Yesterday, I attempted to update some things on my (rarely used) Ubuntu 16.04 system. All went well except for my attempts to upgrade the installed Kodi to 17.0. While attempting this however, I ran into the three separate serious and unexpected problems which I described below. Unforuntaley, I have only been able to work my way past the first two of these problems, so I could use some advice and help to get past the third problem.
Problem #1)
Not being all that familiar with Ubuntu, I followed the simple directions on the following web page in order to try to upgrade Kodi to 17.0:
http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2017…ntu-16-10/
This resulted in failure. I don’t remember the exact message that was produced in the little Software Updater pop-up window, but I have sliced out on the apparently relevant portion of the /var/log/apt/term.log file and placed a copy of that here:
https://pastebin.com/raw/rMif0bRz
As can be seen in this file, it appears that the new Kodi did not wish to overwrite a couple of files that had been installed as part of my prior Kodi installation. (I have no idea why this would be the case, and would appreciate being enlightened about that, but in any case I think that I can safely say that this install failure was distinctly user-unfriendly.)
To get around this problem, I decided to simply uninstall my prior Kodi intall, and then, after that, to install Kodi 17 from scratch, using the instructions on the page noted above. Both of these steps apparently succeded.
Problem #2)
Having (apparently) succeded in installing Kodi 17 from scratch, I wanted to add a shortcut icon for it to my Ubuntu/Unity Launcher bar on the left side of my desktop. Not remembering how to do this anymore, I googled and found the following page which suggests how to do this:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/224004/ho…e-launcher
“You can also drag applications directly from the Dash into the launcher.”
I poked on the icon that starts up the “Dash” and since it did not immediately show any icon for Kodi, as I have done many times before, I used the Dash search box. I just typed in “Kodi” and hit return. But alas, it appears that Dash does not know of my new Kodi 17, even though it appears to have been successfully installed, and even though an executable for it is most definitely present at /usr/bin/kodi. (I know. I checked.)
So, can some kind person explain to me why Dash does not find the newly installed Kodi?
Problem #3)
Having failed to add an icon for Kodi 17 to my Launcher, I simply opened up an xterm window, checked that /usr/bin/kodi was in my $PATH and then I simply typed “kodi”. After I did this, kodi tried to start up, but it crashed and created a coredump file within a couple of seconds. I decided to try one more time before giving up, so I typed “kodi”<return> once again in the xterm window. Kodi again crashed almost immediately and created a coredump file. Fortunately, in both cases, before it crashed kodi created a kodi_crashlog file in my home directory. I have placed copies of both of these in the following locations:
https://pastebin.com/raw/GTQZJcge
https://pastebin.com/raw/BkQhkqfZ
I have no solution for problem #3 or problem #2 above. If some kind soul would offer me solutions to these problems, I would greatly appreciate it.
Separately, please allow me to also respectfully suggest that there may be changes which could be made to Kodi, going forward, which would make the upgrade process for Ubuntu a bit less user-unfriendly.