Everything was going so well

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.

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?