Kodi 15/16/17 Packages for Raspbian

[Rascas]

hey brother, after i set localization options for my country, all drop down menu writings and the ones in exit menu disappared, just a blank frame with nothing inside. what should i do?

edit: ok it now has the other menu options visible, maybe i connected my pi to internet and it downloaded translations i dont know but this time it wont exit as before. it used to exit smoothly when it was english but now it stucks?

I don't know. I don't think that changing the language/location/timezone, etc, can affect how Kodi exits. For me it exits fine all the time, independently how I launch it. Sometimes it takes more time to exit, thats it. The exit option in Kodi on the Raspberry Pi (and not only) was always a little buggy, but it is now much better than the first versions of Kodi for the RPi.

Questions related to Kodi itself, you are better off putting them in the Kodi forum, you will get more help there:
http://forum.kodi.tv/

[aik]

Just recently I updated debian wheezy to jessie and by the same time isengard to jervis (15->16), I used this thread for both 15 (compiled by the topicstarter) and 16 (the pplware repo). Almost everything works except every time I need to type something (url to a repo, search box), Kodi shows me a virtual keyboard and does not accept chars from the physical USB keyboard, and Kodi15 did not have such an issue. Hotkeys (like b->bookmarks, x->stop) still work. How to fix search box to accept chars? Thanks!

[Rascas]

Just recently I updated debian wheezy to jessie and by the same time isengard to jervis (15->16), I used this thread for both 15 (compiled by the topicstarter) and 16 (the pplware repo). Almost everything works except every time I need to type something (url to a repo, search box), Kodi shows me a virtual keyboard and does not accept chars from the physical USB keyboard, and Kodi15 did not have such an issue. Hotkeys (like b->bookmarks, x->stop) still work. How to fix search box to accept chars? Thanks!

Did you followed this ?
viewtopic.php?f=66&t=109088&start=475#p936238

[aik]

Kodi shows me a virtual keyboard and does not accept chars from the physical USB keyboard, and Kodi15 did not have such an issue.

Did you followed this ?
viewtopic.php?f=66&t=109088&start=475#p936238

Yes i did, when installed 15-rc2 and today for the case if something changed since then but it did not help...

[Rascas]

Yes i did, when installed 15-rc2 and today for the case if something changed since then but it did not help...

Backup your settings (.kodi) and reset Kodi settings to see if it works.

[chewy74]

Hi @Rascas
I added the repo and got kodi updated thanks! I noticed it also has a transmission update too and tried to update it, but keep getting this error. Any suggestions?

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pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-get upgrade transmission-daemon
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  transmission-daemon
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/230 kB of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 127250 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../transmission-daemon_2.84-2.2_armhf.deb ...
usermod: user pi is currently used by process 557
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/transmission-daemon_2.84-2.2_armhf.deb (--unpack):
 subprocess new pre-installation script returned error exit status 8
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/transmission-daemon_2.84-2.2_armhf.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

This is everything you need to install Kodi 16 on Raspbian. All of this is done in a virtual terminal:

Add the pipplware main repository by editing /etc/apt/sources.list or add it to a new file like /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pipplware_jessie.list:

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deb http://pipplware.pplware.pt/pipplware/dists/jessie/main/binary /

Than add the key:

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wget -O - http://pipplware.pplware.pt/pipplware/key.asc | sudo apt-key add -

And update, upgrade and install Kodi:

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sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

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sudo apt-get install kodi

To install PVRs you can run the following command to list all PVRs available:

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apt-cache search kodi-pvr

And then install what you want, for example:

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sudo apt-get install kodi-pvr-iptvsimple

Then, to run Kodi you can use the icon the LXDE menu or run the following command:

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kodi

or

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kodi-standalone

To have everything working nicely on Raspbian you also need to set the right permissions:

You have to create the group "input" if it doesn't exist.

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sudo addgroup --system input

Create & edit the following file:

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sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/99-input.rules

enter the following text and save it:

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SUBSYSTEM==input, GROUP=input, MODE=0660
KERNEL==tty[0-9]*, GROUP=tty, MODE=0660

Create & edit the following file:

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sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/10-permissions.rules

enter this text and save it:

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# input
KERNEL=="mouse*|mice|event*",   MODE="0660", GROUP="input"
KERNEL=="ts[0-9]*|uinput",     MODE="0660", GROUP="input"
KERNEL==js[0-9]*,             MODE=0660, GROUP=input
# tty
KERNEL==tty[0-9]*,            MODE=0666
# vchiq
SUBSYSTEM==vchiq,  GROUP=video, MODE=0660

run the following commands for user pi (if you haven't changed your user name):

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sudo usermod -a -G audio pi
sudo usermod -a -G video pi
sudo usermod -a -G input pi
sudo usermod -a -G dialout pi
sudo usermod -a -G plugdev pi
sudo usermod -a -G tty pi

To play full HD video in Kodi, you have to set
gpu_mem=160
in /boot/config.txt (or higher)

PS: The packages are compiled for armv6 so they work in all Raspberry versions.
PS2: This is for Jessie only

[Rascas]

Hi @Rascas
I added the repo and got kodi updated thanks! I noticed it also has a transmission update too and tried to update it, but keep getting this error. Any suggestions?

