Again, thanks a lot for all your advices. So this is what I have done:
Install Samba Server on Vero4K and DB Browser for SQLite on my computer.
Stopped mediacenter
Copied .kodi to .kodi_backup (yes, it turns out I had enough room)
Found 3 * MyMusic libraries and 3 * MyVideo libraries.
Searched for BLOB values and deleted them (I had 35 such values in each of the 3 music DBs. My video DBs are empty). I kept records of all 35 .nfo files.
Restarted Vero
Tried to install Library Data Provider add-on (LDP) → Vero crashed and went into boot loop.
Renamed all 35 .nfo files that contained BLOBs.
Restarted Vero.
While I were renaming 35 .nfo’s Vero crashed a couple of times. It does not crash immediately after reboot like it did upon LDP installation, but it crashes wiithin about 10-15 minutes of standing idle.
I went again into the DB Browser to check that there were no BLOBs left and found one strange thing. All the BLOBs values that I removed were in strReview column. I don’t have any BLOBs anymore, but I have a lot of rows where strReview cell shows correct text of the review, but Edit Database Cell in the top right corner of the DB Browser shows binary hex, instead of text. So what is it? Am I supposed to remove these reviews as well? Hell, I have a lot them…
Just in case, I have corrected all databases, including MyMusic82.
Vero still crashes after about 15-20 minutes after reboot. So if I keep TV screen on, I see sad face every 15-20 minutes without touching anything.
What surprises me is that these crashes happen with the stock OSMC skin and without that offending add-on. So, without even looking into my issue with installing Aeon Nox skin, what might be the reason for these crashes?
After V19 upgrade, I have not proceeded with rescanning tags from music files. (The corresponding message box pops-up when I go into ‘Music’ menu). So at the moment I don’t have access to my music library, although I can play music by browsing files. Could that be the reason? I think if I do this rescan than Kodi will try to update all the tags + .nfo files and no-one knows what will happen.
As an alternative, would it help if I remove Music DB and try to build it from scratch? Or should I stick to the plan of removing all add-ons as you suggested yesterday?
Have you tried a fresh install of OSMC? I don’t see any mention in thread or maybe i missed it.
It is the quickest option to get a fresh start. You wont lose anything as your files are all on Nas.
Plus it is fun to start from scratch and often quicker than trouble shooting.
Once you have a stable OSMC it should be easier to resolve other issue.
I have cleaned music DB from all BLOBs and this stops Vero from crashing every 15-20 minutes.
This, unfortunately did not help with installing Library Data Provider add-on required for Aeon Nox skin.
I have removed all add-ons as suggested by @fzinken above and tried to install LDP add-on. Unfortunately, this sent Vero into boot loop immediately (removing add-on’s folder stops this loop).
So I think, clean install is my last option. My understanding is that I will loose all my settings, like NAS drive mounts, TVHeadend, Bluetooth, etc. It looks like I am in the start of my long journey
Well, can someone please direct me into the steps to perform clean install of OSMC?
You can save those settings (mainly in /etc and maybe your .asound.conf and maybe also your .kodi/userdata/sources.xml and other changes you have done) to your NAS and restore them afterwards.
Scroll through and it will have marked the offending characters for you.
From this you can edit your .nfo quicker.
Once you have finished editing your nfo you can edit the entry in your database to null.
Then restart kodi and scrape your new edited nfo without those characters.
Also make sure you check ALL fields - song artist and albums so no binary entries. You can easily select the first entry and scroll down with arrow key and keep your eye on the info where it says text or binary. If a binary shows up you need to repeat the steps mentioned above.
That’s the good news.
I have just installed amber skin and all services without issue playing music and browsing around for 2 hrs now… no problems . I did install initially aeon mq 8 matrix mod but had problems. Crash 15mins or so like you had… so solved…no…clean database…yes
I have looked at MyMusic82.db. I estimate that I have about hundred of cells in strReview column that are shown as binary in the Edit Database Cell window. (These cells though, appear as normal text in the strReview column. Besides, I’ve never had issues with browsing these reviews in the prior version of Kodi).
Anyway, these records are spread across the whole table of over 900 rows. Manually searching and deleting these cells is a pain. Taking record of what has been deleted in order to amend album.nfo files later is a suicide job…
My knowledge of SQL is limited, but I am surprised that the same column in the database contains data of two different types: Text and Binary. I wonder if there is a way to run an SQL query to show rows WHERE data in column strReview IS BINARY. Then perhaps save this for treating album.nfo files later and run another query to delete such cells.
