Raspberry Pi Forums

I just got the raspberry pi, have formatted the SD card with NOOBS, and connected the pi to a power source, keyboard, mouse, and a tv monitor. However, I seem to be stuck in HDMI "safe mode" which is preventing me from choosing my operating system. How do I get out of this "safe mode" and return to just "HDMI Mode?"
Thanks in advanced.

Wiggle the mouse, does the cursor move?
If not, unplug the mouse, count to ten, plug the mouse back in. Wiggle the mouse to see if the cursor moves.
If not try a different mouse.
If not, then disconnect the power, reboot
If you can move the mouse you can operate the NOOBS menu system (it doesn't need any keyboard interaction)

If that doesn't work then take a step back, reformat the SDCard with the SD Formatter tool, check your NOOBS.zip download (or NOOBSlite.zip download) using sha1sum to ensure it's complete and a good copy.

NOOBS.zip should be 1,209,864,481 bytes in size (check that first before running sha1sum)
NOOBSlite.zip should be 20,918,392 bytes

Unzip it to the SDCard again and try again.

susanwoj wrote:I just got the raspberry pi, have formatted the SD card with NOOBS, and connected the pi to a power source, keyboard, mouse, and a tv monitor. However, I seem to be stuck in HDMI "safe mode" which is preventing me from choosing my operating system. How do I get out of this "safe mode" and return to just "HDMI Mode?"
Thanks in advanced.

Which version of NOOBS (eg. 1.3.2 lite or 1.3.2 full)?
By "HDMI safe mode" do you mean you have a low-res display and you can't get to the O.S. selection boxes to tick them etc?
(It would be useful if you could post a photo. of the TV/monitor screen. Note also the Pi has it's own "safe mode" of booting which is different to what I think you mean)
If you have access to a TV with a composite video input (yellow RCA / AV input, or SCART connector with an adapter) you could try using NOOBS with that (selecting video mode 3 or 4) - for more info. see here:
http://www.cpmspectrepi.webspace.virgin ... ellow.html
Trev.

booting in safe mode happens when you pull gpio header pin 5 (SCL1) low while booting. This can be overruled with an entry in config.txt, if you cannot prevent the pin being pulled low.

mahjongg wrote:booting in safe mode happens when you pull gpio header pin 5 (SCL1) low while booting. This can be overruled with an entry in config.txt, if you cannot prevent the pin being pulled low.

It is 100% entirely unlikely that, that is the case.

The OP reports that it's a new machine with a new card with NOOBS, the likelyhood of her having pin5 low and needing to update config.txt in that way is close to zero (unless it's dead/faulty hardware). If NOOBS needs that setting it should be a default value.

DougieLawson wrote:

mahjongg wrote:booting in safe mode happens when you pull gpio header pin 5 (SCL1) low while booting. This can be overruled with an entry in config.txt, if you cannot prevent the pin being pulled low.

It is 100% entirely unlikely that, that is the case.

The OP reports that it's a new machine with a new card with NOOBS, the likelyhood of her having pin5 low and needing to update config.txt in that way is close to zero (unless it's dead/faulty hardware). If NOOBS needs that setting it should be a default value.

I know, but it is still worth mentioning. even if we are taking about "HDMI safe mode", not "boot safe mode", a wholly different topic!
seems I didn't really read the question too well, and just read the (false) topic name.
changed topic name to "stuck in HDMI safe mode" instead of just "stuck in safe mode".

NOOBS always boots in "recovery" mode, which forces HDMI to 640x480 like safe mode would. This does not cause a problem with OS selection because all the menus are designed for the low resolution.

We see this error sh: can't access tty; job control turned off

If we look in user/bin we see various files but don't know which will run installer.

What size if your SDCard?
NOOBS needs a 4GB SDCard minimum.

32 gig SD card. We are plugging into TV monitor. Did it on two different monitors and got same messages. We had someone come over and use one of the commands in the usr/bin directory that got it access to the is choices but now he can't remember the command and we are stuck
Thx in advance.

How do you connect to your TV?
Is the TV PAL or NTSC if you're using an RCA cable?

On the NOOBS menu there's a option to not use HDMI and to use PAL or NTSC instead. (It rewrites the /boot/config.txt.)