[SOLVED] Some interesting "bug" that i think is worth sharing...

[Exnor]

Ok, my Pi that has been running 24/7 for the past 2 years (i think) finally burned the SDcard that was on it ... so instead of using one of my recovery Ghost imgs i decided to do a full fresh install (from the Win installer with the latest build, plus updates, etc etc), since i have all my addons data on backup.

So i got a brand new fast 8GiB Sandisk card and done the all process (no probs whatsoever on the installation and updates), then, and even before copying my Addons backups to card, i seat down in front of my tv and started the usual configs, like output res, audio passthrough etc etc... just to find out that, after a reboot my settings were not getting saved (!!).
XBMC every time it exited reverted my configs to the ones it came by default...

Long story short: After trying editing by hand the config files e discovered that i needed to CHMOD 777 mode on the entire directory of .....\userdata\... for XBMC to save my settings....
After this everything went smooth and its now fully working (RC3 latest stable build), Addons restored etc etc...

Any ideas why this happened?

On another subject, anyone knows what is the minimum memory split (RAM) to use the less allocated RAM to the GPU? I'm using 90MiB for the GPU on one of my Pi's and its working fine, but i would like to be able to allocate more memory for the system. Any ideas?

Thks guys.

[menakite]

Try to determine the user (UID) xbmc.bin is running under, it should be "xbian" and its home directory should be /home/xbian/.xbmc.
If all this is true, try:

Terminal

sudo chown -R xbian /home/xbian
sudo chmod 755 /home/xbian /home/xbian/.xbmc

It is suggested to allocate 112 MB to the GPU on Model A/old Model B with 256 MB and at least 144 on newer Model Bs (512 MB).
You can limit resource usage by lowering the GUI resolution to 720p, using a skin with "simpler" textures (stick with the default Confluence skin, or try Amber), etc. However, this is very setup-specific - different audio/video codecs may require more, or less, memory on the GPU: you need to find out the minimum required for your setup by just trying to lower it a couple times per week (to check if it's stable and no glitches appear).
Until you see "ERROR: ... OMX_ErrorInsufficientResources ..." in your xbmc.log, your gpu_mem is okay.

[Exnor]

(29th Dec, 2014 02:55 AM)menakite Wrote:  Try to determine the user (UID) xbmc.bin is running under, it should be "xbian" and its home directory should be /home/xbian/.xbmc.
If all this is true, try:

Terminal

sudo chown -R xbian /home/xbian
sudo chmod 755 /home/xbian /home/xbian/.xbmc

It is suggested to allocate 112 MB to the GPU on Model A/old Model B with 256 MB and at least 144 on newer Model Bs (512 MB).
You can limit resource usage by lowering the GUI resolution to 720p, using a skin with "simpler" textures (stick with the default Confluence skin, or try Amber), etc. However, this is very setup-specific - different audio/video codecs may require more, or less, memory on the GPU: you need to find out the minimum required for your setup by just trying to lower it a couple times per week (to check if it's stable and no glitches appear).
Until you see "ERROR: ... OMX_ErrorInsufficientResources ..." in your xbmc.log, your gpu_mem is okay.

Hi mate,

Yep XBMC.bin is running under xbian user, like in my other Pi.... I've changed the permissions like you said to the .xbmc folder... so far ok.

But i've shared this "bug" because this was a clean install, from scratch. Any idea what could have cause this?

On the GPU part, well one my living room Pi i have the default allocated RAM to the GPU and is running FHD (OC @turboo), but on my bedroom i allocated only 90MB because its an old B model (256MiB ram only) and i've noticed a slightly better performance with more system memory available (or maybe i'm just under that impression).
This Pi (old B model) is running OC @turboo also and set for 720p only. I also only use Confluence skin.
Using a bigger size of allocated mem to the GPU makes the Pi noticeable slower than my other one. (both now have fast SDcards).

Thks for the above tips