Cannot get LE to run on Raspberry PI 4 4GB of RAM

1st Official Post

    I recently purchased a Raspberry PI 4 and have been attempting to get Libreelec installed and running for the last few days with no luck. I was able to get the latest Raspberry PI OS running after a couple of config changes. I have attempted to run LE 9.2.6, 9.2.7, 9.95.4 and the lastest nightly build from 6/18. On the 9.2 builds it does not do anything. The green activity light never turns on and I don't get the rainbow screen. On the 9.95.* and nightly build I get the rainbow screen and it either sticks there or goes to a black screen with the activity light flashing for a few seconds and then nothing else. I have tried writing the SD cards with Etcher and the Libreelec SD writing and get the same results with both.

    Any ideas on how to resolve or move this forward. I have been running LE on PI 2 & 3 for years with no issue.

  • Go to Best Answer

    A few of us are in the same boat, with Pi 4s that can’t run LE. There is no solution afaik and it looks like the dev team is too busy with LE 10 to look into it.

    What exactly were the "couple of config changes" you needed to do to get RPiOS running?

    Both RPiOS and LE should run out-of-the-box (and actually they do here and for most users). Without knowing what your changes were, which TV/monitor you are using etc there's not much we can do about it.

    so long,

    Hias

    This line was commented out from distroconfig.txt

    dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d,cma-512

    And this line was added to config.txt

    hdmi_force_hotplug=1

    The TV I am connected to is a Sony Grand WEGA KDF-60XS955 (1080i). When I leave the dtoverlay setting enabled a few seconds after the rainbow screen I get a grey screen with 2 black bars that splits the screen into thirds. After that there is no further activity.

    Please try with a clean installation of the latest LE10 beta, leave config.txt and distroconfig.txt as they are and add the following options to the end of cmdline.txt:

    Code
    video=HDMI-A-1:1280x720M@60D drm.debug=0x04

    This should give you working video output at 1280x720.

    Then ssh in, run the following commands and post the URLs you got from them:

    Code
    pastekodi
modetest | pastebinit

    If video and audio are working fine you can then drop the drm.debug option and just keep the video option in cmdline.

    so long,

    Hias

    Would these steps also help troubleshoot 9.2 on RPi 4? There is a bunch of us who can't get an unmodified 9.2.{6,7} image to boot on the Pi 4. I made extensive testing with various Pi 4 EEPROM versions, SD cards and USB sticks combinations (all working on Pi 3 with LE or Pi 4 with other projects like PiOS), could never get 9.2 to boot. 9.95 was booting but it's missing features I need (subtitles on 4k videos, play/pause etc not working via CEC)

    See 9.2.6 won't boot on Pi 4 (fresh install, frozen on black screen with white _ symbol)

    Quote from greycat

    Would these steps also help troubleshoot 9.2 on RPi 4?

    No, video configuration completely changed in LE10, using the standard linux methods instead of the legacy RPi specific config.txt method.

    This bugreport read as it might be a video driver/mode issue while the issue you linked seems to be something completely different (also you seem to get video output on screen).

    so long,

    Hias

    Hais

    Thanks for your feedback. I have tried the suggestions you made and I nolonger get the black bars dividing the screen but that is really the only difference. I did have to add the entry for hdmi_force_hotplug. Now it is a blank grey screen. The screen flickered a few times after the rainbow screen and the activity like seemed to flash irregularly but after 5 minutes nothing. The pi did seem to have an IP address since it was hardwired and I attempted to connect to it with putty an it was unsuccessful. I did try connecting the pi to a couple of other TVs that are newer than the Sony I mentioned above. One a Sony and the other a Samsung and on those I get nothing not even the rainbow screen.

    Ted

    Have you tried a different HDMI cable?

    Needing hdmi_force_hotplug indicates the RPi can't detect the presence of the TV - which is often caused by a bad (or not fully wired) cable. RPi firmware will then fall back to 1024x768 video mode.

    You need to resolve this issue first, the new driver heavily relies on getting correct info from the TV - the EDID contains info about supported video and audio modes, which is crucial for correct operation.

    BTW: if you add "ssh" to the end of cmdline.txt ssh will be activated (it's deactivated by default) then you should be able to connect with putty if it's up.

    so long,

    Hias

    I have tried some different HDMI cables and in all cases I needed hdmi_force_hotplug. I did get the Sony WEGA working last night. I did have to use hdmi_force_hotplug. Essentially I manually set the options set by hdmi_safe and setting the display for 1080i. Also I had to move the settings in distroconfig.txt to config.txt. They did not seem to probably work in distroconfig. I also had to comment out dtoverlay=rpivid-v4l2 and disable_fw_kms_setup=1. I recently purchased some hdmi cables that are advertised as being premium cables but I tried them on the other TVs I mentioned in my last post and the PI does not appear to be communicating with the TV no matter what I am running PI OS or LE. I get a faint blinking activity light and the TVs don't recognize an hdmi connection whatsoever.

    Thanks

    Ted

    • Official Post
    Quote from jMooney

    I get a faint blinking activity light

    Are you sure the RPi4 power adapter is providing enough juice?

    The activity light (green) is the drive led, 'faint' could also mean lots of disk activity is going on (as in superfast blinking).

    I am using the same power supply on the one that is connected to the Sony that is now working and I haven't seen an indication of low power. The other 2 TVs do not recognize that an hdmi device is even connected.

    Can you please run the commands in post #6 RE: Cannot get LE to run on Raspberry PI 4 4GB of RAM on your working and (if possible) on your non-working setups? It would be really interesting to see the logs, they might provide some more insight.

    In addition to that also run the following command and post it's output, too.

    Code
    vcdbg log msg 2>&1 | pastebinit

    Concerning power supply: note that LE10 won't show the lightning bolt, undervoltage messages will be in dmesg / kernel log though

    so long,

    Hias

    Something doesn't quite add up - the EDID in the modetest output you posted reports it's a Samsung Syncmaster, running at 1920x1080p60.

    So which TV/monitor did you use in that test?

    Please also test with KMS, not FKMS, and post logs with stock http://config.txt/distroconfig.txt and the cmdline.txt changes from post #6

    so long,

    Hias

    That is from the Sony WEGA. At the moment the other TVs I mentioned I can't get them to boot at all. I setup with stock http://config.txt/distroconfig.txt and I added in the for cmdline.txt as well as SSH. With that setup the box appears to hang. I get an IP address showing on my router but the activity light is solid and I cannot connect with SSH. This is what cmdline.txt looks like. It appears the distroconfig.txt is not being properly interpreted. Also I enabled the setting to ignore edid on the information that I sent earlier.

    boot=UUID=2705-5223 disk=UUID=26e63a25-1cef-4d63-a190-a5220a2d37e4 quiet

    video=HDMI-A-1:1280x720M@60D drm.debug=0x04

    ssh

    What do you men test with KMS not FKMS.