Can you do a plain old RPi 3B to RPi 4B SD Card swap? (with 9.2.0)?

FeFiFoFum · December 30, 2019 at 12:52 PM

LibreELEC (official): 9.2.0 (RPi2.arm)

LibreElecPi:~ # uname -r

4.19.83

LibreElecPi:~ # ^C

LibreElecPi:~ # cat /etc/os-release

NAME="LibreELEC"

VERSION="9.2.0"

ID="libreelec"

VERSION_ID="9.2"

PRETTY_NAME="LibreELEC (official): 9.2.0"

HOME_URL="https://libreelec.tv"

BUG_REPORT_URL="https://github.com/LibreELEC/LibreELEC.tv"

BUILD_ID="5d0330e6ad834a1cc1debbc6b58b3464d027acb4"

OPENELEC_ARCH="RPi2.arm"

LIBREELEC_ARCH="RPi2.arm"

LIBREELEC_BUILD="official"

LIBREELEC_PROJECT="RPi"

LIBREELEC_DEVICE="RPi2"

LibreElecPi:~ #

Can I just literally pull the SDCard, put it in the 4 and it'll work?

I know at one point in time, a RPi 2 to 3 SD Swap was a NO NO, until a certain patch - and Ithink similar for Pi 3 to 4, but whatabout now? 6 months on with 9.2.0 - will it just boot ok?

**chewitt** · December 30, 2019 at 1:15 PM Official Post

Manually copy the RPi4 .tar update file to /storage/.update on the RPi2 and "touch /storage/.udpate/.nocompat" and reboot. The OS will update to the RPi4 image and might boot, although some things will be non-functional. Now power off and swap the SD card to the RPi4.

FeFiFoFum · December 30, 2019 at 1:54 PM

Ok so to clarify, I can add the Pi4 tar, to a Pi3 build and it should still boot?

I've made several customisations to my Kodi build which I'm really happy with

Crontab entries, skin layouts, script files for backups, etc.

Honestly, I thought 9.2.0 was just "Pi 4 compatible" hadn't occurred to me, there would be 2 diff builds.

Thanks chewitt

FeFiFoFum · January 1, 2020 at 12:41 AM

Ok Chewitt, it worked - I was a bit scared, because I wasn't sure what makes it an 'update file' - I just used the full 500MB installer (I had a backup)

It worked fine - the notouch thing didn't work, so I just nano / made one manually.

I'm having one last issue, which is here

Dumb mistake? Pi 3, to Pi 4, Kodi UI is only slightly faster, even at only 1080p?

but this thread is solved, I hope it helps someone else.

LeGuerg · January 3, 2020 at 8:34 AM

Quote from chewitt

Manually copy the RPi4 .tar update file to /storage/.update on the RPi2 and "touch /storage/.udpate/.nocompat" and reboot. The OS will update to the RPi4 image and might boot, although some things will be non-functional. Now power off and swap the SD card to the RPi4.

Hi !

I tried this method to switch from a RPi2 into a RPi4, but ended with a freeze in splashscreen when I booted the SDcard on the RPi4.

So instead, I tried the classic method :

1) fresh install of LE 9.2 on the RPi4

2) backup system+DB from LE Settings in RPi2

3) Reinstall the .tar backup file on the RPi4.

All worked fine and my mediacenter is now running well with the RPi4

Can you do a plain old RPi 3B to RPi 4B SD Card swap? (with 9.2.0)?

Similar Threads

LibreELEC (Leia) 9.2.0

LibreELEC (Leia) 9.2 Beta 2