Steamlink issues with Kodi 19 and bootloader 4.0.0

Help and Support
1

In the past, I have been running Steam Link on my Raspberry Pi, which has been working perfectly. However, in the recent update to Kodi 19, I was told that the Steamlink Launcher add-on was no longer supported. No big deal; I’m happy to launch Steam Link via the command line. However, when I attempted to launch it manually, it failed.

$ steamlink
You have dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d in /boot/config.txt, which will cause a black screen when starting streaming - aborting.
Try commenting out that line and rebooting.

I could see the following line in /boot/config.txt:

dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d,cma-512

but commenting this out resulted in Kodi failing to launch, showing a sad face. I have a backup, and can see the /boot/config.txt parameter was introduced by rbp-bootloader-osmc 3.5.0-1 → 4.0.0-2. I thought I might test reverting to the previous version of this package, but it was missing from /var/cache/apt/archives.

  1. Is there a way to get Steam Link working again, perhaps by tweaking dtoverlay?
  2. If not, is there a way to revert rbp-bootloader-osmc, and where can I get this package from?
2

Kodi v19 includes a number of significant changes, including the move to V4L2/GBM on Raspberry Pi.

See Kodi v19 Matrix is here. Here's what you need to know - OSMC for more information. You should have also received a prompt about this before upgrading.

If you want to continue Steamlink and you can’t use vc4-kms-v3d, then you could consider re-installing a Kodi v18.9 image from Download - OSMC.

3

Thanks @sam_nazarko. I didn’t get the prompt, but that might be because I was upgrading on the CLI.

I do a full backup every evening, so I can easily restore from there, but am I correct in assuming that vc4-kms-v3d is necessary moving forwards? Is this a requirement of Kodi 19, bootloader 4.0.0, or both? I’m just wondering if I should just stop all upgrades or whether I can just pin one package.

4

It’s a requirement of Kodi v19

5

Thanks again @sam_nazarko. I just reverted to my backup and everything is working again. Presumably I should pin the Kodi 18 package so it doesn’t get updated. However, I can see that /boot/config.txt is owned by the rbp-bootloader-osmc package, so should I also pin the older 3.5.0-1 to prevent the new dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d,cma-512 parameter? Or should I update to rbp-bootloader-osmc 4.0.0, and just revert /boot/config.txt manually?

6

If you want to stay on Kodi v18.9, then you cannot really update any other packages and should refrain from updating.

7

Ah bummer. Oh well, I guess I’ll just await a fix from Steam or Kodi, although I’m not holding my breath! Thanks again for all your help @sam_nazarko.

8

You’re welcome – but I don’t think there’s anything to fix from the Kodi side.

Cheers

Sam

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9

I’ve run into the same problem while trying to use Steamlink on a RPi4 with OSMC and Kodi 19.

I understand Steamlink is not compatible with Kodi 19 as Kodi requires dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d which Steamlink doesn’t like. So Kodi/OSMC will continue to enforce this setting (as disabling or commenting it out prevents OSMC from booting properly)? Which means that a fix would have to be implemented by Steamlink?

I saw here that a possible fix may be to replace dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d with dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d, however I’m not sure about trying it out given that Kodi requires the first line and the reports of Steamlink not starting either way.

Does anybody know if there is a way to make Steamlink work with Kodi 19 and current OSMC? Or will Steamlink just not be supported going forward?

10

Using dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d, will generally work but:

  1. It might stop working in the future
  2. That config will be overwritten with the next update and you would need to change it again.
11

So I tried that and still couldn’t get it to work. I’ve now decided to simply dualboot OSMC and Raspbian (using PINN) which will hopefully minimise any issues in the future.

Either way, thanks for the help.

12

Thanks for letting us know @ly2y and @fzinken. I’d love to update Kodi, but I’ve already spent so much time troubleshooting this, and I don’t think I want to go down any more rabbit holes. PINN looks very cool, but I think I’ll just stick with my existing OSMC install for now. Please let us know if you end up investigating other options. Cheers.

13

I just wanted to mention that Steamlink stopped working recently for me, even though I was still sticking to Kodi 18. There wasn’t anything to hold me back from updating to Kodi 19 now, so I just went ahead. Surprisingly, Steamlink is working perfectly fine now on Kodi 19!

14

Are you using the Pi 4, by chance?

15

I’m using a Pi 3 B.

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