LIBREELEC setup assistance

[Seatreader]

Hey guys! Sorry, I'm super new to the pi and am working on setting up a media center using Libreelec. I'm have an issue, though, where my pi isn't recognizing my external hard drive.

I have a raspberry pi b (early model, though I'm not sure if the specs (standard SD, not micro, two USB ports)

My hard drive is a Toshiba 1 TB drive, and it shows a white light ( under powered port). I'm thinking it requires USB 2.0 or 3.0, since it's pretty old as well (bought it around 2012), but does anyone have some ideas or thoughts?

I'm thinking of getting the raspberry pi b+, but I want to make sure it will be able to pull from my hdd to actually get media.

Thanks!

[rohtua]

Hi. First off for a media centre I'd recommend OSMC as if there are any issues and you have to trouble shoot them it may be easier as there's more access to the terminal, llibreelec I think uses a read only file system so you aren't able to make any changes to the system to install things like new drivers.

As far as the hdd is concerned I think it'll simply be the format of the drive. Do you know if it's formatted to ntfs or fat32 etc. ? If not you'll be able to find out either by checking it's properties on you main desktop/laptop and if you wanted to have a look on the pi if you SSH into the pi and run sudo blkid with the drive plugged in you should see a list of all the connected devices and some properties (I.e. format) regardless of whether the drive is mounted or not. I get caught out by this one fairly often when setting up a new pi.

Hope this helps.

[Seatreader]

Hmmm - I'll check out OSMC. I'm pretty used to Kodi, which is why I initially went to LibreELEC, but I didn't know it had any real constraints like that. I did check any my hard drive is NTFS (which sucks, because I can't convert it to Fat32 without losing the almost TB of data on it) but that leads to another question:

I'm decent with computers, but am unsure of what specific specs my laptop has - it's old (2010) and so is the drive (2012), but the drive only works in maybe two of the USB ports. Initially, I thought it was because my laptop may not support USB2.0 in some ports. If that's the case (and the problem with my HDD), then would I even be able to get a new TB drive to use? I use a raspberry pi b (though I can' t find the actual model I use ANYWHERE - it's only got 1 usb hub (2 ports) and an SD slot) and I know the Raspberry Pi 3 B+ supports USB2.0, but most TB drives are going to be USB 3.0 now.

Thank you for the help! I'm kind of at a loss here

[rohtua]

Sounds like you have an original pi (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Raspberry-Pi-M ... B008PT4GGC)

The formatting of the drive is better as ntfs as if you went for fat32 you'd be limited to 4gb max per individual files and going from my own experience if you rip blu ray discs the files even transcoded can be5-10gbs. So ntfs is definitely the better option there. To see it on the pi you'll have to install the ntfs filesystem

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sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

Once that's done you should be able to see the drive after you reboot, if you do use OSMC I think ntfs is installed by default but it doesn't take too long to install.

The drive being USB 1/2/3 shouldn't make a difference if it isn't working in some ports I'd suspect there may be something up with the port unless it's only that particular drive that has issues. If you plug a USB 2.0 drive into a USB 1 socket it will work but the speed will be restricted to USB 1 speed likewise if you plug a USB 2 drive into a USB 3 socket it will work but only at USB 2 speeds.

[Seatreader]

That looks exactly right! Odds are the issue there is the port - my laptop is a POS now lol.

I'll try doing the NTFS thing, but how do I access the command line on the pi? I have a NOOBS loader and it only has options for raspberian and ELEC to install. I've only tried ELEC up to this point, but don't know how to get the command line yet. I've got OSMC downloaded, but I've yet to mount it - I can get it up and running hopefully as soon as I get home today.

Thank you for the help! I'm sorry, these are probably silly questions but I really appreciate it!

EDIT: I just saw your bit about NTFS being part of OSMC, I'll give it a go this afternoon!

[rohtua]

It's no problem once your up and running with the pi you'll need to find out its IP address (probably something like 192.168.x.x) in libre/osmc you should be able to find it using the network info/setting section in the menus.

To then SSH into the pi (assuming your laptops on windows) you'll need to download and install putty. Once you've got putty open you'll see a place to enter your IP address all you need to do then is put in the IP address of the pi and hit open at the bottom of the screen. It'll ask you for your username and password. I've just had a look for libre and the default username/password should be root/libreelec (if not it shouldn't be too difficult to find on Google) and the osmc defaults are just osmc for both. Once you've logged in you can try the commands from above. Although libre probably won't let you use them because its a read only filesystem so all you can really do is add files to the storage partition but not actually make changes to the OS (I.e. install software/drivers)

If you give OSMC a go and the ntfs system isn't there just do the above and it should have you up and running in no time.

Noobs is good but when I'm experimenting with different OSes I find it easier just to download the image and use etcher. You can just take the image then and drop it into etcher and then plug in you sd (make sure you pick the right card if you have a few plugged in at once) once you've done that there's just a single button saying flash. Once that's done you can just take the card and plug it into the pi and the OS you want is ready to go. It takes out that middle step of loading Noobs and then picking your OS and depending on the OS you want to try it may not even be an option in Noobs so you'd end up on the etcher root instead. Might be worth taking a look incase you end up having to be flash a card a few times or end up with multiple cards for multiple pi's :p

[Seatreader]

That's super helpful - I'll give it a go! I hadn't heard of etcher yet. I've got the image files and the windows installer, so I'll snag that and get it *hopefully* up and running this afternoon! Thank you for all the help - it's greatly appreciated and I'll keep you posted if it works properly!

