machybris / mackodi: KODI for LINUX on RK3368

[MAC_L1]

machybris / mackodi V0.1.2: KODI Isengard 15.2 and SPMC Isengard 15.0 for LINUX also on RK3368
(testrelease: i only tested this on geekbox.tv, and not on any other RK3368 devices; it should also run on RK3288, RK3188 and RK312X devices)

HOW-TO-INSTALL
1. Open a terminal/shell on your linux device and type:

sudo apt-get install curl
curl -O http://mac-l1.com/install_mackodi.sh
bash install_mackodi.sh
sudo reboot

2. After reboot, run kodi (using menu or terminal) and change the audio settings (don't forget!):
system->settings->system->audio output->audio ouput devices and then select the dmixer
3. Restart kodi

It runs very well on my geekbox.tv device. However I havent tested on any other RK3368 devices, so you are very welcome to check it out! Would be great if it runs on other RK336888 devices too!

Have fun!

And if you like my work: please get me a faster computer by giving a small donation; it will benefit my impatience during compilation/building, my nails and future releases; any donation is welcome!

Donate..

Cheers -- mac-l1

PS: TNX! to geekbox.tv (Gouwa and Eric) for sponsoring me!

[lonix]

Nice, does this mean that openelec may be possible in the future?

[MAC_L1]

Nice, does this mean that openelec may be possible in the future?

Probably not.
What I do know is that openelec is based on kernel 4.x; so for rk-devices this should be done on latest mainline kernel effort; dont know what the current status is for that.
I also wonder if libhybris runs on that 4.x kernel; as libhybris just makes parts of android run on linux basically this means that android should also be able to run on kernel 4.x; might be trouble.
However, I just saw OE runs on WeTek_Play (ARM/Mali device running Android), so you never know...

It would at least be quite a challenge, so basically it depends on some people willing to put some serious effort into this...

[Zahir]

I greatly admire your work. Well done. I'd like to try this on my ZIdoo X6 Pro - but first I need a working image of Ubuntu that runs on the RK3368 boxes. Is there such a thing?

[MAC_L1]

i use an image for the RK3388 geekbox device, see:

http://forum.geekbox.tv/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3122

http://www.geekbox.tv/#support

however i dont know if geekbox images also work on zidoo devices...

you can also look at:

http://forum.geekbox.tv/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=174

to make ubuntu releases yourself...

[Zahir]

Great! Thanks for flagging, I'll give it a spin. I imagine I'll lose a few functions - IR remote and maybe a usb port or two. Hopefully, wifi will work. Will share my experience.

[mo123]

I updated some Lubuntu packages and now 'dmixer' sound is missing in Linux mackodi.
How to get it back?
I tried removing all of mackodi, machybris, Kodi folders and tried reinstalling as in the OP, but still I only get Pulseaudio sound that is not working like other users.

Also is there a way to minimize Kodi or not yet?

I also have a problem where Lubuntu will just freeze after exiting mackodi but only happens 50% of the time.

Any new updates?

Thanks

[RISCy Dude]

I don't have this box.
Does Ctrl+Alt+D minimize all? Does Alt+Tab switch windows?
I have seen some instances where Kodi takes a long time to back out(Across different devices), seems to depend on the type of content just played. I don't know if that has any similarity to your close/freeze issue.

[mo123]

I don't have this box.
Does Ctrl+Alt+D minimize all? Does Alt+Tab switch windows?
I have seen some instances where Kodi takes a long time to back out(Across different devices), seems to depend on the type of content just played. I don't know if that has any similarity to your close/freeze issue.

I will try Ctrl+Alt+D but don't think it will work.
'/' and Alt-Tab doesn't work, maybe because it switches to Android drivers to run Kodi on Linux and then switches back to Linux?
It might have something to do with Kodi trying to switch resolution again after exiting Kodi on Linux and it then get's stuck but in Kodi it shows 1080p 60hz resolution, the same as in Lubuntu.
So not sure why it tries to switch resolutions, don't know if this is also because of Libhybris(Android drivers) and is how it works to switch between Android/Linux drivers and screen needs to be refreshed?

