RPi5 + Libreelec 12 (various latest nightly builds) + Latest EEPROM 2712 + Multi USB powered hub with 4 USB NTFS drives = crash and no boot

Hello.

I had a fantastic couple of months with the hardware/software in the subject, except the EEPROM version, that was stuck on september 2023 version.

Saturday unfortunately I found the possibility to upgrade the EEPROM in Libreelec update panel, but after I checked the button for the upgrade, the RPi5 couldn't boot anymore, displaying a lot of errors in memory and something related to the USB drives. Without the USB system attached the RPi5 boot normally; if I attach the hub after booting, everything freezes and I have to do a cold reboot.

Since I needed the system for music (3 discs for about 9TB, almost full) and for movies (1 disc for 5TB, full), I tried to fix the problem at once, and I ended switching back to LE 11 (last nightly build). With LE 11 (and EEPROM 2712 obviously) everything is OK.

Unfortunately I had to rebuild all the music library (export/import didn't work, I don't know why) and moreover the library with Kodi 20 is not as complete and rich and precise as with Kodi 21...

I didn't save logs because I was quite in a hurry... now I can only wait for a stable LE 12 without these problems, or try to downgrade the EEPROM, but this last thing seems not so simple.

Thanks in advance and kind regards

Alex

Quote from elliottmc

It's not the answer you are wanting, I know, but with that amount of storage and such a large database, you will probably get a much better experience if you use a NAS for storage rather than locally attached drives (easier to maintain) and run MySQL on the NAS to have a shared database.

Yes, you're right... I've always been quite a nerd and I love to play with technology, so I thought at once about a NAS at the time in which I decided to liquify all my music in 2016.

But... I'd use the NAS only for RPi5 and its cost would be extremely higher than my actual 4 Seagate USB3 external disk drive. Moreover the performances with multiple USB drives (upgradable: I've got 2 2TB for music that probably will become 2 5TB) are fantastic both with 24bit .flac music files and with 4K movie files (with RPi5 obviously).

Thanks anyway... I'm looking forward to install more stable versions of LE 12.

Quote from HarryH

It could depends on my bad English, but what should I expect under a „Multi USB powered hub“ ? It‘s a powered hub? Or a USB hub which gets the power from 1 or multiple USB ports of the RPi5 only? No external power supply?

If the answer for the last question is „yes“, it sounds critical to me, because the RPi5 alone needs a stronger power supply 27W than the RPi4 (18W). And you will drive 4 additional USB drives. This could be far away of the official current specification for a USB port or the RPi5 board itself.

If you are still below the current limit of the RPi5 USB ports and your power supply is powerful enough, do you know about this config.txt settings?
https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/…-raspberry-pi-5

usb_max_current_enable=1

and in EEPROM config:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/…PSU_MAX_CURRENT

PSU_MAX_CURRENT=5000

One of the other possibilities is, that something regarding the NTFS support was changed with the recent kernels.

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Hello Harry.

The answer is the first case: it's an autonomous POWERED hub with a lot of USB slots, connected to only one Raspberry USB3 port. Now I've been using it for several years since my previous Raspberry Pi3 exactly because of the limitations in power of the Raspy. In my vision is the lot cheaper and more flexible way (I use to frequently move the USB drives to the ports of my notebook for moving and tagging new files and other things) to have a NAS.

About recent kernels: isn't it the last LE 12 kernel the same as the last LE 11?

Hey, today I tried with the latest nightly build (20240313, about 2 or 3 versions after the problematic one) and everything is OK now!

- System booting

- Multi USB storage perfectly functioning

- Latest EEPROM version

- Latest LE and Linux kernel versions

- Latest Kodi version

I'm rescanning libraries right now. Thanks a lot everyone!