Artic Zephyr From Ashes skin, sadface on reboot

Help and Support Raspberry Pi
10

[quote=“sam_nazarko, post:9, topic:17042, full:true”]

I’d strongly recommend you start doing so. The user base is massive, and after Windows and Android, I believe it is the most popular Kodi platform. You describe this problem to be present in OpenELEC, LibreELEC and OSMC, which is almost the entirety of the Kodi userbase on this device. [/quote]

Indeed, with the uptick of people using Raspberry Pis I signed off on several variations of the Raspberry Pi’s to be bulk ordered (in particular, the Zeros are perfect little controller boards for something we’re working on in the datacenter but naturally the 3s as well). I also personally ordered a Raspberry Pi 3 which will of course arrive before any bulk orders with a preload of OSMC.

[quote=“sam_nazarko, post:9, topic:17042, full:true”]

I haven’t seen any reports of a kernel panic. If there is a kernel panic, you should see a full stack trace on screen. We would need a photo of this, and then debugging the problem would be a lot easier. Are you sure you mean a kernel panic? I think you may just be referring to the ‘sad face’ screen, which means that Kodi could not start properly. It does not mean the kernel has panicked however.

If the system kernel panics, then it will not be possible to retrieve logs in the same session (they would need to restart), as their system would have completely crashed. They would also not be able to log in to get logs, as the skin would try and load each time their device booted.

A segfault does not necessarily indicate a kernel panic. [/quote]

Reports initially started out as the “sad face screen” which, as you indicated, just simply means Kodi could not start but apparently the only way to break the boot loop cycle was and is to do something as drastic as a reload of OSMC while others have reported some success in gaining access to the system via SSH and resetting Kodi's theme to Confluence. Others have of course simply connected the card to a computer and mounted it as rw to pull the logs and and revert Kodi back to Confluence.

Someone provided a system log file of what happens when From Ashes is ran as the default skin with all conditions for the kernel to panic met:

Program terminated with signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
#0  0x0098d3a0 in CWinEventsLinux::MessagePump() ()
[Current thread is 1 (Thread 0x7502b000 (LWP 623))
....
Thread 1 (Thread 0x7502b000 (LWP 623)):
#0  0x0098d3a0 in CWinEventsLinux::MessagePump() ()
#1  0x76fa2fb4 in ?? () from /lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3
Backtrace stopped: previous frame identical to this frame (corrupt stack?)]

Naturally, I will ask for further logs and a Raspberry Pi 3 with OSMC is on the way so I can see for myself as well. My area of expertise when it comes to Linux is in enterprise linux operating systems such as RHEL / CentOS / CloudLinux and other various derivatives and not non-enterprise variants like Ubuntu and Debian although a case could be argued for both distributions meeting the qualifications of the enterprise.

[quote=“sam_nazarko, post:9, topic:17042, full:true”]

  • Was it running the same version of Kodi (16.x)?
  • Does the version includuing @popcornmix’s backports tree?
  • When was this version compiled?

Your skin certainly depends on a large number of add-ons. I suspect you have inherited a lot of these dependencies, but it means that one of the add-ons that are depended on may be the cause of the issue, instead of the skin itself. [/quote]

I am uncertain as to whether or not the users who tried Raspbian ever used @popcornmmix’s backbports tree or not but there has been confirmation that Raspbian with Kodi 16.1 and Kodi 17 Alpha work fine. Do note that the Kodi 17 Alpha version of this skin is missing DialogConfirm.xml and users have simply “hacked that in there” until the June 18th update. It was the only missing piece for the “From Ashes (Danvers Preview)” to run on Kodi 17 Krypton.

I will ask for further details about the Raspbian setups but from my understanding it’s the latest stable version available.

As to the large number of addons required (I completely agree with you; it can take low power systems up to 2 minutes to install From Ashes depending on load and internet connection), 8 are required by de facto as the base Arctic Zephyr skin requires them. The other 11 are required for the enhanced features of Arctic Zephyr: From Ashes including its integration with Emby. With the Summer 2016 Update, this number will become 12 (“Script.Duration” was mistakenly dropped from the requirements). Of that, only one was added after “Arctic Zephyr: Exploded” became “Arctic Zephyr: From Ashes:”

Every other change which has been made since From Ashes’ release last year has been in the confines of Kodi itself such as Autocompletion Keyboard or using enhancements to the Skin Helper Service which is used by virtually every skin to provide additional functionality.

To me, this would also suggest the possibility that there is an incompatibility between one or more components of the skin and OSMC once you take into account all factoring criteria such as but not limited to what other platforms if any does this issue occur on. The only answers are LibreELEC and OpenELEC. However, as stated, that’s not the only criteria.

We identified OSMC as being the most popular after Windows, OS X, and Linux (all distros), so we, as stated, are willing to work with you all to find an appropriate resolution. I personally should have a Pi in my hands in a few days as I bought one for myself separate from the bulk orders.

In the interim, we’re dependent on user reports and logs nor is there any way for us to realtime change aspects of the environment like we can in Windows, OS X, and Linux. We’re fairly certain what users are reporting, based on the description and logs, are in fact a kernel panic but until we see it for ourselves there is no way to be 100% certain.

As always, we will continue watching this thread and will post updates in responses or after we have at least one rPi 3 for testing and can report in further detail.