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

1st Official Post

    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?

    • 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.

    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

    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 :)