OpenELEC Build

mk_munich

Hi,

I try to compile OpenELEC in a VirtualBox, where Ubuntu Xenial 16.04 is installed. I got so far, that the sources are copied from git and now I started the compilation to build an image for my opipc with:
        PROJECT=H3 SYSTEM=opipc ARCH=arm make image

'make' is starting and issuing an error message after a short while:
....
Resolving deltas: 100% (2078/2078), done.
Checking connectivity... done.
scripts/get: line 127: xz: command not found
Makefile:12: rule for target „image“ failed
make: *** [image] Error 127


Indeed the get script line 127 is looking strange:
xz > $ROOT/$SOURCES/$1/${PKG_NAME}-${PKG_VERSION}.tar.xz

Where do I find 'xy' (and perhaps nice to get, what 'xy' is good for) ??

Who is able to give me a hint, what is missing?
Best regards
mk_munich

jernej

It is not xy it is xz. It is a utility for compressing/uncompressing just like zip. You have to install it, but I don't know which package it is in Ubuntu.

mk_munich

Hi jernej,

you are right. I copied 'xz' correct from the log file, but typed 'xy' into my German keyboard. ;-)

I'm using Ubuntu Xenial 16.04, because this is recommended to build armbian. I did not see any recommendations to build OpenELEC, but guessing, it should not matter much. I thought, the tools would be installed by the build script itself? Maybe I'm wrong. In Ubuntu I manually installed:
      apt-get install xz-utils autotools-dev automake autoconf

Now coming a bit further to the next error. Sorry, I'll need your help again. Please have a look at the log file attached.

Best regards
mk_munich

jernej

I don't know what is wrong. Before I was using Kubuntu 15.10 and 16.04, now I'm using Arch and everywhere is working as expected. Build system has nothing in common with Armbian, even compiler is self build here, so you can't compare in that way. Try deleting build folder and start again.

mk_munich

Hi jernej,

missing was:
     apt-get install gettext

Then I needed to get the sources again with:
    git clone -b openelec-7.0 --depth 1 https://github.com/jernejsk/OpenELEC-OPi2
and built the image. It took several hours on my PC. If someone will try it like me, he should set up VirtualBox with a fixed size hard drive of ~50GB from the very beginning ;-)

Do not know, why even tools were build. Luckily they are not rebuild again, when present.

Next step for me is to dig into it and try first (small) changes ;-) What would be a good starting point?
Best Regards
mk_munich

jernej

Depends on what are your expertise. Do you have some GLES knowledge?

mk_munich

oh dear.... ;-) Very important subject (e.g. Unity is using OpenGL ES, which is making it interesting for me, too). Good, that I've time. As far I understand the issue is, that there is still code, which is not under GPL. Perhaps good starting point is to get the current status of OpenGL ES here in OpenELEC. And what are the open tasks in particular. May be, the tasks can be broken down.

jernej

Unfortunately, for this fork it is very little hope to be fully GPL compliant. Some code in kernel is without license or only in blob form, which is a violation and only Allwinner can change that...

Possible improvements:
1. Improve kernel - multiple possibilities:
    - Implement correct passthrough - hard task
    - Improve resolution handling (4:3 resolutions, EDID, automatic selection, etc.) - doable, I'm working on it
    - Find issue why device connected to a USB hub crashes sleep procedure (power button press)
2. Kodi:
    - Write new standalone renderer, which would take care also for unaccelerated formats and taking screenshots. Functionality for screenshots would also help framegrabbers for remote watching.
    - Use Cedrus instead of CedarX (some work was done - vdpau branch, but for some reason rendering was an issue)
    - Implement GLES reinitialization at resolution change in Kodi - this should fix resolution change issue. I tried, but I clearly missed something at initialization
3. System:
    - Fix all ALSA sound outputs to 32 bits per sample in configs - that would remove the need for Kodi patch which is doing exactly that.
    - Create a plugin for WiringOPI, which was requested several times. Probably with Python bindings as there is no GCC on OpenELEC.
    - Fix CEC for some TVs - unfortunately, this is detective work as there is completely no HW documentation. It may be a kernel or libcec issue. Logic analyzer would probably help here.

Those task are from the top of my head.

jernej

Oh, another one - test 4K resolution by changing script.bin.

mk_munich

Hi all,
my own build is working :-) I played with my opipc a lot over the weekend. It is stable. Many thanks to jernej for his help!
I successfully played HD (720) movies from www without having seen any issues. Audio is done via HDMI and working well. I played many YouTube videos. I installed several additional programs also from other sources (e.g. http://srp.nu). I also tried 4k videos (searched for "4k" in YouTube). Even, if the name is suggesting 4k, I've been disappointed, that the real coding of all videos was 1080p.
I tried a 4k video file (e.g. sample-Elysium.2013.2160p.mkv) from my USB stick. First: the USB stick was immediately seen by OpenELEC, great! But the file did not play. It had opened in the video player, but then nothing happened.
May be, that 4k is not yet working at all... But it looked to me, that videos with HEVC codec had been played.

I still have some issues:
1) Using an HDMI to DVI adapter
2) CPU temperature
3) try to use Putty (on Window PC) to connect to OpenELEC
I'll summarize the PM communication with jernej. Again many thanks to him !!!

to 1) Background is, that I would like to use the LCD screen in my workroom rather than my TV in my living room. Unfortunately it is not trivial (may be impossible?) to change the display mode in a running OpenELEC on my opipc. A script h3disp taken from armbian did not work.
to 2) When running OpenELEC on my opiPC connected to my LCD display, the screen remains black and the CPU temperature is getting hotter and hotter. I'm using a heatsink for H3 (+ both RAMs, but they do not even get warm). When temperature reached >70 degrees Celsius, I took power off. When running OpenELEC connected to my TV via HDMI the CPU do not get warmer than ~65 degrees even playing a HD (720) video from the internet.
to 3) When being in the workingroom I'm using the serial console from opipc and Hyperterm on PC side - no problem. When opipc is running in the living room, then I would beed a remote SSH connection e.g. done with Putty on Windows PC. Putty is working well with other small boxes (and I have quiete a few). I activate SSH in kodi, first. I get an error seen in Putty: "expected key exchange group packet from server". I guess, that the exchange of the security key does not work. As Putty is normally working well in my LAN with other devices, I would see the problem more on OpenELEC side.

jernej wrote:
1. I never said that h3disp would work on OpenELEC. Sunxi tools gets compiled only during building for host computer. You should open that script, check what it is doing, install or compile sunxi-tools for host machine and edit script.bin in the same way. Even if sunxi-tools were installed, it wouldn't work, because script.bin is in different place than in Armbian (or better said, Debian).
2. Do you have at least basic heatsink on the SoC? H3 should work well close to 100°C (critical temperature is 125°C). Not that it is normal, but it depends what did you do to the board - no heatsink, put it into the box with poor ventilation (enclosure sold with the board is not very good), high ambient temperature, RSS feeds enabled in home screen -> all, but not limited to, that contributes to high SoC temperature and they quickly add up.
3. I don't know anything about Putty. I'm using only Linux machines at home. Try another SSH program. It may be because OpenELEC uses latest (or close to) packages and it is possible that Putty doesn't support latest ssh encryption algorithms (just speculating)...
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
I'll do some more tests and will answer in the next post.