Migrating from Pi 3B to Pi 3B+ (move SD card over)

Hi All,

I have bought a Raspberry Pi 3B+ as a drop-in replacement for my Pi 3B to solve issues with 2.4GHz WiFi I have been experiencing. I was hoping I could just swap over the SD card and all would be well. However this has not been the case.

LibreELEC seems to boot fine, but hangs on the Kodi splash screen. I have pulled the SD card and from the kodi.log file extracted the following:

2019-04-11 17:29:28.783 T:1807721344   ERROR: Unable to open database: MyMusic72 [2005](Unknown MySQL server host 'focal-playground.lan' (-3))

This gets repeated roughly every 33 seconds (edited to maintain peace )

I host my kodi database on a separate MariaDB server. Figuring it was some issue with it being unable to connect to the network, I made a backup of and removed the /storage/connman folder. However that didn't resolve the issue. It is running LibreELEC 9.2.6.

I have tried with <loglevel>2</loglevel> in advancedsettings.xml but nothing extra that seems relevant gets logged.

Where do I go from here? Can I not just 'move over' the SD card from a Pi 3B to a 3B+?

Quote from Klojum

Giving us 10 identical errors isn't very helpful. Next time use loglevel 1 for hiding OSD stuff during debugging.

Please provide the FULL kodi.log file via a pastebin website. We prefer to keep our forum server clean.

Fair enough. I've edited my post. I chose loglevel 2 as the kodi docs state it is the same as level 1 + onscreen display which I thought might come in handy, either way I have re-run it with loglevel 1 and here's the kodi.log:

Quote from Klojum

SQL error 2005 = unknown database server host.

Meaning if you are using hostnames instead of IP addresses, LibreELEC cannot find the hostname. But since you haven't provided the full debug log yet, it is all just guess work.

Quote from wutr

Figuring it was some issue with it being unable to connect to the network, I made a backup of and removed the /storage/connman folder. However that didn't resolve the issue. It is running LibreELEC 9.2.6.

To clarify, my access points don't show any sign of a new device (ie. my Pi 3B+ with a different MAC address) connecting to the network. To make sure no old connman settings were interfering I removed them temporarily, but that didn't help in getting past the splash screen.

I solved the problem, but I can't say with a 100% certainty that I know what caused it without one more check. It isn't to do with host name resolution.

TL;DR:

On the old device: Turn off wireless networking, temporarily rename advancedsettings.xml to avoid querying a remote server.

Then, on the new device: Turn on wireless networking and connect to a network, rename advancedsettings.xml and reboot

The old Pi 3B was connected to 2.4GHz WiFi. Swapping the SD card to the new Pi 3B+ for some reason prevented the 3B+ from connecting to that same 2.4GHz WiFi. I have no MAC filtering or anything so I'm not sure why it is a problem. Maybe connman saves its settings based on hardware metadata and is therefor not able to port the connection details over to the new WLAN device on the Pi 3B+.

All of this caused Kodi to hang at the splash screen. The log file is not very detailed, as you can see in my previous post. The only hints are:

2019-04-11 17:28:54.179 T:1807721344 DEBUG: Initialize, updating databases...

and

2019-04-11 17:29:27.904 T:1807721344 ERROR: Unable to open database: MyMusic72 [2005](Unknown MySQL server host 'focal-playground.lan' (-3))

I thought initially the fact that the SQL server was unreachable due to the WiFi not being connected was causing the hang, but then I did the following:

1. Boot the old Pi 3B from the SD card

2. Disable wireless networking

3. Reboot

This caused it to hang at the splash screen too (remember, this is the old 3B, which was fine before)

So I carried on:

4. Delete (rename) advancedsettings.xml

5. Boot the new Pi 3B+ from the same SD card

and voila, I got past the Kodi splash screen.

6. Enable wireless networking and connect to the 5GHz network

7. Reinstate (rename) advancedsettings.xml

8. Reboot

Now the Pi 3B+ is working absolutely fine on the same SD card as I used in the old 3B.

There are two possible causes for the problem:

A) Trying to connect to the remote SQL server is unsuccessful

B) Updating the database on boot hangs because connecting to the remote SQL server is unsuccessful

I have a feeling it is the updating of the database (which it can't do because there is no connection to the network) that is actually causing the hang, but I would have to do some more testing to verify.

For now my problem is solved.

Edit:

Last minute addition from my current kodi.log:

2021-03-13 18:54:59.307 T:1807721344 DEBUG: Initialize, updating databases... DONE

That doesn't appear in the hang-at-splash scenario, I'm reasonably certain that's causing the issues.