[MAC_L1]

I updated some Lubuntu packages and now 'dmixer' sound is missing in Linux mackodi.
How to get it back?
I tried removing all of mackodi, machybris, Kodi folders and tried reinstalling as in the OP, but still I only get Pulseaudio sound that is not working like other users.

Also is there a way to minimize Kodi or not yet?

I also have a problem where Lubuntu will just freeze after exiting mackodi but only happens 50% of the time.

Any new updates?

Thanks

about pulseaudio: my first thought is that pulseaudio is messing things up. kodi looks first for pulseaudio devices (pulseaudio runs on top of alsa) and if no pulseaudio found then kodi tries alsa. as pulseaudio is installed and running (but giving no sound), direct alsa sound is not possible. hence no sound.

so wonder what happens if pulseaudio is deinstalled (or possibly temporarily disabled)? maybe you can try "sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio", reboot and reinstall mackodi again

best option would of course be that someone makes a decent configuration for pulseaudio, like radxa did for rabian/rock2; then also spdif would work too

minimzing kodi is not possible in mackodi (yet) - only full screen. indeed, with libhybris android EGL is used to display GLES rendering the screen, and this EGL is always working fullscreen; minimizing kodi for resizable X11 windows needs X11 GPU support that I have not seen working yet for rk3368 devices - should come from . i managed to let libhybris android EGL/GLES applications at least coexist with X11 (the latter is still running in the background off-screen). Right now I excluded all X11 code in building mackodi.

about the freeze: strange... wonder if it really is a freeze or that the screen is black/ not responding (meaning the switch back from X11 off-screen to on-screen is not working)... so is it possible to remotely ssh into the machine for instance or some other form of triggering activity remotely? maybe also a kodi log could help here... (/root/.kodi/temp/kodi.log)

any new updates? i tried upgrading to jarvis however it crashes after a few secs... so not yet..

[mo123]

about pulseaudio: my first thought is that pulseaudio is messing things up. kodi looks first for pulseaudio devices (pulseaudio runs on top of alsa) and if no pulseaudio found then kodi tries alsa. as pulseaudio is installed and running (but giving no sound), direct alsa sound is not possible. hence no sound.

so wonder what happens if pulseaudio is deinstalled (or possibly temporarily disabled)? maybe you can try "sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio", reboot and reinstall mackodi again

best option would of course be that someone makes a decent configuration for pulseaudio, like radxa did for rabian/rock2; then also spdif would work too

minimzing kodi is not possible in mackodi (yet) - only full screen. indeed, with libhybris android EGL is used to display GLES rendering the screen, and this EGL is always working fullscreen; minimizing kodi for resizable X11 windows needs X11 GPU support that I have not seen working yet for rk3368 devices - should come from . i managed to let libhybris android EGL/GLES applications at least coexist with X11 (the latter is still running in the background off-screen). Right now I excluded all X11 code in building mackodi.

about the freeze: strange... wonder if it really is a freeze or that the screen is black/ not responding (meaning the switch back from X11 off-screen to on-screen is not working)... so is it possible to remotely ssh into the machine for instance or some other form of triggering activity remotely? maybe also a kodi log could help here... (/root/.kodi/temp/kodi.log)

any new updates? i tried upgrading to jarvis however it crashes after a few secs... so not yet..

I finally fixed my audio problem

I removed pulseaudio and pulseaudio-utils and also purged pulseaudio and restarted.
Previously I didn't purge pulseaudio or restarted.
Now sound is back.
Somehow when I updated Lubuntu, Lubuntu's pulseaudio overwrite my sound settings.
But the audio settings look very different in Kodi now.
Previously there was pulseaudio, dummy pulseaudio and dmixer.
Now there is RK_RK1000 Analog, RK_RK1000 dsp0 & RK_RK1000(dmixer)
I choose the last one and it works.

I'm not sure if X11 drivers will be made for RK3368 as Imagination Technologies has no previous Linux support.
Hope you will be able to use X11 drivers for Mali released by ARM, will that only accelerate graphics operations and not video?
There are also 2 github accounts where Rockchip and users posted VPU Linux video acceleration code.
I hope that can be used in the future directly on Linux for better compatibility instead of Android drivers on RK3288 devices.

Thanks for all your hard work.