2018-07-22, 01:04
EDIT: The solution is in birdwatcher's post below, which references this article: Make LIRC work in Ubuntu 18.04, so that you can use your infrared remote in Kodi
We have been trying to do this now for two days and can't seem to get anything approaching a working solution. This is a brand new install of Ubuntu 18.04 and Kodi 17.6, and it is turning out to be a major headache. We haven't even got to the point of thinking about addons or anything, this is truly "out of the box" Kodi, and we've reinstalled Ubuntu about three times now.
In previous versions of Ubuntu we'd install LIRC, configure it to use a Windows MCE remote, and Kodi just magically worked with the remote, and we have done this several times on different and upgraded systems. But along comes Ubuntu 18.04 and apparently you can't use LIRC anymore. But without it, not all the the buttons work, and those that do only work some of the time. We tried the solution at https://github.com/clontarfx/kodi-rc6-mce-nolirc but it only made things marginally better - more keys worked, but very often we'd get double keypresses or in other cases we'd have to press a button several times for it to register (particularly annoying when it's the OK/Enter button). We checked remote operation using a command that I can't recall offhand from the Linux command line, and all the buttons to seem to register correctly, but if you hold any button down for more than just a moment Ubuntu appears to recognize multiple keypresses.
Getting a remote to work and properly behave in Kodi should NOT be this difficult. I don't know if the cause is changes in LIRC that prevent it from working properly (which we uninstalled and purged because it made the remote stop working altogether), or in Ubuntu itself, or something in Kodi though I'd be very surprised if it was a Kodi issue. I cannot believe other Ubuntu users aren't running into this and I am wondering, what did you do to fix it? Do you live with a remote that hardly works acceptably, or did you actually find a solution that truly banishes these problems (and if you did, PLEASE share it)? Or did you just go back to Ubuntu 16.04, where LIRC still works beautifully, or to some other Linux distro where LIRC still works? I would really like to know if there is a solution to this. Note that we have experienced this issue on two completely different systems running very different hardware, and yet the problems we observed were exactly the same.
If there is a solution that works I would suggest putting it in a sticky post that explains it because I have looked at so many web pages on this issue that supposedly show solutions (that don't work) that my eyes are glazing over, and I see that many users have run into this, and many of them apparently just gave up and went back to Ubuntu 16.04. I would rather not do that, so if there is a solution that WORKS I would really love to hear it.
We have been trying to do this now for two days and can't seem to get anything approaching a working solution. This is a brand new install of Ubuntu 18.04 and Kodi 17.6, and it is turning out to be a major headache. We haven't even got to the point of thinking about addons or anything, this is truly "out of the box" Kodi, and we've reinstalled Ubuntu about three times now.
In previous versions of Ubuntu we'd install LIRC, configure it to use a Windows MCE remote, and Kodi just magically worked with the remote, and we have done this several times on different and upgraded systems. But along comes Ubuntu 18.04 and apparently you can't use LIRC anymore. But without it, not all the the buttons work, and those that do only work some of the time. We tried the solution at https://github.com/clontarfx/kodi-rc6-mce-nolirc but it only made things marginally better - more keys worked, but very often we'd get double keypresses or in other cases we'd have to press a button several times for it to register (particularly annoying when it's the OK/Enter button). We checked remote operation using a command that I can't recall offhand from the Linux command line, and all the buttons to seem to register correctly, but if you hold any button down for more than just a moment Ubuntu appears to recognize multiple keypresses.
Getting a remote to work and properly behave in Kodi should NOT be this difficult. I don't know if the cause is changes in LIRC that prevent it from working properly (which we uninstalled and purged because it made the remote stop working altogether), or in Ubuntu itself, or something in Kodi though I'd be very surprised if it was a Kodi issue. I cannot believe other Ubuntu users aren't running into this and I am wondering, what did you do to fix it? Do you live with a remote that hardly works acceptably, or did you actually find a solution that truly banishes these problems (and if you did, PLEASE share it)? Or did you just go back to Ubuntu 16.04, where LIRC still works beautifully, or to some other Linux distro where LIRC still works? I would really like to know if there is a solution to this. Note that we have experienced this issue on two completely different systems running very different hardware, and yet the problems we observed were exactly the same.
If there is a solution that works I would suggest putting it in a sticky post that explains it because I have looked at so many web pages on this issue that supposedly show solutions (that don't work) that my eyes are glazing over, and I see that many users have run into this, and many of them apparently just gave up and went back to Ubuntu 16.04. I would rather not do that, so if there is a solution that WORKS I would really love to hear it.