Restore guisettings.xml

Kodi
1

My guisettings.xml somehow got corrupted, leaving me with a default Kodi installation after a fresh bootup this morning.

I make Kodi backups on a frequently basis by using the Backup addon from the Kodi repo. I copied the guisettings.xml file from the lastest backup to the userdata folder, and restarted Kodi. That did not work unfortunately. The default guisettings.xml file is still there.

Restoring a full backup is cumbersome and time consuming. I would like to know whether there’s a quick workaround to restore the guisettings.xml file without going through the whole process of restoring a full backup. Anyone?

2

when I restore from backup which is on the sd card, it only takes a few minutes.

3

Including your thumbnails folder?

My backups are stored on my pc for safety reasons.

4

Instead of using the Kodi backup addon, try the CE backup option.

5

Thanks for the recommendation, but don’t you agree with me, that restoring a full backup by using the backup addon or CoreElec restore option is way to drastic for such a “minor” flaw? Only one corrupt file and you have to do a full restore operation…

I’m just curious if this can be done easier.

6

make another back before restoring. I have used the restore function numerous times with no problems.
generally I backup to sd card backup folder, then copy it to my pc.

7

I completed a full restore operation by using the backup addon just 30 minutes ago and restarted Kodi. Guess what…the guisettings.xml file was not restored. I have to go through all Kodi settings.

I’ll use the CoreElec restore option if the problem returns. But I still wonder whether there’s a easier way to restore the guisettings.xml file. For example by using a putty command over SSH.

8

Why don’t you just copy the whole guisettings.xml to a safe place. It takes only a few seconds to do that. If the present one gets somehow corrupted, replace it with working one from safe place.

9

Yep, use file explorer to copy the file to a usb drive. Use same file explorer to copy file back from USB drive to box. Make sure hidden files and rename and delete are enabled.

10

@Sholander @ Betatester,

Copying a custom guisettings.xml file from my pc to my Beelink GT King box by using Kodi’s built in file exolorer, was the first step I did. But that did not work. When I restarted Kodi, it was still using the corrupt guisettings.xml file. It started with the Estuary skin and not with the Aeon MQ7 skin etc. The filesize of the guisettings.xml did not match with the guisettings.xml file I just had restored.

11

You need to stop kodi before make this changes:
systemctl stop kodi
and after start kodi again
systemctl start kodi

12

Thank you very much! I’ll try this option, if it happens again. Exactly the answer I was hoping for.

13

It is more complicared than I thought…I think I missed something.

If I stop Kodi, how do I restore guisettings.xml to the userdata folder?

14

You could use samba, sftp or ssh.

15

Sftp works fine. I can copy the guisettings.xml from my pc to my tv box.

Just curious…how to use Samba when the tv screen is blank after sending the “systemctl stop kodi command” over ssh?

Thanks for explaining me how to restore the guisetttings.xml file without having to restore a full backup. Very useful.

16

Samba is not a part of KODI and will work after stop command over ssh

17
18

Thanks for the recommendations. Unfortunately I’m unable to approach my tv box by using samba. Entering smb://192.168.178.11 doesn’t seem to work on my Windows 7 machine. I did some searching on internet, but the tweaks did not work.

However SSH works fine. Does anyone know
whether there’s a shortlist available containing useful SSH commands I can send to Kodi?

19

You can review the list of Linux command line operators and commands. Most of them should work in the terminal.

20

Thank you.