Everything was going so well

[JMac]

Hi folks, I’m fearing the worst at this point.

My magicmirror has been running really nicely on the whole for like a year.
Because computers aren’t really my thing I’ve avoided doing too many updates when the notifications have popped up.

Earlier this week I noticed the screen had completely frozen and the pi was no longer responsive to keyboard inputs, so I felt I didn’t have a choice but to pull the power and try to restart the pi.

now I’m stuck with a screen has a long list of processes, the the bottom one reads,
[ 3.399958] —[ end Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(179,2) ]—

is this game over and start again or can any of the previous setup be rescued.
I genuinely don’t think I know how I did it first time round and got it working as well as it did.

Any help appreciated.

[sdetweil]

@JMac said in Everything was going so well:

not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block

well, in hopes of recovering, make a new sd card,
boot it
mount the old sd card in the pi USB (with appropriate adapters of course)
then find the device for the USB port

and then find the partitions

sudo  fdisk -l

maybe it can recover with

sudo e2fsck -f -v /dev/mmcblk0p2

mmcblk0p2 MIGHT be right, but dont know

THEN if this recovers the partition…
I would run my backup/restore script (see https://github.com/sdetweil/MagicMirror-backup-restore)
to get the MM setup saved, and u can restore that to the new sd card system
use my installer to install MM
https://github.com/sdetweil/MagicMirror_scripts

then restore

[JMac]

@sdetweil my apologies for the very very late reply. To be honest I haven’t wanted to get into it for fear I’ll have to start again.
is this an SD card failure (would it be better to run the MM from a USB drive? I don’t know how easy that is to do.
Going to try and get this looked at now.

[JMac]

@sdetweil managed to find an old SD card and put a fresh Pi OS on it.
Mounted the old one in an adapter, when I run your sudo fdisk -1, I get
fdisk:invalid option–‘1’
Try ‘fdisk --help’ for more information.

I guess I don’t try you recovery command until this one is happy?

Edit to add, I do have - on the home screen - a boot file and a rootfs file from the old SD card.

[OldSunGuy]

@JMac that should be the letter (l) not a number (1) .

sudo fdisk -l

[JMac]

@OldSunGuy well that was a great start :man_facepalming_light_skin_tone:

if I can get the steps above to work, can I get the original SD card to work again? It’s a samsung evo micro sd and way better than the unbranded one I’ve found to try and recover the original setup.

[JMac]

I get the same issue. Sudo fdisk -i returns
fdisk: invalid option - - ‘i’
try 'fdisk - - help fro more information

any thoughts?

[mumblebaj]

@JMac That is not an i it is an l (small letter L)

[JMac]

@mumblebaj that’s worked.
I’m now presented with
/dev/mmcblk0p1
/dev/mmcblk0p2

so follow @sdetweil step above and go with the second option?

[mumblebaj]

@JMac Yeah, would suggest you follow his recommendations.