Pi - Complete Hardware Failure..

[rgadsdon]

I have had my Raspberry Pi for over a month now, installed /upgraded to Fedora 17, and tried the OpenELEC XBMC builds..

I have and just plugged in a (powered) USB hub, got some nasty-looking port errors, so unplugged the hub and tried to reboot the Pi..

Now, the Pi is dead.

All I get is the single red LED. The power supply and SD Card are known/good. Tried unplugging everything except SD Card and keyboard, still nothing. Tried unplugging everything and leaving it for a couple of minutes... Still dead. Tried a different SD Card / image, and a different power supply.. Still nothing...

I know the use of a hub is (apparently) problematic, but I wasn't prepared for it to kill the device!

Robert Gadsdon.

[abishur]

I'm reluctant to think this killed the pi outright. I know I've seen some code that runs only during the foot boot of an image, it sounds like you interrupted that process (which has rendered an SD card worthless to me until I re-imaged it.)

If you wouldn't mind, would you take that original SD card, format it completely, and re-image it using the debian distro? Then without the USB hub attached, see if it will boot up off that image?

[croston]

I had a similar issue with my RPi when I shorted out a couple of GPIO pins by accident. It turned out I had completely killed the SD card. I couldn't even reimage it. I suggest you try a new SD card to see what happens.

[rgadsdon]

@abishur, thanks for the fast response!

I was actually trying your suggestion (but with the OpenELEC build, as that was the easiest/smallest to fit on my third - 2GB - SD Card..) And - it boots OK. So - it would appear that the SD Card had been zapped somehow? I put the (original, non-booting) card in an SD Reader on my main (Fedora 16 x86_64) system, and it mounted correctly (VFAT boot, and EXT4 root partitions..) The only odd thing I noticed, was that the start.elf file had had its timestamp changed to 01/01/1980.. The file size etc. seemed correct... I overwrote with a new boot partition image, but that card still doesn't work..

Still, the important thing is that the Pi is alive again! I will track down the problems with the SD Card in due course, but thanks for your help!

Robert Gadsdon.

[jbeale]

I put the (original, non-booting) card in an SD Reader on my main (Fedora 16 x86_64) system, and it mounted correctly (VFAT boot, and EXT4 root partitions..) The only odd thing I noticed, was that the start.elf file had had its timestamp changed to 01/01/1980.. The file size etc. seemed correct... I overwrote with a new boot partition image, but that card still doesn't work..

That is quite interesting to me. Something changed on the original SD card that is apparently invisible to the main x86 system, and is durable to rewriting the boot partition, and prevents the Pi from booting. It would be very interesting to know what that something is. It might shed light on a lot of different SD card problems that have been reported.

[mabrowning]

I've actually seen this happen quite a bit. I was using an OpenELEC image as well, and if I would reboot without unmounting /flash (equivalent to /boot in the debian image), then the RPI would refuse to boot every time (stuck at only the single red LED as in the OP) until mounting on some other computer and unmounting cleanly.

[rgadsdon]

Just FYI... I found what the problem was on that non-booting SD Card... Somehow, the kernel.img file had 'vanished', which resulted (of course) in the scenario mentioned..
I replaced this file from a known/good 3.1.10 backup, and everything works OK, now...
Still worrying, that this can 'magically' happen...
I also tried cutting the power line (pin 1 ) on an old USB cable, and using that to connect the hub, but the catastrophic USB errors still occurred every time extra devices were plugged in.. I also confirmed that those devices (USB sound card) were recognised correctly, if plugged in directly to the Pi USB ports..

Robert Gadsdon.

[PS_Aitch]

For what it is worth, I thought my Pi had died entirely, all SD cards no good, nothing worked, then I changed Power Supply and everything sprang into life, no apparent problems anywhere in the system at all.
Just goes to show that checking the PSU is a vital step in triage because the power supply did make the Pi do something (red light on the board) but didn't work properly, leading me to assume (incorrectly) that the hardware had failed.

I'll know better next time. I now have a brand new Pi bought on the basis that the initial one had failed, whereas I just really needed the PSU which came with it. Wonder what I'll use the new one for...