[Tripper]

Hi there. First post here.

Just recently installed the great looking AppTV onto a Raspberry Pi 3. Once installed, I rebooted and all I'm getting is a blank screen. Cant figure out what went wrong.

Log file here; https://pastebin.com/Qh5p1fKY


Any Ideas?

[nickr]

I suspect you need to allocate more ram to the gpu. Try 256M

[Tripper]

Thanks for the hint but no go. Tried 256 and 512 as well and still having the same issue.

[wyrm]

Hi there. First post here.

Just recently installed the great looking AppTV onto a Raspberry Pi 3. Once installed, I rebooted and all I'm getting is a blank screen. Cant figure out what went wrong.

Log file here; https://pastebin.com/Qh5p1fKY


Any Ideas?

Tripper,

First post here and you included a log file, very well done. Unfortunately the log file is NOT a full debug log, so some details that might be useful are missing. See my sig below for details on posting a debug log file.

Now, just from the quick look at the log file you did provide, there are a number of errors that seem to give a hint on what might be the issue. There are a number of SMB errors, so it might be an network issue. Are you using a Windows 10 system with the Creators update installed? If you are currently using SMB version 1 you should try moving over to SMB2 or 3.

The other possibility is that the addons db of Kodi has become corrupted as I keep seeing error messages about not being able to load skin settings. Kodi will regenerate a new file if you rename the old file that from memory is located in ../userdata/databases, you could give that a try.

Other than that please post a link to a Full debug log and we might have better luck suggesting where the problem lies. For one, the debug log will tell me what version of the skin you are trying to use and if there was any problems with the loading of the skin files.

Please post back here if you manage to resolve the issue and provide the solution that worked for you as I have had users asking the same question but not providing debug logs when asked. As they never post back if they resolved things I have no idea what seems to be causing the issue.

BTW, doubt it is a memory issue as the memory allocation you have matches what I have on my Pi and there are no problems here. The skin is very light on system resources so unless you have ALL of the bling turned on and are running at 4K I don't think that would be your problem.

Wyrm (AppTV)

[Tripper]

Hi wyrm. Thank you for the reply. Great looking skin you got there!

Ok tried renaming the addons db as you suggested and the Pi was able to launch back into the default skin (not AppTV). Checked the addons and AppTV was shown but disabled. Tried reenabling it and screen went black again. Rebooted.
Pi booted back up into AppTV but it was laggy as heck.. Left it for a bit, no improvement. Tried rebooting again and it went back to a blank screen. To be clear, the Pi boots up but once I'm into Kodi, all I get is a black screen.

My setup, Pi connected to an Asus RT-87U running merlin firmware. My video files are on a hard drive connected directly to the router via USB3, shared via SMB2. The Pi is booting up via berryboot. I'm running openelec 8.0.4, apptv 1.5.5.

Before installing AppTV, the default skin worked fine. Videos etc all played with no issues.

You mentioned posting a debug log. That log I posted was generated using those instructions linked in your signature. The log that was generated was a ZIP file which contained 10 logs, only 1 was named 'Kodi.log' and that was the log I posted as the instructions indicated. I suppose I missed something?

Thank you for your help.

[wyrm]

Hi wyrm. Thank you for the reply. Great looking skin you got there!

Ok tried renaming the addons db as you suggested and the Pi was able to launch back into the default skin (not AppTV). Checked the addons and AppTV was shown but disabled. Tried reenabling it and screen went black again. Rebooted.
Pi booted back up into AppTV but it was laggy as heck.. Left it for a bit, no improvement. Tried rebooting again and it went back to a blank screen. To be clear, the Pi boots up but once I'm into Kodi, all I get is a black screen.

My setup, Pi connected to an Asus RT-87U running merlin firmware. My video files are on a hard drive connected directly to the router via USB3, shared via SMB2. The Pi is booting up via berryboot.

Before installing AppTV, the default skin worked fine. Videos etc all played with no issues.

You mentioned posting a debug log. That log I posted was generated using those instructions linked in your signature. The log that was generated was a ZIP file which contained 10 logs, only 1 was named 'Kodi.log' and that was the log I posted as the instructions indicated. I suppose I missed something?

Thank you for your help.

Tripper,

Did you add the loglevel 1 to your advanced settings file? (Instructions at the link shown in my sig bellow) Also don't understand why there were multiple log files uploaded like that as they all looked to be similar if not exactly the same. It sounds like the skin files have possibly become corrupted, but that is just a guess on my part.

Try this suggestion and see how you get on. From the default skin, uninstall AppTV then in the addondata directory either rename or delete the AppTV directory. Now reinstall the skin from the main repo (should be version 1.5.5). If you are still having problems, please post another log file and I will take a much closer look to see if I can't pinpoint the problem.

BTW, how exactly are you rebooting your Pi? Yanking the power cord while sometimes is unavoidable, generally it is a bad idea. 17.3 for one will not save your skin settings until you perform a clean power down (this is meant to be fixed in 17.4).

Wyrm (AppTV)

[Tripper]

Hi Wyrm.

