Category Archives: ubuntu

Unable to load libcec.so on Kodi

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As part of a complete re-vamp of my home media setup (blog post coming soon on that!), I found myself trying to connect a Sony TV to an Intel NUC running Kodi v16 via one of PulseEight‘s brilliant USB-CEC Adapters. However, no matter what I tried (combinations of cables, all the settings on the TV, different ports on the NUC etc) I could not get Kodi to recognise the adapter. Despite the Kodi Wiki page on CEC suggesting that this should plug-and-play, I did not get any suggestion from either the TV or Kodi that the CEC dongle was being recognised.

After quite a lot of searching in the wrong place (at first I was convinced that my fresh install of Kodibuntu wouldn’t be the root cause), I found a couple of log lines that finally pointed me in the right direction:

DEBUG: Loading: libcec.so.3.0
ERROR: Unable to load libcec.so.3.0, reason: libcec.so.3.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Turns out that Kodi is built against libcec.so.3.0, however the version in the repository (I believe that was bundled or at least suggested by Kodibuntu) is 3.1. Kodi should (theoretically) be built against libcec.so.3 (note the missing .0), which the appropriate symlinks would have taken care of, however it seems there are some changes between 3.0 and 3.1 that Kodi doesn’t like, so some simple switching of the links (I tried creating /usr/local/lib/libcec.so.3.0 -> /usr/local/lib/libcec.so.3.1, which in hindsight isn’t a great idea) caused various crashes that I wasn’t prepared to start debugging – so instead I used the suggestion in this forum thread:

$ apt-get install --reinstall libcec3=3.0.1-1~trusty

Which will put the old version of libcec on your machine. After a quick reboot, Kodi instantly recognised the CEC dongle as promised, and it has been working beautifully ever since!

Windows 7 on a Inspiron 510m

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My ancient old knackered laptop (recently upgraded with a brand new 1Gb stick of RAM) had been running Ubuntu for a number of years, and was getting to the point where a OS re-install was necessary. I’ve been getting increasingly annoyed with the university wireless not playing nicely – so decided to give Windows 7 a try (since I can get it nice and free!)

Install was a breeze, OS booted fine first time, all drivers found and installed by Windows Update – apart from one…

Seems I was stuck with the 640×480 VGA resolution driver, Intel doesn’t think their 8XXGM series drivers work well with 7. Never fear – a bit of Googling revealed this site: http://www.groundstate.net/855GMWin7.html, which contains instructions for tricking 7 into installing the old drivers! Result! Although Seb may have had a slight point on this weeks Tech 107 (episode 3) about Macs being easier due to them not needing separate driver install. Ah well.

So – I’m now officially off Linux and 100% Windows again. Lets see how long it lasts this time!

Linux Adventure #2: Networking

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Well, we all know that the main uses of a computer are:

  • MSN
  • Wikipedia
  • Porn

All of which require the internet. So obviously, my new Linux box (mLinux – I’ll explain some other time) must be connected to the internet! "No problem", thought I, "I’ll slap in that USB dongle I got ages ago and never use!"

So in went the Belkin Wireless G Adaptor (F5D7050), and up popped the "dysonHub" network! Score! Not quite…

Enter the password, and Ubuntu will connect fine, but absolutely nothing happens. No internet = no MSN, Wikipedia or Porn! Damn!

The adventure must be halted at this point – I must have internet to continue!

Linux Adventure #1: Installation

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Step number one in my adventure on the road down Linux Lane went surprisingly easy!

Slapped in the shiny new Ubuntu 7.10 disk, and installed it with no problems. Probably is a good point to mention that the PC I’m using is an old machine with a 20.5Gb HDD that was liberated from a local primary school when they chucked it out. What a waste!

Anyway, the only error I got was the lack of internet connection for a system update, and something about commenting a line in a file :S Didn’t really understand that, I’m more of a GUI guy if I’m honest!

Next came the peripherals… Mouse and keyboard worked (obviously), and then I realised I only have 2 USB ports on the computer! Enter my trusty old Belkin Hub, which worked out of the box (read: dusty cupboard) and gladly accepted the mouse, my pen drive and the USB Network Card (discussed later)

Everything working so far, played a few games… everything’s hunky-dory!

Until the time came to start on t’internet…