[Tony5856]

This is probably the wrong place to ask this but I just wasn't sure where to post, sorry.
I looked in skinning and it seems making builds and wizards is frowned upon??
I made a build and wizard with all legal addons. The point was to put the build on my kids android boxes and be able to do any updates from my house and just have them run the wizard to update their setups.
I used aeon nox skin and made a folder in the userdata folder called backgrounds and put my custom images there.
Before zipping the kodi folders I went into the skin xml files and changed the paths from c:users, ect to special://
But when I installed the build on a amazon fire stick, the background images don't appear, and when I go to skin settings and look at the path for the backgrounds they have changed back to c:users....
What am I doing wrong?
And let me apologize if this is a subject that is not allowed. I didn't see anything in the forum rules regarding builds or wizards

[PatK]

Nothing wrong with customization of Kodi, most of us do that to some degree. I don't think the majority of users call them 'builds', nor differences files or batch wizards or the like; it's associated a bit too much with 'pirate' and illegal add-ons, and the forum frowns on those terms. Without going into specifics, the help you are asking for might be construed as guidance down the road of no return, and a map that might lead some to the suggestion that the forum is enabling what we hate most, consequently my advice is more of a general nature.

Kodi on start builds its own Userdata (wiki) folder, and in that should there be any problems your creation of a folder in the userdata folder called backgrounds path is likely overwritten, by the default. The solution is to place this folder elsewhere, and look for issues that are enabling the default.

[Tony5856]

Thanks for your reply. Maybe some clarification on what I should be calling a 'build' or 'wizard' would help.
As I stated I'm trying to customize a skin setup and compress it to a zip file for installation on a separate device, what would be the term for that?
I keep up with the news somewhat and I understand how your program is wrongly associated with piracy, but your reply is a bit confusing.
Quote "the help you are asking for might be construed as guidance down the road of no return" trying to customize kodi and copy that setup to a different device is leading me down what road??
and why can I not return?
I thank you for your general advice and will do more research on the subject. The wiki seemed confusing to me because the cross platform issue, but I will read more on the Userdata folder.

[trogggy]

This is probably the wrong place to ask this but I just wasn't sure where to post, sorry.
I looked in skinning and it seems making builds and wizards is frowned upon??
I made a build and wizard with all legal addons. The point was to put the build on my kids android boxes and be able to do any updates from my house and just have them run the wizard to update their setups.
I used aeon nox skin and made a folder in the userdata folder called backgrounds and put my custom images there.
Before zipping the kodi folders I went into the skin xml files and changed the paths from c:users, ect to special://
But when I installed the build on a amazon fire stick, the background images don't appear, and when I go to skin settings and look at the path for the backgrounds they have changed back to c:users....
What am I doing wrong?
And let me apologize if this is a subject that is not allowed. I didn't see anything in the forum rules regarding builds or wizards

One thought... If you edit your paths while kodi is running and aeon nox is active your changes won't stick. Could it be as simple as that?
Otherwise can you clarify exactly which file(s) you edited?

[Tony5856]

Thanks, but I did my editing when kodi was not running.
The xml files I am editing are:
kodi/userdata/sources.xml (this was because I set a source in file manager to the backgrounds folder that I created, it was the only way I knew to get to that folder from within the aeon nox silvo skin settings)
kodi/userdata/addon_data/skin.aeon.nox.silvo/setting.xml (changed all the skinshortcuts-backgrounds from my Cdrive location to special://
I also followed the above advice and moved the backgrounds folder to inside the kodi/media folder and pointed my skin settings to the new location.
as a last resort I even edited the kodi/addons/skin.aeon.nox.silvo/16x9/script.skinshortcuts-includes.xml file
still doing some reading...

[trogggy]

I think you've done pretty much the same as me by the sound of it - the difference being that I'm using xonfluence which doesn't use script.skinshortcuts - so editing addon_data\skin.xonfluence\settings.xml works for me..
I think the file you want to edit is
Kodi\userdata\addon_data\script.skinshortcuts\mainmenu.DATA.xml
That's assuming you don't have script.skinshortcuts configured to use different shortcuts with different skins.
Disclaimer: I haven't done this, I keep meaning to try a few skins that use skinshortcuts but haven't got around to it. So it's an educated guess.

[trogggy]

Kodi on start builds its own Userdata (wiki) folder, and in that should there be any problems your creation of a folder in the userdata folder called backgrounds path is likely overwritten, by the default. The solution is to place this folder elsewhere, and look for issues that are enabling the default.

I'm a bit confused by this tbh Pat. There isn't a userdata/backgrounds folder created by default. Even if there was it would merge with the one already there.
There shouldn't be any problem with having a userdata folder already in place with a few custom bits before kodi does its first run - it will just merge (and already-present files won't be overwritten). I've done that for years, with eg sources, guisettings, Databases, Thumbnails, advancedsettings and numerous'extras'. It just works.