I followed the instructions about the log file which said to use loglevel 2. I edited the advance settings file to use loglevel 1 as you suggested. Still get a ZIP file with 10 different log files, named accordingly;

01_KODI.log
02_System.log
03_Hardware.log
04_Audio.log
05_Network.log
06_varlog.log
07_input.log
08_Filesystem.log
09_Journal-cur.log
10_journal-prev.log

I've posted the new KODI.log file here; https://pastebin.com/WPjERdAi

I tried what you suggested. Renamed addons DB to get back to the default skin. Went to uninstall AppTV but the uninstall option was greyed out. Proceeded to delete the AppTV directory from the addon directory. Rebooted. Got back to the default skin and reinstalled AppTV. Skin changed. Seemed fine. Hit the power menu which dimmed the screen. Rebooted. Back to booting up to a black screen.

Can only reboot via yanking out the power cord when the screen is blank. As a side note, I did actually get a switch which I hoped to use as a power button via the GPIO but was not able to proceed as I couldn't figure out how to make it work in openelec (all the power switch guides online do not use openelec).

[wyrm]

Hi Wyrm.

I followed the instructions about the log file which said to use loglevel 2. I edited the advance settings file to use loglevel 1 as you suggested. Still get a ZIP file with 10 different log files, named accordingly;

ok, thanks for the repost of log file. Loglevel 2 would be fine, just that it shows debug details in the top corner of the screen. Level 1 is still a Full debug log just without the screen details. Having had another look at the file(s) you posted, I have spotted why we are not seeing a debug log. The advancedsettings.xml file is not being loaded due to an error on the first line of the file. Remove this line as it is not required and is probably confusing things.

PHP Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

The other thing is that maybe you are editing the wrong file as the log shows this as the contents of the file

PHP Code:

02:21:57.507 T:1946431504  NOTICE: Contents of special://xbmc/system/advancedsettings.xml are...
                                            <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
                                            <advancedsettings>
                                              <showexitbutton>false</showexitbutton>
                                              <remotedelay>1</remotedelay>
                                              <fanartres>720</fanartres>
                                              <imageres>540</imageres>
                                              <samba>
                                                <clienttimeout>30</clienttimeout>
                                              </samba>
                                            </advancedsettings>
02:21:57.509 T:1946431504   ERROR: Error loading special://profile/advancedsettings.xml, Line 0
                                            Failed to open file 


So there would not appear to be any

PHP Code:

<loglevel hide="false">1</loglevel> 


line in the file that it is trying to load. Check that you are editing the correct file (special://masterprofile/ is mapped to: /storage/.kodi/userdata) and make sure to remove the first line.

I tried what you suggested. Renamed addons DB to get back to the default skin. Went to uninstall AppTV but the uninstall option was greyed out. Proceeded to delete the AppTV directory from the addon directory. Rebooted. Got back to the default skin and reinstalled AppTV. Skin changed. Seemed fine. Hit the power menu which dimmed the screen. Rebooted. Back to booting up to a black screen.

Can only reboot via yanking out the power cord when the screen is blank. As a side note, I did actually get a switch which I hoped to use as a power button via the GPIO but was not able to proceed as I couldn't figure out how to make it work in openelec (all the power switch guides online do not use openelec).

Note on the yanking of power cord comment, I realise that sometime you have to (I have had to on a few occasions myself), just not a great idea. Now for the record I am using Libreelec loaded via a Noobs install and don't see any problems. What distribution are you using and are you overclocking or running non standard software? Just asking as I'm trying to figure out what is causing the difference in behaviour I am seeing.

See if you can track down why your advancedsettings file is not loading the debug level tag and have another try on the log file please. Hang in there, will eventually pin down what is going on.

Wyrm (AppTV)

[Tripper]

Interestingly, I noticed that in the log as well, i.e., that there was an advancesettings file that was different from what I had written. Basically, I had to write a new advance settings file as there was no such file in any directory from what I could find. I placed my new advancesettings file into the /storage/.kodi/userdata folder. The file I wrote had these lines;

PHP Code:

<advancedsettings>
    <loglevel>1</loglevel> <!-- Change this to "1" to hide the on-screen debug log text -->
</advancedsettings> 


Thats all. Line one with that error does not exist in my file. Looks like there is another advancesettings file that I cannot seem to find. I'm wondering, could this be because I'm booting up from berryboot? As I understand it, berryboot uses an image file, so perhaps I can't actually access the advancesettings file as it is on the image thats being booted up? Or am I just too dense to find the file?

To clarify, once booted up, there is no advancesettings file that I can see or access. I ssh into the Pi and no such file existed in /storage/.kodi/userdata (or anywhere else for that matter) until I wrote one. When I pull the SD card from the Pi (after turning it off ) and access it on my Mac, again, there is no such file I can find other then the advancesettings file I wrote and placed there. And the file I wrote does not have that first line you mentioned. Weird.

I'm perfectly fine to wipe the SD card and do a fresh install and see whats what. I'm extremely grateful and appreciate your hep with trying to figure this out (I'm thinking its just user error on my part as always) so am happy to try anything you suggest if its not taking up too much of your valuable time.

[Tripper]

Update. Decided to do a clean install and see how it goes from there. This will take sometime. Will update in here with results.

[nickr]

Try using libreelec instead while you are about it.

[Tripper]

Try using libreelec instead while you are about it.

Been Googling info about the differences and all I could mostly find was a consensus to ' try both and see which one one prefers'. Can't seem to find anything definitive with regards to differences other then differing 'visions'. Just what those visions are, I have no idea.

Anyways, gonna mess around with openelec for a bit before trying libreelec and see what the differences are.

Fun times.

[nickr]

The reason is that openelec is all but dead, but suit yourself.