librelec will run from usb - and installs to ssd - but will not boot - splash screen - then keeps restarting

    as above having issues with a fresh install on an older AMD based x86 media centre

    • motherboard is ASUS M4A88TD-M EVO
    • have successfully installed libreelec latest generic image to main internal SSD (LibreELEC-Generic-legacy.x86_64-12.2.1.img.gz)
    • LE installer reported success - "press OK to reboot" - press enter - but then does not boot

    as further context

    • this hardware was running LE fine until i attempted this fresh install from usb image -
    • last time i did a fresh install was 2023 - i think that was also the then x86 generic image - which worked fine for 2 years
    • only hardware change was it was using a 3.5" HDD as the system disk then - now replaced with known good / tested SSD now so i don't think its a hardware issue
    • have checked all physical connections - sata power / data cables - tried alterative sata cables - and alt sata ports - no change
    • have looked at bios settings but not seeing anything obvious out of place

    behaviour on start up is as follows - on push of push power button -

    1. display wakes - displays normal motherboard launch screen briefly
    2. then shows black screen with text - along lines of SYSLINUX [version] [date] EBIOS Copyright (C) 1994-20[xx] H. Peter Alvin et al. version 12. something
    3. then shows full libreelec logo / splash screen for a few seconds
    4. then black screen with curser arrow in centre - arrow blinks 3 times over around 10 seconds
    5. then loops back to 1 - and cycles indefinitely

    seems like some kind of incompatibility between the boot instructions on the newly created LE system disk vs the hardware ......??

    is using up huge amount of time i cant really afford - can anyone offer guidance to help me resolve

    • Best Answer

    It sounds like the core OS boots and runs fine but something fails/faults with Xorg so the Kodi home screen doesn't show and then Kodi is restarted (ad infinitum).

    If you have an AMD GPU the first thing I would do is reinstall with the Generic (not Generic-Legacy) image. I would also use a current LE13 nightly to have the latest drivers (not that this guarantees anything). If the Generic image does something similar, e.g. the boot splash shows but the Kodi home screen then doesn't overwrite it, you can access the 'Logfiles' Samba share over Ethernet and either upload the zip file or (better) pastebin the system and kodi logs so we can maybe see what went wrong.

    It is more worse. Due to Kodi Safe Mode the machine reboots after 5 Kodi crashes, crashes again and reboot into normal mode - continuing to crash. Getting logs is nearly impossible.

    For the records: Safe Mode can be disabled by creating /storage/.config/safemode.disable but this require to boot a linux from USB stick. You can use the LE Install Stick for that. Boot into installer Greetings page and press <Ctrl><Alt>-F3 to get a console. Use blkid to identify the storage partition e.g. /dev/sda2, type:

    Code
    mkdir -p /tmp/mnt
mount /dev/sda2 /tmp/mnt
touch /tmp/mnt/.config/safemode.disable

    If all done reboot

    You will still see no Kodi GUI but the Samba Share can be accessed over Ethernet.

    IMO support for old ATI GPUS was dropped for Generic-legacy in LE12.2 and LE13. The Generic image may still support them.

    thanks for the input guys :thumbup:

    the device has Onboard Graphics: Integrated ATI Radeon HD 4250 GPU release date around 2010 - which is pretty old - and why i started with the legacy version

    i guess i will try the latest generic image to see if that fares any better - but i had a hell of a game getting the media centre to boot from the LE USB install image - it just wouldn't recognise the USB as bootable - then somehow after around a dozen times it somehow did .....

    think its a windows vs linux thing as has been an issue on other devices with mounting linux based boot media made on a win 11 machine :/