Code: Select all

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-get upgrade transmission-daemon
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  transmission-daemon
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/230 kB of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 127250 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../transmission-daemon_2.84-2.2_armhf.deb ...
usermod: user pi is currently used by process 557
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/transmission-daemon_2.84-2.2_armhf.deb (--unpack):
 subprocess new pre-installation script returned error exit status 8
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/transmission-daemon_2.84-2.2_armhf.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

That's unrelated to Kodi. Please keep this on topic.
You have to check what is process 557, save your work, exit/kill the process and update again.

[youpilai]

Hi everybody,

First, thanks to all to spend your time on this, it's good for those who want more of our pi.

For example, in my case, i want to add Kodi to my minimal audiophile setup, the main use of my Pi. For that i use Volumio, so there is no Desktop environment.
Thanks to gkreidl, I had succesfully installed Kodi (15.2) on the previous version of Volumio (1.55). It's working great for my use, and i'm happy with that.

But, now that a new version of Volumio is coming (RC1 for now), i've tried to install Kodi 16 on top of it, following the instruction of Rascas from pipplware main repository, but cannot succeed to make it work. So i've some questions :

Is this installation is suppose to work standalone, like the way the 15.2 version worked ? (ie no Desktop Env.)
Have i to create the startkodi script like before, and if i do, is it the same or have i to change it in some way ?

I ask this because after installing Kodi 16 following step by step Rascas information, i'm not able to launch kodi from command line, using 'kodi', 'kodi-standalone' nor 'startkodi'
I get error message concerning 'fgconsole not found' or something like that.

Is someone have tried (and hopefully succeed) to do the same ?
Thanks for your help

[aik]

Backup your settings (.kodi) and reset Kodi settings to see if it works.

Tried that, did not help...

[Rascas]

Backup your settings (.kodi) and reset Kodi settings to see if it works.

Tried that, did not help...

My guess is that you didn't followed all the instructions correctly, or something in your system preventing the keyboard from working correctly.
Install GKreidl Kodi 15.2 and see if that works for you.

[aik]

My guess is that you didn't followed all the instructions correctly, or something in your system preventing the keyboard from working correctly.
Install GKreidl Kodi 15.2 and see if that works for you.

Well, the only change i made to those instructions was i replaced the account name (pi to aik) and 15.2 works. Is there anything i can do to debug this? What in my system can prevent typing from working if all shortcuts still work?

[Rascas]

Hi everybody,

First, thanks to all to spend your time on this, it's good for those who want more of our pi.

For example, in my case, i want to add Kodi to my minimal audiophile setup, the main use of my Pi. For that i use Volumio, so there is no Desktop environment.
Thanks to gkreidl, I had succesfully installed Kodi (15.2) on the previous version of Volumio (1.55). It's working great for my use, and i'm happy with that.

But, now that a new version of Volumio is coming (RC1 for now), i've tried to install Kodi 16 on top of it, following the instruction of Rascas from pipplware main repository, but cannot succeed to make it work. So i've some questions :

Is this installation is suppose to work standalone, like the way the 15.2 version worked ? (ie no Desktop Env.)
Have i to create the startkodi script like before, and if i do, is it the same or have i to change it in some way ?

I ask this because after installing Kodi 16 following step by step Rascas information, i'm not able to launch kodi from command line, using 'kodi', 'kodi-standalone' nor 'startkodi'
I get error message concerning 'fgconsole not found' or something like that.

Is someone have tried (and hopefully succeed) to do the same ?
Thanks for your help

In my instructions it clearly says that it is only for Raspbian Jessie.

"fgconsole" is a tool that is installed in most of the Linux distributions, perhaps it exists in volumio stable version and not in the testing "rc1" versions, I am not familiar with volumio. You better ask in the volumio forums.

It works standalone. Like said in my instructions, no need for extra start scripts, just run:

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kodi-standalone

[Rascas]

My guess is that you didn't followed all the instructions correctly, or something in your system preventing the keyboard from working correctly.
Install GKreidl Kodi 15.2 and see if that works for you.

Well, the only change i made to those instructions was i replaced the account name (pi to aik) and 15.2 works. Is there anything i can do to debug this? What in my system can prevent typing from working if all shortcuts still work?