[rohtua]

No problem let me know if there's any hiccups.

[Seatreader]

I'm gonna keep working on this, but after trying to boot, it only boots into a sad face. Trying a fresh flash of it though. I've also noticed that the hard drive won't fully activate - I still get a white light for a few moments and it sounds like it starts to spin, but it just dies down and shuts itself off. Thoughts

Edit: trying the actual installer I think I found part of the issue - it's looking for the WiFi net that we don't have yet. I may have to wait to fully get it going, but shouldn't it still recognize the hard drive and read it?

[rohtua]

It could be a couple of things with the sad face, that's just OSMC's wayof telling you it's crashed somewhere along the way. I think OSMC have several versions of the image to download, I'd just check you got the right one. If you've downloaded the wrong image by accident that might be it. It could be trying to setup the pi3 version and not finding the hardware it needs. You'll be after the pi 1/0/0w version.

Are you plugging the hdd in before or after boot. Pi's are a bit tempermental when it comes to powering external drives as they need a lot of power compared to what the pi is normally running with. I've found the best way to sort it is with a powered USB hub so the hub will power the drive and leave the pi with just the data side of things. When it's accessing a drive either to read or write the drive needs more power than when it's idle and the sudden change in power can crash the pi.

When it's booting/powered on if you look in the top right corner you might see a yellow lightening bolt. That's the pi saying it wants more power. Which could be the power supply for the pi or the hdd is wanting more power than the pi can give which is causing the sad face to appear when it crashes.

I'd test booting with and without the drive plugged in. If using a hdd and not a USB stick with the pi i'd suggest making sure it's connected before boot and if possible connected via a powered USB hub. For the purposes of testing though a non powered USB hub may still help as I think the pi will be sending more power to that to keep each of the hubs ports powered than if it was idling its own USB ports.

EDIT: the original pi doesn't actually have Wi-Fi built in that didn't show up till the pi3, if a constant internet connection is a must you'll need to look at getting a Wi-Fi dongle. Unless you can run an Ethernet cable from your router to where the pi will be running.

[Seatreader]

I tried both methods of plugging in the hdd - before and after boot, but I'll try the powered USB hub to see if that works to fix that issue. Having a hub like that would solve my other issues with not having enough ports too lol. I need at least three to use a wifi dongle.

I verified that I am trying to install the pi 1 version, so I don't *think* it's that. I'm supposed to get my WiFi router today, though (new house lol) so I'll try booting then and see if that fixes things.

[rohtua]

Let me know how it goes. The Wi-Fi shouldn't have an effect but you never know. Maybe keep trying to re flash OSMC onto the card. When your booting first time do you get to the "installing OSMC" stage?

Once the card has been flashed and plugged in it should just boot straight to a blueish screen with a loading bar that'll take a few minutes to complete.

[Seatreader]

Yeah I'll let you know! First boot loads and installs everything, it's when it actually loads into OSMC. then it gets the crash face. I'll try reflashing and verify I have the correct version of it

[rohtua]

If you've got an Ethernet cable to hand, while it's got the crash face on see if you can ssh into it as per above and it might let you get to some logs/error messages.

Depending on how you're setup at the minute the simplest way might be to plug the Ethernet cable into the pi and then directly into your laptop (assuming it has an Ethernet port). Then in putty where you'd put the IP address you could try osmc.local

If that doesn't work you'll have to find out the IP address the computers assigned to the pi. Opening up command prompt and running arp -a should display all connected IP addresses and depending on how many there are it may be a bit of trial and error to find out which is the pi. It should look different to the IP given out by the router though. I think that unless you bridge the internet connection windows will assign an IP address that begins something like 169....... if it is bridging the internet connection then if your laptop IP is something like 192.168.1.x then the pi may appear as 192.168.2.x

If it let's you ssh in if you do:

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cd /var/log
ls

That should list any error logs there are and then if you run:

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sudo nano *filename*

Then it should display the log file which you should be able to copy and paste onto here and we can see if we can spot what's going on.

If you have one it may be worth trying a different power supply to see if it's a power issue.

EDIT: if its a kodi related issue if you are able to paste any logs from

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cd ~/.kodi/temp

[rohtua]

Hi, any joy with your pi yet??

[Seatreader]

We got like 50/50. I was able to get it to run and boot into the OS, but the external drive won't access at all, so I would have to find a powered hub. While doing that, though, I realized that it just barely runs and is a bit slow on the hardware side. I think I would just need the additional hardware to get it fully up, but we can't afford to drop the cash right now.

[rohtua]

A pi 3 should do it. Was ntfs installed in OSMC by default?

Libre works better on the lower powered pi's but you're restricted if you need to add things in or troubleshoot.

Yeah a powered hub/powered drive is the best way to go in my experience. If you have a spare USB stick lying around it may be worth as an interim measure copying the files you want to watch onto the USB stick and seeing if you can run with that as it'll need less power.

Your router doesn't happen to have a USB port on it for setting up a network drive at all does it. In my setup I'm running a network drive through one pi and then the OSMC pi connected to the TV is setup to read media from the network drive. I've set it all up with pi's as a couple of separate projects but depending on the router some will let you just plug in a drive and then access it over the network in which case you wouldn't need to get all the extra powered stuff and could upgrade to physically adding the storage to the pi/upgrading your pi much later.