Information Blog

Saturday, March 19, 2016

Updating your Raspberry Pi Packages Kernel and Firmware Also fixing omxplayer problems

**Note, this is for Raspbian and other Debian based distros**

Also, this tends to fix Omxplayer when it wont work

Ive found that almost all of the omxplayer problems are solved by properly updating your raspberry pi. Before you say "I already did that!", read below to make sure you have taken all of the steps since the kernel and the firmware require different commands.

Updating Packages

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

This updates the package list and upgrades all the packages. You can use the -y flag if you hate typing yes. After the kernel and all packages are upgraded, this command should show you:
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded

Updating the Kernel

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade

This upgrades your linux kernel distribution. These are regularly released. You can see which version you have by running:
uname -a

Right now I have "Linux raspberrypi 3.6.11+"

Updating the Firmware

sudo rpi-update

This upgrades the firmware as long as you have the Hexxeh script downloaded. It and instructions can be found here:
https://github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update

If you are having issues with video, make sure your memory split is set appropriately. I uses 128/128.
You can set this by editing /boot/config.txt and adding the line gpu_mem=128

If something is wrong, especially with omxplayer, make sure your packages, firmware, and kernel are all up to date. When they are, your problems will most likely be fixed.

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How to fix Raspberry Pi boot problems

If you have any problems with your SD card messing up or your Pi not booting, this is an attempt at documenting my issues with booting or SD card corruption and how I fixed them.

This can range from problems with rpi-update to changing the /boot/config.txt file to restoring the SD card superblocks from the superblock backup to Oh No my SD card is hosed and I need to recover files. Weve all been there so need to be embarrassed about messing something up. Things mess up a lot.

Boot Problems

First of all, this is a great reference that I use a lot.

Start by figuring out what changed.

Did you just change your /boot/config.txt?
Did you delete any important files?
Did you run rpi-update?
Did you add a new device?
Did you overclock too much?
Do you get a kbd prompt?
Did it run some weird commands on the shutdown about "device still open for writing"?

If you just changed your config.txt, you should change it back and then change line by line while rebooting until you see what option is causing the error.

If you deleted any files, restore them.

If you ran rpi-update and it wont reboot, try making your /boot/config.txt the default one. The cma_lwm and cma_hwm options sometimes cause the new firmware to break.
If that doesnt work or you have flashing light errors, restore the old boot files by copying the /boot.bak/ files into /boot/
sudo cp -ap /boot.bak/* /boot/

If you recently overclocked, try reducing it back down. I run 1100 MHz easily but 1200 MHz tends to be unstable for me.

If you get a kbd prompt or error, check your power supply to make sure its supplying enough voltage, then reduce any overclocking or overvolting in your config.txt, then (if the first two dont solve it) replace the boot files like described above.

If you have a kbd prompt that you couldnt fix, you get read/write or I/O errors on shutdown or startup, or

it cant find the ext4 partition, then you have been a victim of SD card corruption.
Dont worry though. There are still ways to recover your files.

The first thing you should do is make a copy of your SD card image.
Plug the card into another computer with linux and use dd to copy the image. Then you can try to fix the image file without further corrupting the data.
The first thing to try to do is replace your superblock with a backup. To do that click here.
If that doesnt work and all else fails, it is possible to use scalpel and custom recovery configuration to get your files. See here for how to do that.

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