Everything was going so well

JMac

@mumblebaj cool. Do you have any idea why the initial SD card would be failing to launch when the pi is turned on?
as mentioned above it’s a good quality SD card so am I daft to consider (providing I can recover a copy of my old setup) copying it back onto to the original SD card, am I asking for trouble in the future?

JMac

@sdetweil so I ran e2fsck -f -v /dev/mmcblk0p2

got a warning about SEVERE filesystem damage.

went yes and got ]e2fsck : permission denied while trying to open /dev/mmcblk0p2
you must have r/w access to the filesystem or be root.

How do I get around this?

mumblebaj

@JMac I am sure Sam is probably still sleeping, but you can try sudo e2fsck -f -v /dev/mmcblk0p2. This should run as root user.

JMac

@mumblebaj when I run that in terminal I get,
e2fsck 1.46.2 (28-Feb-2021)
/dev/mmcblk0p2 is mounted.
e2fsck: cannot continue, aborting.

Any thoughts, is that image/setup a goner?

mumblebaj

@JMac You could try systemctl stop udev and then try running it again. My knowledge of these linux things are not that great. Or service udev stop might work. I am leaning towards the card being a goner thought.

JMac

@mumblebaj It would be way easier if I could recover the previous setup but I’m starting to feel like it might be worth starting the entire MM install again, but for me that’s the least interesting parts of Pi builds.

The files are still available on the old SD card so the card itself isn’t completely kaput.

edit to add I ran the systemctl stop udev command.
put in the password of the MM to allow this.
re ran sudo e2fsck -f -v /dev/mmcblk0p2
and get the same e2fcsk: cannot continue, aborting error.

mumblebaj

@JMac You can use the scripts from Sam to install MM. You can find them here. Always do a backup of your install with one of Sam’s script as this would save tears in the end. I have been there before and the backup and restore process saved me a few times.

Scripts can be located here:
https://github.com/sdetweil/MagicMirror_scripts

sdetweil

@JMac you cant whack on a file system if its mounted for access,do

df -k

will show u the devices and where they are mounted then sudo umount /dev/… what you were using

df -k should show it gone
then the fsck… commands should work w sudo

sdetweil

@JMac if u can get the config, custom
css and and listing of the modules ( ls command) we can build the backup/restore files

JMac

@sdetweil sorry to be dense how do I know what I’m unmounting?
am I unmounting /dev/mmcblk0p1?? it says thats mounted on /boot.

edit to add,
after re running sudo fdisk -l it would appear the old memory card (with my previous MM setup on) is on Disk /dev/sda

thats classed as Disk Model: storage device (as it’s mounted in the usb drive atm) does this seem correct? is this the one which needs unmounting?

sdetweil

@JMac well mounted means accessible by the filesystem

so it’s /dev/sda
the usb installed sd card

so

sudo unmount /dev/sda
and then run fsck on that

JMac

so I run the command sudo umount /dev/sda
and get
umount: /dev/sda: not mounted.

so should now go,
e2fsck -f -v /dev/sda
not the original
e2fsck -f -v mmcblk0p2

?

sdetweil

@JMac correct… you had to find the disk name

JMac

@sdetweil when i run e2fsck…
I get
e2fsck: permission denied while trying to open /dev/sda
you must have r/w access to the filesystem or be root.

sdetweil

@JMac yes, you must use sudo on both commands unmount and fsck

sorry I was unclear

normal users should not be able to mess with hardware, so one must act as root

JMac

@sdetweil I run sudo umount…
and get
umount:… not mounted,

then run
sudo e2fsck -f -v /dev/sda
and get
e2fsck 1.46.2 (28-feb-2021)
/dev/sda is in use
efsck: connot continue, aborting.

sdetweil

@JMac hm… wonder what is using it?

can you open the disks app on the pi from the dedktop menu

JMac

@sdetweil on the home screen I have 2 drive icons under the wastebasket.
one is boot
the other is rootfs

i then have the option to eject these in the file manager

sdetweil

@JMac there should be that drive on /dev/sda too

JMac

@sdetweil I’m a little confused (I’d imagine thats pretty clear at this point).

i run sudo fdisk -1
and get
Disk /dev/ram0 through to Disk /dev/ram15
the list then has
Disk/dev/mmcblk0: 7.4GiB (my thinking is this is the current/new sd card)

Device
/dev/mmcblk0p1
/dev/mmcblk0p2

Disk /dev/sda:59.69 GiB (I again assume this is the old SD with my original MM setup)

Device
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda/2

end of the list.

does any of that make sense/ is any of it what I’m looking for? I’ve obviously taken out several lines under each of those headers just for space and time typing.