Unfortunately I’m not skilled at writing such queries. I have tried a few basic queries in DB Browser that returned some filtered records, but not the ones I was after. I suppose my belief that the data in a column can be of only one data type undermines this approach.
I am facing exactly same situation as you. Except in my case I do not have any nfo files, and concluded it is whenever I am having special characters in the path or filename of the music/video file things are not working - Kodi does not find the file if the path/filename is read from the library and contains such characters, and scanning new files with such characters in path/filename results in error records added to the Music or Movie or TV library Database, where the filename/path becomes a “BLOB”.
Removing the BLOB records and uninstalling Library Data addon stabilized Kodi, but now I cannot play such files in the library or add new ones. Looking like clean install will be only way forward. I actually did a clean install of Kodi Matrix v19 on an Android TV on same network, building a library with same NAS data source and it worked fine. Just loooots of work.
As advised by others, the issue was that after upgrade to v19 some add-ons were not able to read entries in Kodi library that contained binary data type. In my case it was Library Data Provider add-on that was not able to process some records in MyMusic82.db sending Vero4K into boot loop. (The only way to get out of this loop was to delete add-on’s folder via SHH).
I desperately wanted this particular add-on as it was a prerequisite to installing the AEON Nox SiLVO skin. Therefore, I really wanted to clean up my Music database, at the same time making sure that I do not corrupt it again with 900+ album.nfo files sitting in my folders with music. In order to succeed, I had somehow to isolate nfo files that caused the add-on to crash.
Below are the steps that I have gone through and that fixed my issue:
To be on a safe side, I have created a copy of MyMusic82.db on my laptop and worked with this file
I’ve installed DB Browser and then: Open Database → Browse Data → Table ‘album’
In the tab Execute SQL I’ve run the query:
select DISTINCT album.idAlbum, album.stralbum, songview.strpath
from album
left join songview
on album.stralbum = songview.strAlbum
where strReview is not null and strReview <> “”
that produced all the albums and corresponding paths to the music albums where data in column strReview has been populated (i.e. this step has filtered out rows with blanks and Nulls). The query has produced just over 700 albums.
I’ve copied the output of this query in Excel
Back to the Browse Data tab, I’ve sorted data by column strReview to make sure that all blanks ane NULLs are at the bottom
I have then manually gone through col strReview and deleted all cells with BLOBs and cells which had binary data type in the top right window (Edit Database Cell, as shown on some screenshot above)
Back to Execute SQL, I have run the same query the 2nd time. This time I ended up with 517 “good” records (this is because at this step I have deleted about 200 “bad” records).
I’ve copied the output of Query 2 into Excel, next to the output of my Query 1. Then I’ve done a simple VLOOKUP() in Excel to highlight the “bad” albums.
I’ve then saved the MyMusic82.db, stopped mediacenter (see comments above) and replaced the the original DB with the updated one.
After this step, I managed to install Library Data Provider add-on and Aeon Nox SiLVO skin without any issues.
I have also written a code in Excel VBA that was able go through all the “bad” folders and rename all album.nfo to say, *review_album.nfo" in order to deal with these files later. However I decided to check what would happen if I would simply refresh “offending” nfo files via Info → Refresh in Kodi. It turns out that it is possible to add all these album.nfo files that previously crashed the add-on without issues! Yes, I do see a few funny characters in Reviews, but I can live with them. I may have deal with them later, but for now, skin is working!
Also, anticipating questions about artists, yes I do have a few, like Niccolò Paganini, Frédéric Chopin or Françoise Hardy and no, in my case these names were not the issue. I have not changed them, and installing Library Data Provider and the skin went through smoothly.
We share the same problem, and I also would love the Aeon Nox Silvo skin to work as in previous Kodi release. So does the family, changing causes unnecessary hassle…
After reinstalling Vero4K fresh, the issue is still there for me. But unlike your case the root cause for BLOB (binary) records in database is different, caused by special characters in the filename or path when the NFS share is mounted through fstab cifs. When mounted through the SMB client in Kodi instead I do not face this issue.
Again thanks a lot for sharing, helping my case a lot!
@zapper, same as yours, my shares are mounted via fstab. However, I didn’t have any issues with folders with special characters.
Just checking now, I have a few folders where artists and albums have special characters. For example, I have an artist folder “Fabrizio De André” or the folder with Jean-Michel Jarre’s album “1976 - Oxygène”. None of these caused any issues during library migration from 18 to 19. I believe, in my case it was only the strReview column that was the problem.
