue with periodic build releases based on master and whatever popcornmix throws our way. Fingers crossed the generally pretty good review procedures and change management will keep problems to a minimum. Your continued feedback and testing is appreciated.
Skin Usage
By all means use third party skins with these builds (if the skins are compatible), but please do not report problems that cannot be reproduced while using the stock Confluence skin that is included with every build.
If a problem is not reproducible with stock Confluence then it's most likely to be a third-party skin problem, in which case contact the skin maintainer.
Installing
You need a working system in order to install a test build. If you are starting from scratch, use an official OpenELEC disk image to create a working system on your SD card. Once you have a working system, install the test build by copying the tar file into your Update folder and reboot.
Recent builds (see next post for older builds):
- #1204, 04-Dec-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Build: Switch kernel branch from rpi-4.3.y_rebase to rpi-4.3.y)
- #1203, 03-Dec-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Re-add PR:7030 (CNetwork - implement IPv6) now issues are fixed)
- #1202b, 03-Dec-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (libcec update, switch to p8-platform; #1202b fix libcec RPi platform detection)
- #1201, 01-Dec-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (New firmware; drop PR:7030 (CNetwork - implement IPv6); add support for pre-gzipped addons.xml in repositories)
- #1130, 30-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Some VideoPlayer updates)
- #1129, 29-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (connman-1.30)
- #1128, 28-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Fix for systemd-228 garbage; bump ffmpeg 2.8.3)
- #1127, 27-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Add pvr.hdhomerun client; CNetwork - implement IPv6; dcadec v0.1.0; libcec updates; fix TrueHD passthrough)
- #1126, 26-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Include Kodi security fix)
- #1125, 26-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (New firmware; libcec updated; connman-1.30 bump dropped)
- #1124, 24-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Temporarily revert multi-touch support)
- #1123, 24-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Passthrough audio should be fixed in this build)
- #1122, 22-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Kodi 16.0 beta3; WARNING: Passthrough audio is most likely broken in this build)
- #1121, 21-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (A few changes)
- #1120, 20-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Bump systemd, dbus)
- #1119, 19-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Bump even more packages; bumped connman-1.30)
- #1118, 19-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (New firmware; many OpenELEC package bumps)
- #1117, 18-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (OpenELEC 7.0; new firmware; VideoPlayer (newclock5) updates)
- #1116, 17-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (VideoPlayer rebase; revert PR:4411; fix MySQL 5.7.5+ incompatability)
- #1115, 15-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Kodi 16.0 beta 2; bump to ffmpeg 2.8.2; restored PR:4411, dropped first hunk)
- #1114, 14-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Revert PR:4411 to test if PulseAudio/i2s issue is related)
- #1113, 13-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Switch from rpi-4.3.y to rpi-4.3.y_rebase; drop Linux ATAGS)
- #1112, 12-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Small changes)
- #1111b, 12-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Urgent replacement for #1111 - see forum for details; new firmware; dropped ALSA/Pulse bridge and BT commits)
- #1110, 10-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Use ALSA-to-PulseAudio bridge)
- #1109, 09-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Add i2s patches; add DMA_BCM2835 kernel config option; add Bluetooth audio connect/disconnect options)
- #1108, 08-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Cosmetics)
- #1107, 07-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Added PulseAudio support for Bluetooth and network audio - thanks @lrusak)
- #1106, 06-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (New firmware; dcdadec: Improved DTSHD-MA (XLL) sync loss recovery and resilience to errors)
- #1105, 06-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Fix inversion of export library dialogs, fixes #16358; fix JSON output of album and artist mood to be array as in spec)
- #1104, 04-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Minor fixes)
- #1103, 03-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Various tweaks)
- #1102, 03-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (New kernel 4.3.0; OpenELEC master bumped to Kodi 16 beta1; bump gcc to 5.2.0 (clean build))
- #1101, 02-Nov-2015: RPi / RPi2 -- Release post (Kodi 16.0 Beta 1; new firmware; bump libbluray-0.9.0; remove skin backward compatibility; fix for 3D ISO playback)
Feature Requests:
I will not be adding extra add-hoc packages to these builds as that is not their purpose, which is to help test bug fixes and enhancements for existing features/packages/drivers in stock OpenELEC. New functionality may be included for testing purposes if it is considered both beneficial and highly likely to be merged upstream in the near future, and is available as a github pull request or commit.
