Need Kelp With Kodi (Buntu)/xbmc

the '#' is a comment for bash. also, you wouldn't include the dollar signs, i just put them in there to show what the prompt would look like, it wasn't an actual shell script. dont type the comment lines at the terminal

i put the code for the lcd pixel scrubber in a pastbin:
http://pastebin.com/6TihSzzB

copy and paste the code into a text editor and save it as lcdscrub.c in your home directory
here's the steps to build:

#you should have gcc, but just in case:
sudo apt-get install gcc binutils

#sdl library
sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev

#then compile lcdscrub.c
gcc lcdscrub.c `sdl-config --cflags --libs` -lSDL -o lcdscrub

# then you can run the program at the shell
./lcdscrub

i don't know if it will work for you or not, i always leave my monitor on with a text editor open. i haven't noticed any difference after running this all night once, but then again my screen was okay to begin with.

oh yeah, btw ... when the program runs you have to press 'q' or 'ESC' to make it quit. try running it overnight, make sure you don't have any power settings enabled that will turn off your monitor after inactivity because the longer it runs the better chances of fixing the screen. the burn in on LCDs is supposedly not permanent like a CRT, so doing this helps the liquid crystals "untwist".

edit: if you notice page tearing during the scrubbing, it's probably because its not using double buffering, i made it that way for compatibility. it's easy to change though. it shouldn't have anything to do with the effectiveness though.

 

Were you able to get Kodi working or did the wifi/networking issue prevent you from going any further with Kodi once it was installed?

Kodi + Genesis add-on is priceless for watching movies, tv, worldwide events like soccer, etc.. I think the easiest/most effective thing to do in your case would be to use a dedicated device such as a raspberry pi to run your Kodi/XBMC. Get the Raspbmc operating system image installed and make sure you buy one of those wifi usb doggles for like $15 on Amazon, and you'll be set. The whole setup should be around $60-$70 total at most

 

I got it working actually with the exception of my video card's configuration. I have a Broadcom wifi adapter which isn't natively supported by most Ubuntu distributions. Ran across an Xterminal command that installs the drivers for it. As for my ATI/AMD video card, the open source drivers worked, but when I plugged in an HDMI cord, the screen resolution on my laptop and HDTV goes all wonky. I think it's an underscan issue. Found a command to combat that, but since the open source drivers only install to a certain degree in Kodi (I think because of the strange filesystem it uses. It's got a root system, which is '/' and a /Home system.) Flgxr, which are the open source AMD video card drivers end up installing to a strange directory and I'm unable to run configuration for my video card, thus preventing me from using HDMI setup. And with my laptop screen having a dead spot on the bottom, it's just not worth the trouble.

It sucks cuz I have a remote that's linked to my laptop (fits right inside on top of my card reader) and 'it's' compatible with xbmc! I thought that was pretty neat, but without being able to hook up to my TV, it's just not worth it. I might try installing Ubuntu itself later on and seeing if I can get my video working that way. Kodi runs on Lubuntu, which might be why I'm having so much trouble creating an Xorg.conf file and figuring out where it goes in order for it to register with ATIconfig. Buuut, I'm just sticking with Windows for now. That's too much playin!!!

How much is a Raspberry Pi anyways? For a while now, I've actually been thinking about buying an Android TV stick. Those things look NEAT! Can't remember all the names and specs on them now, haven't checked on their status in a while, but there's a ton of em out there. I was also waiting for the new Android OS/processor/thing to be released too.

Last I checked, these were the top models, in order (kind of?):

DIAOTEC CX-919 (Might want to research the official manufacturer of the CX-919. I think the original is made by Rockchip? I might be thinking of the Rockchip RK3188 processor?? So much tech LOL)
http://www.amazon.com/DIAOTEC-Cortex-A9-process-UP-1-6-1-8GHZ-Mali-400MP4/dp/B00ECCC85C%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q%26tag%3Dduckduckgo-ffsb-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB00ECCC85C

Measy U4C (Best for gaming and has a camera! OOooo...)
http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/mini-pcs/measy-u4c

Zealz GK802 (This one claims to run Linux/Ubuntu the best. Might want to check Amazon for better prices haha)
http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/mini-pcs/zealz-gk802-android-mini-pc


The Mali-450 is the new Android system I'm waiting on. What it can do looks amazing! But, as with anything tech that's new to the market, everything has it's bugs.

ARM Mali-450 4K Demo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gg-z85b-fo

There are 2 other Mali processors available or nearing release now, I believe. Not sure if the 450 has been released or not yet. I haven't researched this stuff in about a year or so.

