Kodi 18.9 broken

[jacksonATL]

I have two RBPi3 running kodi, and after the latest update both are no longer working. Downgrading just the kodi package does not seem to resolve the problem as there have been changes to the video driver. The CPU spikes and system crashes trying to play any media, muic or video. I have pasted logs below:
kodi.log: http://ix.io/2Hyp
journalctl: http://ix.io/2Hyq
config.txt: gpu_mem=320
dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d
dtparam=audio=on
initramfs initramfs-linux.img followkernel

[blacksad]

After the last system update, Kodi crashes when playing videos on my Pi3B+.

Name : kodi-rpi
Version : 18.9-1
Build Date : Thu 10 Dec 2020 05:37:40 PM MSK

Name : raspberrypi-firmware
Version : 20201210-2
Build Date : Fri 11 Dec 2020 02:07:48 AM MSK

System log:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'Dec 11 16:10:30 alarmpi kodi-standalone[424]: mmal: mmal_component_create_core: could not find component 'vc.ril.video_decode'')
Kodi log:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '2020-12-11 16:10:30.866 T:1899558912 ERROR: CMMALPool::CMMALPool Failed to create component vc.ril.video_decode')
Rolling back raspberrypi-firmware to version 20201029 solves the problem.

[blacksad]

Try downgrading raspberrypi-firmware

[jacksonATL]

Thank you very much! That has resolved the issue(s) for kodi. I downgraded to raspberrypi-firmware-20201029-1.

[graysky]

MOD NOTE: merged topics.
Looking into root cause, thanks for letting us know.

If you would like to switch to the kodi-rpi-git package (currently shipping v19.0b2), it works fine with the newer firmware package and output (fluidity of motion and richness of colors) on my system is just better (perhaps due to the alternative video driver). I have running the git package for months now and even the early alphas were rock solid.

Potential reasons not to update kodi:
* switching will update your kodi databases so you might want to backup /var/lib/kodi/.kodi first.
* if you run a shared mariadb, do not update without updating all of your other boxes.
* unofficial plugins may not work with python 3 yet.

[blacksad]

@graysky in kodi 19 hardware acceleration for h264 already working on rpi3?

[graysky]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('blacksad', '@')graysky in kodi 19 hardware acceleration for h264 already working on rpi3?

[graysky]

raspberrypi-firmware 20201211-1 should fix this issue.

[blacksad]

Yes, it's working, thank you

[c4tz]

Unfortunately not yet working for me. I upgraded my Rpi 3 B+ today and came across the same problem.

The upgrade included:

kodi-rbp 18.9-1 -> kodi-rpi 18.9-1
kodi-rbp-eventclients 18.9-1 -> kodi-rpi-eventclients 18.9-1
libcec-rpi 4.0.2-1 -> libcec-rpi 6.0.2-1
raspberrypi-firmware 20201016-1 -> raspberrypi-firmware 20201211-1 (which should have solved it, as described before)

which I all had to downgrade again in order to get a working setup.

Unfortunately I didn't save my kodi log when encountering the problem the first time and it has already been overwritten. There were no errors in the journal (apart from exit 1), and when trying to start kodi manually, it only printed: "ERROR: Unable to create GUI. Exiting"

Edit: uploaded journal log for kodi: http://ix.io/2HHl (First successful start was before upgrade)