Linux Installer & DDing Rasp 2 Image

[cship]

(1st Mar, 2015 03:31 AM)IriDium Wrote:  I've NEVER had a problem with the installer or dd on ubuntu 14.10

I use dd bs=1M ......

However, I have 2 identical micro SD readers one is suspect the other works all the time.

Hardware breaks all the time, especially if from the far east or the UK

Please remember that someone out of the goodness of their heart spend time creating the linux/OSX installer, they were not given a condo in Miami nor a Rolls Royce, so even if it's wrong, it's better than nothing.

I'm curious, what unofficial ubuntu installer are you using? If using unetbootin then there is your problem.

I'm not using ubuntu, I'm using debian wheezy amd64, before that I was using CentOS. I'm really wondering if the installation works if I use the gui installer because that is what has been most tested, I'll try it and report back.

I followed the dd instructions you recommended exactly and the installation process was very strange because I had to unplug and re-plugin the raspberry pi 2 three times before kodi would launch. The first boot hung at init but the bar stopped moving. On the second boot, "create" ran until the bar stopped moving. Then on the third boot kodi launched successfully. In the opening menu where the device is setup, I used the option to install any updates. Numerous updates were applied. When I told the system to reboot, it got stuck in at init with the bar moving across the screen forever. Unplugging and re-plugging just brought me back to the same init screen with the bar running forever.

I'm not sure why the hardware is believed to be the problem because the exact same hardware reliably runs a dd'ed openelec image without any issues whatsoever. I was also able to run OSMC for a week or so but it's alpha software and was very buggy.

The intent of my post wasn't to bash the person who took the time to create the gui install package. I know how these projects work, it's a labor of love, same thing with being a moderator. My point is that all linux users are directed to use the gui installer on the downloads page and the "linux installer" is intended to be used on bleeding edge distributions like recent ubuntu derivatives, fedora, arch, or gentoo. The linux installer is broken for any distribution that does not have the qt5 dependency. If the preferred installation method for people that are not using a bleeding edge linux distribution or are using BSD is to dd the XBian image, I feel the dd option should be clearly noted on the downloads or the installation instructions page.