I’ve been running OSMC on the first edition Vero for just over a year, but for the past couple of weeks, it’s refused to boot reliably, with various behaviors:
On-screen boot log reporting “dependency failed for local filesystem”
Getting to the home screen, but dimming & being completely unresponsive
Alternating between black screen & snow-crash type screen
I’ve used the OSMC installer to install to a new SD card, and have retrieved the files (settings files, scripts, audio) from the ‘old’ SD card, but I’d really like to retrieve the library or database from the old install (before trying a fresh install on the same SD card for curiosity). Read access to the ‘old’ filesystem isn’t an issue, but since I can’t get into OSMC itself, and the ‘new’ install won’t allow me to simply copy the database files over the initial DB, can anyone please advise whether there’s another way to initialise the new DB from the old install?
First I assume you have a standard OSMC install and not a shared MYSQL setup.
The main question is when was the last time you had updated your old installation? The reason for that question is that there was a change to the database version.
Assuming that your old install was at least updated in April you simply could copy your complete /home/osmc/.kodi folder over to your new install and all your settings and databases are restored.
Just before copying the files over stop the media centre with
sudo systemctl stop mediacenter
And afterwards start it with
sudo systemctl start mediacenter
But copying the whole folder only makes sense if not any addons where the reason for your issue.
Sorry slow reply when @fzinken was so kind to rapidly respond with advice: takes a while to try suggestions I’m afraid, but do appreciate them.
Guess just copying the DB folder in place isn’t enough? Without knowing the cause of the original issue, I’m loathe to try overwriting the entire install (though there’s nothing of value there, I’m appreciating having a reliable unit again!), but just copying the DB folder & restarting mediacentre service doesn’t seem to have refreshed the DB. If I rebuild it from scratch, I’ll have to get in the habit of exporting the library to XML & backing it up. Remembered that I have a backup of the old kodi install on a server, so have dual access to the old files, but still feel like I need to run them somewhere in order to get meaningful access to the database.