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.

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?