 

The reason I recommended the Pi is because it's only like $35. Kodi (formerly known as XBMC) runs on many versions of linux not just Lubuntu. With the Raspberry Pi you need to install your own linux operating system. They recommend several OSes on the official Pi website. There used to be an OS image called Raspbmc on that page, but that OS has now become https://osmc.tv/download/

If you use this OS image on your raspberry pi, it will come preinstalled with Kodi. Kodi starts automatically when the raspberry pi starts, so you literally just need the remote/keyboard to find what to watch. All you need to do to watch/stream most movies for free is get Genesis Add-on for Kodi (which is just a matter of downloading the zip file, and transferring it to the SD card on the raspberry pi and importing it from within Kodi)

 

Unfortunately this bug still exists, i've seen it before myself and yeah, its fuckin annoying. I think it's a bug in the AMD driver, but i'm not sure, it could be a bug in Xorg, or possibly both, or maybe even a different issue completely. I'm not sure, i never did get to the bottom of it, for some reason it only rears it's head every once in a while, but changing video modes while using HDMI seems to make it surface and then it gets stuck in a "bad" video mode and the graphics become garbled and you can't see anything very well until you switch to a different tty.

sometimes, you even actually have to reboot ... fuck rebooting, i leave my machine on for months and will go to extreme lengths to avoid it.

that's a little bit i found about it. i'll link to where i found this also.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fglrx-installer/+bug/376741

oh yea, you should probably back ur shit up before doing anything to the video/display system ...

edit: i haven't actually tried the above, and that was from 2009, but it looks like its probably the same bug that just won't die. usually unplugging the HDMI and/or running something that forces the graphics card into a different video mode straightens it up. it almost seems like different parts of the display system hierarchy aren't in agreement about the video mode, like X is writing to the framebuffer thinking the card is in a different video mode than it really is. i probably don't know what im talking about though. i've had code that changed the display mode and then crashed and burned, and didn't exit cleanly, leaving the display corrupted until you manually changed the video mode back to what it was supposed to be ... the effects were similar.

 

Craaaaap... so most likely Ubuntu will have most of the same problems as Lubuntu did. Well, hopefully I might get lucky, just purge install and go. One can hope at least lol.

 

which driver exactly are you using? the one from the repositories or did you get it from the AMD/ATI site?

also, paste the output (if any) of this command:

modinfo $(lsmod | egrep '[^$]?fglrx' | egrep -o '^[a-zA-Z0-9\_]+') | grep -v '^alias'

this will tell you about any kernel mods installed from fglrx .. i know, it looks kinda intimidating, it's not really though, just a way to do several things in one command that individually aren't very complex at all.

 

First I used the drivers from the repos in Synaptic Install Manager. (I suppose they're the same when installing via command line) Then I 'attempted' installing the official AMD drivers. I think I installed them successfully, but got the same result as with the repo drivers. Unpacked to 3.deb files and installed those or something along those lines. Had some trouble at first, because I tried to unpack in --Ubuntu/trusty mode, which for some reason, Kodibuntu runs on Lubuntu, but while installing it says it's built on Ubuntu 14.04.1. Which I assume is a "Trusty" build. Even after the error trying to unpack in trusty format, when I removed the unpacking-format command it still unpacked in Trusty format! After all those errors haha thought that was strange.

 

if you want to verify your release codename (trusty, utopic, etc ...) run :

lsb_release -c

on my machine i get these results:

ace@mrheater:~$ lsb_release -c
Codename: utopic
i'm not sure exactly what all you have done so far, but you should undo what you did and start from a fresh state like it was before you started. in any case you should purge whatever fglrx packages you might have installed.

sudo apt-get purge fglrx*
sudo apt-get update

Code:

#if you tried installing the proprietary driver before then do
sudo sh amd-driver-installer-x86.x86_64.run --uninstall 
 
#or (try this one first)
sudo sh /usr/share/ati/amd-uninstall.sh

make sure /etc/X11/xorg.conf was restored, if it wasn't then copy the backup file (should be there) over.

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Linux+x86

^ go there and get the latest stable driver, this is what AMD has and it supports everything that they support. download the file, untar, or unzip or whatever. cd into the directory fglrx-* and you should see several .deb files, a check.sh shell script, and a .run file .. this is the installer. running the check.sh script tells you information about your architecture but you don't really need to run it.

they also have a beta driver for linux, you can get it at the AMD site by choosing "latest linux beta driver" from their menu, i use the stable one i linked to, but i've used both before. there shouldn't be much difference, but if you have problems with one for some reason you can try the other version.

run the .run file using the command:

sudo ./*run

choose "install AMD drivers" or similar option (can't remember exactly what it says), and not "generate distro specific package" and the next choice you have will be between automatic and custom. just choose automatic and let the script/prog work.

if at any point this fails you need to look at the log file to find out what the errors are. it will probably fail because of some unmet dependencies, and you have to resolve these first.


cat /usr/share/ati/*install*.log

^in this file it will tell you about all the packages that you should have had, but don't so you will have to apt-get install them from the repositories.

after you install those, rerun the .run file in the directory that you unzipped the drivers to, and it should complete without errors this time. if it tells you that you need to reboot, then do it. you should now have the driver installed, and can configure your displays with the catalyst control center by running amdcccle, or clicking it from the lxmenu.

if it doesn't work if you do it exactly like this, then it's probably because of something you previously did before you started this.