Pi does not boot after rpi-update

[Stendy]

Hi,
today I performed rpi-update but after reboot Raspberry-pi seems to be dead. The green LED flashes a few times and then stays off. The only LED on is the red one. When connected to TV via the RCA, a colourful pattern appears and hangs there.

The .firmware_revision content is: d860bb689b8a66a303325d87a57ab33221c5a5e7

Please give me advice, how to resurrect my Pi without need to format the card again.

Edit: I was using Raspbian “wheezy” distro.

[MaxK1]

Had the same problem with rpi-update and downloaded from github. Seems that at least the 240 and 224 splits are "bad." If you have your old /boot/start.elf, you should be able to use that.

[nommo]

Hi - exactly the same happened to me but I was on Squeeze.

Grab the firmware from Github and copy it over to your SD card manually. I didn't find out what exactly had gone wrong but that fixed it... https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware ... aster/boot

Cheers
Paul

[MaxK1]

I grabbed it off github as well and it didn't work (after I tried 2 rpi-updates) Just used the previous
start.elf from my other pi. What split did you use? I tried 240 and 224...

[Stendy]

Thanks for your advices.
I've downloaded the whole firmware from github, but the problem persists. Additionally the file system seems to got corrupted. I can't now rewrite the files on card with their older version from github. I will try to format the firmware partition of the card.

[PaulCheffus]

Thanks for your advices.
I've downloaded the whole firmware from github, but the problem persists. Additionally the file system seems to got corrupted. I can't now rewrite the files on card with their older version from github. I will try to format the firmware partition of the card.

Hi

Everytime this has happened to me I have needed to run chkdsk with the /f switch on the FAT partition from Windows, then replace with the files from github.

Cheers

Paul

[Stendy]

I've repaired the partition using CheckDisk as Paul advised and copied firmware files from Aug 31 on it. Pi now boots normally. Problem solved. Thanks for your help.

[MaxK1]

Didn't have a mangled/corrupt card - just had to replace start.elf.

[rspitz]

I've repaired the partition using CheckDisk as Paul advised and copied firmware files from Aug 31 on it. Pi now boots normally. Problem solved. Thanks for your help.

Please advise on how to get the firmware files from Aug 31. I am a newbie to github and could only find the complete set of files for the newest version, with which my RPi doesn't boot any more and which gave me corruption on my boot partition after using rpi-update.
Also, is there a method to download the files all at once? I only succeeded in downloading them one by one.

[PaulCheffus]

I've repaired the partition using CheckDisk as Paul advised and copied firmware files from Aug 31 on it. Pi now boots normally. Problem solved. Thanks for your help.

Please advise on how to get the firmware files from Aug 31. I am a newbie to github and could only find the complete set of files for the newest version, with which my RPi doesn't boot any more and which gave me corruption on my boot partition after using rpi-update.
Also, is there a method to download the files all at once? I only succeeded in downloading them one by one.

Hi

The newest files are the ones you want. Using your Windows PC or Mac or whatever write these files to the FAT partition of the SD card.

The corruption appears to occur for me when using rpi-update.

Cheers

Paul

[MaxK1]

I've repaired the partition using CheckDisk as Paul advised and copied firmware files from Aug 31 on it. Pi now boots normally. Problem solved. Thanks for your help.

Please advise on how to get the firmware files from Aug 31. I am a newbie to github and could only find the complete set of files for the newest version, with which my RPi doesn't boot any more and which gave me corruption on my boot partition after using rpi-update.
Also, is there a method to download the files all at once? I only succeeded in downloading them one by one.

Download as a zip file (top left button) normally. You want something recent, but not what is out there now. I just grabbed the stuff off my other pi before attempting to upgrade it (which I won't do now)
But normally, just rpi-update "just works"

Always have something to fall back on when it doesn't

[Stendy]

I've repaired the partition using CheckDisk as Paul advised and copied firmware files from Aug 31 on it. Pi now boots normally. Problem solved. Thanks for your help.

Please advise on how to get the firmware files from Aug 31. I am a newbie to github and could only find the complete set of files for the newest version, with which my RPi doesn't boot any more and which gave me corruption on my boot partition after using rpi-update.
Also, is there a method to download the files all at once? I only succeeded in downloading them one by one.

Hi

The newest files are the ones you want. Using your Windows PC or Mac or whatever write these files to the FAT partition of the SD card.

The corruption appears to occur for me when using rpi-update.

Cheers

Paul

Hi again,
Paul was right. I copied the newest firmware files on the card by Windows and it works fine. So the problem was truly caused by corrupted filesystem. I did not noticed it when I tried these firmware files for the first time, because no error was reported.

[MaxK1]

Odd - when I grabbed the files from github (after 2 failed rpi-updates) it still didn't work and I reverted to
a copy of start.elf from my other pi. But hey, if you got it working, great.

[Trixster]

I have given up trying to get RPi-update to work, it just bricks my pi every time.

[dom]

I have given up trying to get RPi-update to work, it just bricks my pi every time.

If you start with clean image of "2012-08-16-wheezy-raspbian.zip", boot up and run rpi-update after first boot, does it fail?
I'm aware of problems if you start with an older image, but I'd expect what I described to work.

[Trixster]

Hi Dom, yes I've started with a fresh install of that image every time but no joy. I've made no changes to config.txt or the memory split.

[PaulCheffus]

I have given up trying to get RPi-update to work, it just bricks my pi every time.

If you start with clean image of "2012-08-16-wheezy-raspbian.zip", boot up and run rpi-update after first boot, does it fail?
I'm aware of problems if you start with an older image, but I'd expect what I described to work.

Hi

I think this might be related to the manufacturer of the SD card. My Kingston ones work everytime but the Transcend ones get corrupted.

Cheers

Paul

[MaxK1]

I found no corruption, and the problem turned out to be I was overclocking sdram a wee bit to much.
Backed off a little bit and it fired right up. I must have been right on the edge.

[rvilela]

I have a similar problem. But the rpi works when booting with HDMI/DVI, the RCA hangs on the color pattern after I did the rpi-update today, but still booted. As I tried to run a xbmc package on Arch. 10 sec later hanged.
Before the rpi-update there was a lot of kernel panics just after the rpi logo.

[Bencom]

I had to comment out the overscan setting in /boot/config.txt after rpi-update on the 8th.
Latest firmware seems to have set overscan to a default that works correctly on my Philips 236V LCD.
My previous setting for all overscan was (minus) -40. As stated in the config file, screen size and overscan are related which may explain why my RPi blanked the screen after the update. To much, not enough, something. Hope this helps.

[AnguishedEnd]

I was following the directions posted here to set up a web server.

When I got to the step to update the firmware using rpi-update it successfully completed without errors, but when I went to do a restart my board did not boot back up. I now get 6 flashes from the OK led which meas start.elf did not start.

Do I just copy the start.elf from here and replace it?

Update: So I couldn't just copy the start.elf file over from my computer after downloading the entire firmware repository from github. I had to do what above user PaulCheffus said. Use chkdsk utility on the SD card. Now I am able to copy start.elf over to it (replacing the corrupted one) and boot up normally. Thanks

[500driver]

Hi,
I had the problem of a not booting RPi, too. The LED blinked 3 times, but copying the start.elf file didn't help.
As there were non backuped files and configs on the file system, I tried to revive the OS.
I had a second SD card with a bootable old Raspbian Installation and I did the following:
* created an image of the bootable old Raspbian FAT partition on my notebook using DriveImage XML (backup function).
* then I restored this Image to the FAT partition on the first SD Card.
That helped and my system booted again.
Thomas