I have no desire to create builds with unique features upon which someone becomes dependent, as this benefits nobody in the long term not even those using the unique features once I stop creating new builds. In theory, when I stop creating new builds you should all be able to seamlessly switch back to official OpenELEC builds which by then should be including most if not all of the enhancements originally tested in these builds.
If you care about long term support for your favourite package, feature or driver and want to see it included in an OpenELEC build, contact the OpenELEC developers on github and open an issue requesting the addition of support in the base OpenELEC build (or better yet, create a Pull Request with patch). That way everyone building or using an OpenELEC derived system "wins".
Additional Testing Notes:
- Build references
When reporting issues, refer to builds using only the published build codes, ie. #0215, #0216 etc. The build code is visible on the boot screen, and by typing "lsb_release".
Do NOT use any other reference, as these are often meaningless. For instance, the OpenELEC github revision identifier, 20272, 20281 etc. can be used by more than one build if nothing changes in OpenELEC between successive builds meaning such references could identify multiple builds, rendering it useless as a unique reference.
Anyone using the wrong reference will be ignored by me, possibly others, as I'm just not interested in working out which build you may or may not be referring to.
- Usage information
Starting with build #0529(2014), very limited usage information will be collected during the first boot of each newly installed build. The information collected is: build#, Pi memory size (256MB, 512MB or 1008MB) and maximum ARM frequency. No IP or personal information is collected!
If you wish to opt out of data collection, run the following command:
The purpose of this data collection is really just to get an idea of how much testing is being carried out and on what hardware, and would otherwise be achieved via non-opt out server logs if such logs were available (which they're not).Code:touch /storage/.config/milhouse.dnt
- Migrating OpenELEC from Pi1 to Pi2, and back again
Note: Prior to migration I would recommend disabling all overclocks, as a Pi1 overclock may not work successfully on a Pi2, and vice versa.
From Pi1 to Pi2: While using the Pi1, upgrade with the RPi2 tar. Once the upgrade is complete, the system will reboot to a rainbow boot screen (as you're now booting the ARMv7 kernel). Shutdown (pull the power) and transfer the SD card into your Pi2, which will boot normally.
From Pi2 to Pi1: While using the Pi2, upgrade with the RPi tar. Once the upgrade is complete, the system will reboot to a rainbow boot screen (as you're now using the ARMv6 kernel). Shutdown (pull the power) and transfer the SD card into your Pi1, which will boot normally.
- Builds since early Dec 2014 include crashlog support
In the event of a crash, the file /storage/.kodi/temp/kodi_crashlog_<ccyymmddhhmmss>.log will be created. Upload this file to a paste site and post details on the forum.
Debug builds are occasionally uploaded to the debug folder. Debug builds will usually include more detailed crashlog information, but require a larger System partition (at least 384MB) and more RAM (on Pi1, reduce gpu_mem to 128 or as low as you can live with while still able to reproduce the problem).
Use the following command to upload the most recent crashlog:
Code:paste $(ls -1art /storage/.kodi/temp/kodi_crashlog* | tail -1)
Hint: Use the following command to create an alias named "crashlog" that can be used to upload always the latest crashlog file:
Code:echo "alias crashlog='paste $(ls -1art /storage/.kodi/temp/kodi_crashlog* | tail -1)'" >> /storage/.profile
- Resizing partitions for debug-enabled builds
The default FAT partitition created by a disk-image installation is too small for a debug-enabled build and will need to be increased in size to at least 384MB, using some of the free space allocated to the second ext4 partition.
To resize the FAT and ext4 partitions of an existing installation:- Linux: use gparted to resize FAT/ext4 partitions
- Windows: use MiniTool Partition Wizard. See this post for more details - unfortunately partition move/resize is not supported by MiniTool for ext4 filesystems so backup, delete/recreate ext4, then restore to resize the Storage partition
- Windows: An alternative solution is to boot a Linux "LiveCD" and then use gparted
- Linux: use gparted to resize FAT/ext4 partitions
- Odds and sods
