Raspbery Pi 2B won't boot at all. Flashing rainbow screen. Several SD cards. Several Builds.

1st Official Post

    Hi guys,

    I was planning to install an extra RPi in the bedroom. Since I have LE10 running on my RPi4 in the livingroom, I decided to give a nightly build of LE10 for the RPi2/3 a shot. Mainly because I run the MySQL configuration on my NAS hence the Databases should be the same.
    However, I can't get the RPi 2 to boot. At all. ;(

    Here's what I tried:

    • I installed the LibreELEC-RPi2.arm-10.0-nightly-20210808-f02196c.img.gz from LibreELEC nightly downloads
    • I tried 3 different SD-cards
    • I tried 2 different RPi 2B's (I have 2 lying around)
    • I tried reformatting the SD-card with the SD Card Formatter 5 tool
    • I tried installing the Image with Balena Etcher: balenaEtcher - Flash OS images to SD cards & USB drives
    • I tried the official LE9.2 build for the RPi2 from the download page Raspberry Pi 2 – LibreELEC
    • I tried both the HDMI output as well as the composite output on my little Sony TV. Both give same results.

    Nothing works. The screen either flashes the rainbowscreen for a second with the LE10 nightly build and then stays black or remains on the rainbow screen with the official LE 9.2 build.

    I'm scratching my head here. What am I missing? :/

    Any idea's :?: :?: :?:

    [UPDATE]

    I installed Raspberry Pi OS (32bit) on my SD-card and tried that. Guess what? This works... The OS boots up and works like a charm. But I can't get ANY LE build to work, no matter what I do...

    Edited 4 times, last by lobbie1978: Added new info (August 13, 2021 at 5:11 PM).

  • Go to Best Answer
    • Official Post

    The LibreELEC disk image contains both partitions. A static 512MB system partition, and the initially small data partition that will be resized at the first boot of LibreELEC. An image writer cannot just "forget" a partition.

    Check the SD card with a bootable tool like GParted. Check both partitions on stuck to being read-only.

    Ok, so now I'm totally confused. But enlightend at the same time.

    I tried to run NOOBS and that works. When booting up LE, I went to the System Information and saw this:

    Code
    ARMv6-compatible processor rev 7 (v61)

    Which indicates it's a B+ model and NOT a RPi2... :(

    On the PCB it says:

    2011.12 which indicates:

    Code
    Model B Revision 2.0 (512MB)
PCB says: "Raspberry Pi (c)2011.12"

    I misunderstood Revision 2.0 with RPi 2, when in fact, it's the RPi 1...

    Can I get a big DOH! Obviously the RPi2 build won't run on the B+ model.
    So, I'm back to square one...

    Quote from Klojum

    The v1 B+ model has a full sized SDcard slot, the RPi2 has a microSD card slot IIRC.

    I still use the B+ model as a Pi-Hole server in my network.

    Yes, I found out my Pi-Hole runs on a Rpi 2. So I'll switch them up so I can use the Rpi 2 for LE10 and the Rpi 1 for Pi-Hole.

    Thanks!