Need help updating Raspberry Pi 2 for OpenELEC

1st Official Post

    I'm currently running OpenELEC Kodi v15.2. It was recently pointed out to me, OpenELEC is no longer being developed and Kodi is now on version 18... so I'm working on upgrading.

    The instruction I was given was to download the installer file, drop it in the Update directory and to restart the Pi. However all the instructions show a .TAR file being put into the update folder. When I visit the download page now it only shows an .IMG file.

    The problem is when I drop that file in the update folder and reboot, the OS doesn't even recognize it as an update option. I've tried opening the .IMG file and saving the contents as a .TAR file, this appears to work on reboot, it says it's uncompressing the file but then I get an error saying it cannot find the SYSTEM file or KERNEL file so it aborts.

    Is there any path to upgrade or will I have to back everything up, wipe it, and install from fresh (which I'm hoping to avoid).

    • Official Post

    An upgrade will not work as the size of the 15.x system partition will be too small for the update to process.

    Therefore, coming from such an old version, a fresh installation is necessary anyway to create the bigger sized system partition.

    Alternatively, you can do the partition resizing manually via tools like Gparted, but that will require some PC knowledge.

    You can try to make a backup of your current OpenELEC setup via the built-in Backup/Restore tool.

    The question is, whether all your settings/add-ons will be compatible with Kodi 18.5.


    It's not unthinkable that a fresh installation will take up less time than the tweaking of old settings.