Upgrading the MeCool M8S Pro+

Quote from appas

Hi all. I have a MeCool M8S Pro+ that i am trying to upgrade from LibreELEC 8.2.3.1 to 9.2.8.5 from https://github.com/dtechsrv/LibreELEC-AML .

The github page just says

I have placed the .tar file (LibreELEC-M8S-Plus.arm-9.2.8.5.tar) in the Update folder via SMB and rebooted, but i just get the same old version and no upgrade process starts. Is there a way to manually start the update? Why is it not starting automatically, if that's what should happen?

I might add that after a reboot, the Update folder gets emptied...

Mecool M8S Pro+ and OTT M8S+ are not the same box at all.

In addition, several of Mecool M8S Pro+ models are available, so I need an accurate model number. The plain model (without additional letters) is equipped with the S905X SoC, but the "L" version is built with S912. (The S912 is not even supported by me.)

Moreover, updating from v8.2 to v9.2 is not recommended just because the first use native 64-bit Kodi and with native 64-bit binary add-ons, while the second uses 32-bit Kodi (only the kernel is 64-bit).

Quote from appas

My box says S905X 2GB/16GB.

I suggest you try to make a clean install on an sd card with S905/MXQ-4K-Pro_2G image.

You need to copy your old remote.conf to the root directory of the card.

Quote from appas

Ok, I tried that image, both the update route and with a clean image. The update just booted to the old version of LibreELEC, as before (and wiped the Update directory). The SD card made with LibreELEC-AML.USB-SD.Creator did not boot - the box fell back to booting from internal NAND, meaning it started the built-in Android OS when that card was inserted.

Okay, I suggested that you skip the update. It won't work either because neither the device model nor the architecture match.

Did you use the toothpick method when booting from the SD card? If not, please use it, beacuse I suspect that the aml_autoscript of version 8.2 and 9.2 are quite different, and it only runs again if the toothpick method is used.

Quote from appas

edit: Actually, looks like I have no network connectivity on the new install. Could you help me with that, still?

In the System info > Network, it says "Link: Not connected". Under LibreELEC > Connections, nothing is shown. Previously, this is where I connected to my Wifi.

Do I need to do something to enable the Wifi on my device, to get my AP to show here?

I need some log from your box. Please log in to the box via SSH over Ethernet, then put this in the command line:

dmesg | paste

... and post the link you received here. Hopefully, something will be revealed about the state of your wifi, because unfortunately I don't know what kind of wifi chip is in your box.

Can you possibly do the same under version 8.2?

Unfortunately, I didn't get much closer to the wifi, but it seems that there is some kind of SDIO wireless chip on the motherboard.

We should somehow find out what is causing your boot issues, because we can't move on to the next step.

Try creating a new SD card first. But before that, perform a complete overwrite format on it with this program: SD Card Formatter.

Then use this to write the previous snapshot image to the card: LibreELEC-AML USB-SD Creator.

Also, make sure you only use SDHC cards (max. 64 GB), as these boxes are not really compatible with SDXC.