Is my Pi dead?

[mypiness]

I was playing with some GPIO pins on the weekend and things got very hot. Now all I get when I turn on the RPI is:

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Can't access tty: job control turned off

Pi_Screen.jpg (51.72 KiB) Viewed 531 times

I've some read some posts that have said it can be resolved by changing the safemode settings but this have not worked.

I've tried a couple of different SDCards/NOOB versions but without success.
My RPI is a 2011.12

Any help appreciated?

Thanks.

[rpdom]

Have you got anything still connected to Pin 5 of the GPIO connector? If so, remove it and try booting again.

If not, then I'm afraid you have damaged some of the GPIOs and possibly other parts of the Pi's processor as well.

In that case your Pi will never work properly again, but you may be able to get it to boot an do some things if you add

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ignore_safe_mode=1

to your config.txt file.

What you're seeing is called "Safe Mode" or "Recovery Mode". It's a special mini Linux system that runs in memory only and can be used for recovery purposes in some situations. It is enabled when GPIO3 is connected to ground. Normally that pin is pulled to 3.3V by a resistor on the board, but if the pin's internal circuitry has been damaged that won't work and you end up in Safe Mode.

[mypiness]

Thanks rpdom.

No, there is nothing connected to pin 5, I've disconnected everything apart from the keyboard and monitor.

From the screen in the pic (the Recovery mode), where do I navigate to, to find the config.txt file so that I can add the ignore_safe_mode=1 setting?

[rpdom]

You'll only have a limited set of tools available, but you should be able to do this.

If you installed with a straight Raspbian image (using win32diskimager or dd), you should be able to do this

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mount -t vfat /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt
ls /mnt/config.txt   # Make sure this shows something before continuing! 
echo "ignore_safe_mode=1" >> /mnt/config.txt
umount /mnt
reboot

If the reboot doesn't work you'll need to cycle the power. It is safe to do so after a few seconds.

If you installed using NOOBS then use mmcblk0p5 instead of mmcblk0p1. The rest is the same.

[mypiness]

Thanks for the clear instructions, rpdom -- it would appear that my pi is dead!