I bet that it is your user "aik" that hasn't the right permissions set.
How are you running Kodi, from the desktop, terminal or auto-start at boot ? Are you running Raspbian Jessie ? You can turn the debug on in kodi and check the log file.

[youpilai]

In my instructions it clearly says that it is only for Raspbian Jessie.

"fgconsole" is a tool that is installed in most of the Linux distributions, perhaps it exists in volumio stable version and not in the testing "rc1" versions, I am not familiar with volumio. You better ask in the volumio forums.

It works standalone. Like said in my instructions, no need for extra start scripts, just run:

Code: Select all

kodi-standalone

Thanks Rascas,
As Volumio 2 is based on raspbian Jessie, i've installed 'console-tools' and get rid of the error concerning 'fgconsole'
Now that i know the way it should work, i can spend time to search for the others missing packages that prevent Kodi to be launched (fbi:no process found, libEGL.so or cec.service for that matter)

Thanks

[Rascas]

Thanks Rascas,
As Volumio 2 is based on raspbian Jessie, i've installed 'console-tools' and get rid of the error concerning 'fgconsole'
Now that i know the way it should work, i can spend time to search for the others missing packages that prevent Kodi to be launched (fbi:no process found, libEGL.so or cec.service for that matter)

Thanks

fbi process and cec.service are PiPplware specific so you can ignore that messages ( I will hide that in the next versions). But libEGL.so is very important, it's part of the Raspberry Pi firmware.

[youpilai]

After some search concerning problems with libEGL.so, it appears that the library is present on my system, and i just had to create some symlinks from "/opt/vc/lib/" to "/usr/lib/".

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sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libEGL.so /usr/lib/libEGL.so
sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libGLESv2.so /usr/lib/libGLESv2.so
sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libbcm_host.so /usr/lib/libbcm_host.so
sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libvcos.so /usr/lib/libvcos.so
sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libvchiq_arm.so /usr/lib/libvchiq_arm.so
sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libmmal.so /usr/lib/libmmal.so
sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libmmal_core.so /usr/lib/libmmal_core.so
sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libmmal_util.so /usr/lib/libmmal_util.so
sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libvcsm.so /usr/lib/libvcsm.so
sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libmmal_vc_client.so /usr/lib/libmmal_vc_client.so
sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libmmal_components.so /usr/lib/libmmal_components.so
sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libcontainers.so /usr/lib/libcontainers.so
sudo ln -fs /opt/vc/lib/libopenmaxil.so /usr/lib/libopenmaxil.so

Now it works. But only for root (or with sudo)
And when i quit, it stay on a black screen and i have to reboot the pi (it doesn't bother me so much, but...)
Thanks

[exobuzz]

@rascas

Would you be ok with RetroPie including this repository for installing of Kodi ?

[Rascas]

@rascas

Would you be ok with RetroPie including this repository for installing of Kodi ?

You can use the packages of course, but I would prefer that you copy the packages to another server, because I don't know if it has the power and bandwith necessary for a much bigger use.

[bleep42]

Hi @Rascas,
I followed your instructions from here:-
viewtopic.php?p=936238#p936238
and now have a perfectly functional Kodi 17 running on Raspbian.
Thanks you for all of your effort.
I wanted to try Kodi 17 to see how the improvements in decoding h265 (HEVC) were coming along;
I'm very impressed considering the Pi chip was never intended to replay h265, this is on both a Pi2 and Pi3.
I've tested both 720p and 1080p; 720p looks to be almost perfect now, 1080p some times stutters and the sound can get out of sync with the video, but a lot of 1080p will play fine.
Well done to everyone involved Milhouse, Popcornmix et al....
I hope you do manage to get near perfect replay of all h265 content up to 1080p.
Regards, Kevin.

[exobuzz]

@rascas

Would you be ok with RetroPie including this repository for installing of Kodi ?

You can use the packages of course, but I would prefer that you copy the packages to another server, because I don't know if it has the power and bandwith necessary for a much bigger use.

please can you set me up with rsync access so I can mirror your repository? that would be the easiest way of including this (and would be nicer than using wget or so)

[exobuzz]

Also please can you make your source packages available somewhere? Thanks.

[Rascas]

please can you set me up with rsync access so I can mirror your repository? that would be the easiest way of including this (and would be nicer than using wget or so)

Please check the PM.

[Rascas]

Hi @Rascas,
I followed your instructions from here:-
viewtopic.php?p=936238#p936238
and now have a perfectly functional Kodi 17 running on Raspbian.
Thanks you for all of your effort.
I wanted to try Kodi 17 to see how the improvements in decoding h265 (HEVC) were coming along;
I'm very impressed considering the Pi chip was never intended to replay h265, this is on both a Pi2 and Pi3.
I've tested both 720p and 1080p; 720p looks to be almost perfect now, 1080p some times stutters and the sound can get out of sync with the video, but a lot of 1080p will play fine.
Well done to everyone involved Milhouse, Popcornmix et al....
I hope you do manage to get near perfect replay of all h265 content up to 1080p.
Regards, Kevin.

