How to Install LibreELEC

LibreELEC boots from external media (SD-Card or Thumbdrive), so you need to write the image to SD/USB storage.

Preparation

  • [x] Download the Win32DiskImager.
  • [x] Extract and install it on your Windows PC.
  • [x] An SD Card and a Card Reader or a Thumdrive (U-Disk) is required, make sure there is nothing important on your card as ALL the data will be erased after the following operations.

Download The LibreELEC Image

You can download LibreELEC images from VIM1/VIM2.
Note: Image names containing “KVIM” is an image for VIM1, and “KVIM2” is for VIM2.

Write Image to SD/USB Storage

There are two ways to write a LibreELEC image to SD/USB storage:

Using Windows

  1. Run Win32DiskImager.
  2. Insert the SD/USB storage into your PC, it should appear as a new drive letter.
  3. Select the .img file and verify that the destination drive letter is correct, then click write:
    Image of Win32DiskImagerLibreELEC.jpg
  4. When the write-process is complete, you can safely remove the SD/USB storage by right-clicking on the drive in “Windows Explorer” and selecting “Eject”.

Using Linux

Get The SD/USB Storage Device Node:
After you’ve inserted the SD-Card to your PC, use dmesg | tail to find out which /dev/sdX it is located at.
You can also use parted or fdisk, It should look something similar to /dev/sdX:

$ sudo parted -l
...
Model: Mass Storage Device (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 3997MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      16.5MB  3989MB  3973MB  primary  fat32        boot

Make sure the disk is unmounted:

$ sudo umount /dev/sdb1

Use dd to write the disk image into SD/USB storage:

sudo dd if=LibreELEC-S905_SD_USB.aarch64-17.6_20180122-KVIM.img of=/dev/sdb bs=4M && sync

Notice: The sync flag is to ensure that all changes are synced to the SD/USB storage before removing it.

Eject the SD/USB storage:

$ sudo eject /dev/sdb

Boot LibreELEC from the SD/USB storage

In order to boot from the SD/USB storage, you need Android running on the eMMC to activate the Multi-Boot.

2 to activate the Multi-Boot:

1). Keys mode (Side-Buttons)
2). Activate Multi-Boot using Android.

  • Enter Settings>About Device->System->Updates
  • Click select and choose aml_autosript.zip
  • Click update, then the system will reboot and boot from the external media image stored on the SD-Card.
    Note: Don’t use your PC as a USB-Host to supply the electrical-power, lest Multi-Boot will fail to activate!

NOTICE

  • Android N has a permission issue; Your bootable SD card will be damaged, if you attempt to use it to boot.
  • Android O also has a permission issue. If you want to boot Ubuntu with Linux 4.9 please refer to this guide.