Table of Contents

Replicate Kodi Instance

Overview

To replicate a Kodi instance to a new machine, it is only necessary to copy three directories from the original machine to the new one. These directories are addons, media, and userdata, and are stored under the Kodi directory. However, this directory is different depending on the OS they are installed in.

  1. LibreELEC - /storage/.kodi/
  2. Windows - C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\
    1. USERNAME is the user who will run kodi
  3. Linux - ~/.kodi/
    1. ~ indicates the home directory of the user who will run kodi
  4. MacOS - /Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/Kodi/ (hidden by default)
    1. USERNAME is the user who will run kodi
  5. IOS - /private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/Kodi/
  6. Android - Android/data/org.xbmc.kodi/files/.kodi/

So, to copy the configuration from a LibreELEC instance to a Debian Linux derivative, you would copy from /storage/kodi on the LibreELEC machine to the ~/.kodi directory on the Linux machine.

Steps

Steps to take are:

  1. On target machine (new machine)
    1. Install kodi on the new machine
    2. Run kodi at least one time (to generate path)
    3. Shut down kodi
    4. find and rename the kodi configuration directory
  2. On source machine (old machine)
    1. Shut down kodi, if possible
    2. copy addons, media, and userdata to some media, or copy directly to the new machine
  3. On target machine
    1. Create directory .kodi to replace the one you renamed
    2. copy the three directories above to that subdirectory
    3. change the ownership of the entire tree (.kodi and all directories/files under it) to the user who will be running the program
      1. look at the old, renamed directory for the correct ownership
    4. Start kodi and verify it runs.

Example

Assume copying from a LibreELEC install to a Devuan Linux install. On the Devuan machine, the user to run will be named acme. You are logged into the devuan machine and able to access the LibreELEC machine via ssh. The name on the LibreELEC machine is libreelec.

On the target machine, kodi has been run once, then shut down. LibreELECT makes it difficult to shut down kodi, so we just hope for the best. 

cd ~acme
mv ~acme/.kodi ~acme/.kodi.old
mkdir ~acme/.kodi
scp -r libreelec:/storage/.kodi/addons ~acme/.kodi
scp -r libreelec:/storage/.kodi/userdata ~acme/.kodi
scp -r libreelec:/storage/.kodi/media ~acme/.kodi
chown -fR acme:users ~acme/.kodi