[Tony5856]

I have not had a chance to work on it much, but I did look at the mainmenu.DATA.xml and there is nothing in there about backgrounds, just info and icons.
Here is a stupid question, when editing I am just pasting special:// into the line of code and I'm not sure if the syntax is correct.
Here is the original line:
C:\Users\hoise\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\media\Backgrounds\kids\
so when I paste it looks like this:
special://media\Backgrounds\kids
Is the above correct or should it look like this:
special://media/Backgrouns/kids

Thank you for your help, I'm going to work on it some more now

[trogggy]

I have not had a chance to work on it much, but I did look at the mainmenu.DATA.xml and there is nothing in there about backgrounds, just info and icons.
Here is a stupid question, when editing I am just pasting special:// into the line of code and I'm not sure if the syntax is correct.
Here is the original line:
C:\Users\hoise\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\media\Backgrounds\kids\
so when I paste it looks like this:
special://media\Backgrounds\kids
Is the above correct or should it look like this:
special://media/Backgrouns/kids

Thank you for your help, I'm going to work on it some more now

Only forward slashes, so special://media/Backgrouns/kids...

Except that path's not valid AFAIK.
There are specific 'special' paths you can use, all listed in the wiki.
Special_protocol (wiki)
Assuming your Backgrounds folder is plonked in the root of your userdata then the path woul be:

special://masterprofile/Backgrounds/kids

[Tony5856]

I'm getting frustrated now.
I made the folder C:\Users\hoise\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\Backgrounds\kids
I then ran kodi, file manager, set source C:\Users\hoise\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\Backgrounds
went into skin settings, pointed menu to C:\Users\hoise\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\Backgrounds\kids
edited the kodi/userdata/sources.xml and kodi/userdata/addon_data/skin.aeon.nox.silvo/setting.xml
first attempt I did special://masterprofile/Backgrounds/kids, deleted thumbnails folder and Textures13.db, zipped the addons, media, and userdata folders.
uploaded to repo, installed a fresh kodi 17.3 on amazon fire stick, installed repo and build.
Did not work! All background paths reverted to C:\Users\hoise\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\Backgrounds
Read the wiki page you linked about 6 times, still confusing about the available paths vs the default os mappings.
Did everything again only this time my edit was special://home/userdata/Backgrounds/kids
installed build, now curious thing is, menu came up and backgrounds were there, as soon as the skin built the menu, the backgrounds disappeared.
This was also the only method that I was able to open the special://home/userdata/Backgrounds source and see the files inside. all other methods when I tried to look at the source, the path was invalid.
So it seems to me that during the 'skin building menu', the path is being changed, but I cant find were that is happening, but then again, I cant read python code that well.
The skin is aeon nox silvo, should I be posting in that section? I'm not discounting your help, it is much appreciated! just seems to be a skin issue to me.
I'm lost at this point, I have spent so many hours just trying to fix this one little issue.
Any other ideas?

[trogggy]

I'm getting frustrated now.
I made the folder C:\Users\hoise\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\Backgrounds\kids
I then ran kodi, file manager, set source C:\Users\hoise\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\Backgrounds
went into skin settings, pointed menu to C:\Users\hoise\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\Backgrounds\kids
edited the kodi/userdata/sources.xml and kodi/userdata/addon_data/skin.aeon.nox.silvo/setting.xml
first attempt I did special://masterprofile/Backgrounds/kids, deleted thumbnails folder and Textures13.db, zipped the addons, media, and userdata folders.
uploaded to repo, installed a fresh kodi 17.3 on amazon fire stick, installed repo and build.
Did not work! All background paths reverted to C:\Users\hoise\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\Backgrounds
Read the wiki page you linked about 6 times, still confusing about the available paths vs the default os mappings.
Did everything again only this time my edit was special://home/userdata/Backgrounds/kids
installed build, now curious thing is, menu came up and backgrounds were there, as soon as the skin built the menu, the backgrounds disappeared.
This was also the only method that I was able to open the special://home/userdata/Backgrounds source and see the files inside. all other methods when I tried to look at the source, the path was invalid.
So it seems to me that during the 'skin building menu', the path is being changed, but I cant find were that is happening, but then again, I cant read python code that well.
The skin is aeon nox silvo, should I be posting in that section? I'm not discounting your help, it is much appreciated! just seems to be a skin issue to me.
I'm lost at this point, I have spent so many hours just trying to fix this one little issue.
Any other ideas?

Firstly special://masterprofile/Backgrounds/kids and special://home/userdata/Backgrounds/kids are the same address.
This:

All background paths reverted to C:\Users\hoise\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\Backgrounds

means somewhere you haven't changed a reference that needs to be changed.
Without knowing exactly what you've done I would use notepad++ to search for any reference to 'Backgrounds\kids' in your kodi data folder (C:\Users\hoise\AppData\Roaming\Kodi). If you're not familiar with notepad++ - it's just a case of clicking search > find in files, entering your search term and then choosing the directory to search.
Can you run that search and post the result?

[Tony5856]

OK, thank you again for your help, I figured it out.
Did everything the same as above then deleted the skin hash file
userdata/addondata/script.skinshortcuts/skin.aeon.nox.silvo.hash
zipped it all and installed on android and it worked perfect.
Thank you for your time and effort, I do appreciate it very much!