Nice
You did install the armv7 version right ? It has significant performance improvements in HEVC over the armv6 version.

I just compile different versions of Kodi, all the credit for the HEVC optimizations goes to Popcornmix and Co. I don't think i can improve it much more, besides reported bug fixes, at least without changing another packages/libraries allready present in Raspbian, which I don't do and don't want to do, because of stability/compatibility. So further performance improvements will come from further Kodi developing and new HEVC optimizations.

Regards,
Diogo

[bleep42]

Hi @Rascas,
I followed your instructions from here:-
viewtopic.php?p=936238#p936238
and now have a perfectly functional Kodi 17 running on Raspbian.
Thanks you for all of your effort.
I wanted to try Kodi 17 to see how the improvements in decoding h265 (HEVC) were coming along;
I'm very impressed considering the Pi chip was never intended to replay h265, this is on both a Pi2 and Pi3.
I've tested both 720p and 1080p; 720p looks to be almost perfect now, 1080p some times stutters and the sound can get out of sync with the video, but a lot of 1080p will play fine.
Well done to everyone involved Milhouse, Popcornmix et al....
I hope you do manage to get near perfect replay of all h265 content up to 1080p.
Regards, Kevin.

Nice
You did install the armv7 version right ? It has significant performance improvements in HEVC over the armv6 version.

I just compile different versions of Kodi, all the credit for the HEVC optimizations goes to Popcornmix and Co. I don't think i can improve it much more, besides reported bug fixes, at least without changing another packages/libraries allready present in Raspbian, which I don't do and don't want to do, because of stability/compatibility. So further performance improvements will come from further Kodi developing and new HEVC optimizations.

Regards,
Diogo

Hi Diogo,
Yes I included the path 'http://pipplware.pplware.pt/pipplware/d ... mv7/binary /' in my '/etc/apt/sources.list' file as well as 'http://pipplware.pplware.pt/pipplware/d ... ain/binary /' so hopefully I am running ARM7, I suspect if I wasn't I wouldn't be able to play any h265 (HEVC) files at all.
One thing I have now discovered is the main reason for stuttering and sound problems on 1080p and probably 720p HEVC as well if I had any, is if the file you are trying to play is full rate, ie fill 50Hz or 60Hz rather than the more standard half rate 24/25Hz or 30Hz.
So it seems to me that as long as 1080p HEVC files are encoded half rate, they almost entirely play well, almost no dropped frames, I'm sure there are exceptions and hopefully more improvements will be comming along, because all 4 CPUs are being worked hard, not leaving much spare capacity, but so far it's looking good.
Thanks again, to Popcornmix, Milhouse, et al, and yourself for providing the binaries to work with Kodi, hopefully you will be able to keep your repositories up to date for the foreseable future.
Regards,
Kevin.

[Rascas]

Hi Diogo,
Yes I included the path 'http://pipplware.pplware.pt/pipplware/d ... mv7/binary /' in my '/etc/apt/sources.list' file as well as 'http://pipplware.pplware.pt/pipplware/d ... ain/binary /' so hopefully I am running ARM7, I suspect if I wasn't I wouldn't be able to play any h265 (HEVC) files at all.
One thing I have now discovered is the main reason for stuttering and sound problems on 1080p and probably 720p HEVC as well if I had any, is if the file you are trying to play is full rate, ie fill 50Hz or 60Hz rather than the more standard half rate 24/25Hz or 30Hz.
So it seems to me that as long as 1080p HEVC files are encoded half rate, they almost entirely play well, almost no dropped frames, I'm sure there are exceptions and hopefully more improvements will be comming along, because all 4 CPUs are being worked hard, not leaving much spare capacity, but so far it's looking good.
Thanks again, to Popcornmix, Milhouse, et al, and yourself for providing the binaries to work with Kodi, hopefully you will be able to keep your repositories up to date for the foreseable future.
Regards,
Kevin.

Yes, thats it. 50 and 60Hz HEVC videos will not play well, that is a know "issue" on the RPi. 24,25 and 30HZ are much more likely to play well. It depends also on the bitrate of the file and other thing I think it depends a lot is the options that were used to encode the video. This is harder to see because some files don't have the options used in the metadata. For example, on the Pi 3, I have one 1080p HEVC 24Hz at 10Mbits sample that plays fine (with overclock), other 1080p HEVC 24Hz at 2Mbits, drops frames. It depends.