(2018-11-06, 10:13)wsnipex Wrote: (2018-11-05, 23:10)stian Wrote: as the team-xbmc repositories are blocked by Ubuntu 18.04.1, seemingly for security reasons...
huh? Please elaborate on this, since I have no idea what you are talking about
Sorry, I had things confused, as this was an error I got while trying to install an earlier version of Kodi through the ppa:team-xbmc/kodi-old repo. Which gives me this error:
E: The repository 'http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc/kodi-old/ubuntu bionic Release' does not have a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.
That was what I was referring to. As you have probably figured, I am not exactly a Linux expert.
(2018-11-06, 09:02)Rechi Wrote: (2018-11-05, 23:10)stian Wrote: Trying that now, but it seems the kodi-vfs-rar addon will only compile correctly if I also compiled Kodi myself, instead of installing it through Ubuntu's apt repositories.
Why do you think so?
Because that is how I interpret the readme on the GitHub page for the kodi-vfs-rar addon, which reads:
When building the addon you have to use the correct branch depending on which version of Kodi you're building against. For example, if you're building the master branch of Kodi you should checkout the master branch of this repository. Also make sure you follow this README from the branch in question.
Linux
The following instructions assume you will have built Kodi already in the kodi-build directory suggested by the README.
git clone https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc.git
git clone https://github.com/xbmc/vfs.rar.git
cd vfs.rar && mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DADDONS_TO_BUILD=vfs.rar -DADDON_SRC_PREFIX=../.. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../../xbmc/kodi-build/addons -DPACKAGE_ZIP=1 ../../xbmc/cmake/addons
make
The addon files will be placed in ../../xbmc/kodi-build/addons so if you build Kodi from source and run it directly the addon will be available as a system addon.
I tried this, and all the compiled files ended up in ~/xbmc/kodi-build/, and not in ~/.kodi/, where the files are installed when installing Kodi through apt-get. The GitHub readme does not inform on how one can manually edit the files as to make sure the compiled files end up in the "right" folder. And as I am not an expert, I am therefore clueless. I tried copying the files from ~/xbmc/kodi-build/addons to ~/.kodi/addons, but that did not work. I was still unable to play directly from RAR archives.
This is just too difficult. If removing the RAR playback functionality was so important, couldn't this addon at least have been placed as a searchable and installable addon directly in the Kodi addon interface? If nothing else than to make it easy on people who do not have a Ph.D. in Linux? What is the point of being directly user-hostile?
(2018-11-06, 09:02)Rechi Wrote: (2018-11-05, 23:10)stian Wrote: Why on earth would anyone remove rar support from Kodi 18?
Kodi is a media player, so it's core feature is to play media files, not to read rar files. That's the reason why rar support was moved into an add-on.
But where do people get these media files from? From the warez scene groups who pack their releases in RAR archives. They always have, and they always will. This functionality in Kodi was absolutely brilliant. For someone like me, who only download the best possible encodes, a movie usually costs me between 25 to 40 gigabytes of disk space. A full season of a TV show can run up to 50-100 GB. In order to keep these torrents seeded, I have to retain the RAR archives. If I have to unrar all the archives in order to play them through Kodi, I would have to go through the painful process of unrar-ing every single movie and episode, and thus I would have to increase my disk space with roughly 100 percent. Why not just keep this functionality in Kodi? How much space was there to save on removing it? A couple of megabytes? I can't imagine it would need that much maintenance either. And as I said earlier, if it had to be removed, why not add the RAR addon to the addon section of the Kodi GUI for a user-friendly way to get the feature back?
I have tried more or less everything to get Kodi running again with RAR playback functionality – installing through Ubuntu repos,
installing older version of Kodi through apt-get and even
this highly sketchy method of installing Kodi 16.1 on Ubuntu 18.04. I now have a install of Kodi that does not function. It will not start. Why? Because I'm no expert and therefore I have f**ked everything up. It shouldn't be this difficult. The only option remaining, as I see it, is to do a complete reinstall of Ubuntu and to hope I get it right this time, but getting everything running as it did under Ubuntu 17.04 with Kodi 17 (with RAR playback) is just too much of a hassle and potentially wasted hours or even days, so as of right now I will not be using Kodi anymore.
