[oldtvwatcher]

Well a lot of people are having problems with it.  I'm not sure I understand what you are doing (okay, I really don't understand) but it seems to me you are saying that if I save my existing /etc/lirc/hardware.conf, and then after installing the new version copy that over the /etc/lirc/lirc_options.conf it will work?  And, how does the /etc/lirc/lircd.conf come into this?  That is what I do not understand.  They took something that was dead simple and made it difficult; is it any wonder people want the old version?

Not exactly no.  Perhaps if I show you the relevant files from my own installation it will help you with yours.

This is the first part of the old hardware.conf file.

xml:
# /etc/lirc/hardware.conf

#

#Chosen Remote Control

REMOTE="onkyo"

REMOTE_MODULES=""

REMOTE_DRIVER=""

REMOTE_DEVICE="/dev/lirc0"

REMOTE_SOCKET=""

REMOTE_LIRCD_CONF="/etc/lirc/lircd.conf.d/onkyo.lircd.conf"

REMOTE_LIRCD_ARGS=""

The values for some of these variables are going to be transferred into the new lirc_options file

xml:
# These are the default options to lircd, if installed as

# /etc/lirc/lirc_options.conf. See the lircd(8) and lircmd(8)

# manpages for info on the different options.

#

# Some tools including mode2 and irw uses values such as

# driver, device, plugindir and loglevel as fallback values

# in not defined elsewhere.



[lircd]

nodaemon        = False

driver          = default

device          = /dev/lirc0

output          = /var/run/lirc/lircd

pidfile         = /var/run/lirc/lircd.pid

plugindir       = /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lirc/plugins

permission      = 666

Notice that the device here mirrors the old REMOTE_DEVICE and that the driver is set to default as we weren't using a specific driver before.  All the other values I believe are the defaults. The other file we need is lircd.conf which specifies the remote definition file.  This used to be loaded by hardware.conf.

lircd.conf

xml:
include "/usr/share/lirc/remotes/mceusb/lircd.conf.mceusb"

include "/etc/lirc/lircd.conf.d/onkyo.lircd.conf"

Hopefully that should give you enough info to see how to configure it. 

Okay, in the first part I see where you are taking the Remote Driver and Remote Device settings and using them in the new lirc_options file.  And in lircd.conf I see you are including /usr/share/lirc/remotes/mceusb/lircd.conf.mceusb which makes sense because many people, myself included, are using a cheap generic Media Center Edition compatible remote.  I don't get the line that includes /etc/lirc/lircd.conf.d/onkyo.lircd.conf though, nor the references to onkyo in your original file - are you using two different remotes (a MCE and an Onkyo) to control different things?  Or do you have just one Onkyo remote that happens to be MCE compatible?  If not then I'm mystified as to why there are two includes here.  This may be one of those things that would make perfect sense to someone conversant in Linux, but I really don't have a clue.

The equivalent section of my current /etc/lirc/hardware.conf (for 0.9.0) looks like this:

xml:
#Chosen Remote Control

REMOTE="Windows Media Center Transceivers/Remotes (all)"

REMOTE_MODULES="lirc_dev mceusb"

REMOTE_DRIVER=""

REMOTE_DEVICE="/dev/lirc0"

REMOTE_SOCKET=""

REMOTE_LIRCD_CONF="mceusb/lircd.conf.mceusb"

REMOTE_LIRCD_ARGS=""

As you can see it's not exactly like yours, and in particular has settings for REMOTE_MODULES that yours doesn't, and I have no idea why or whether that is important at all.

I have to ask, have you had any issues with either non-responsive buttons, or with buttons registering as double or triple presses since using this?

I'm still trying to figure out if there would be a desktop version of Linux that would be better suited for running Kodi.  I am mainly looking for stability, in other words something I can set up once and then not have to keep messing with.  Ubuntu with Unity was pretty stable, all things considered, although I did have the unexplained crash once in a blue moon but rebooting always fixed that.  But reading about the unfixed memory leak in Gnome kind of makes me wonder if it is time to try something else when I am ready to upgrade from 18.04, which is part of the reason I posted in the first place.  Anyway, thanks for this information, it is probably more helpful than anything else I have seen so far.