Ginger bricks their Raspberry Pi by failing to copy a file

Conversation started Jul 19, 2022 at 16:15.

GingerBot

Jul 19, 2022 16:15

this is ginger

I have a... tiny bit of a problem

I may or may not have fucked up doing a RPi update and locked myself out of my system, possibly reformatting my SD card

I'm typing this from the browser built into NOOBS

on this account because this browser doesn't work with Google Auth for some reason

send help

Thomas Ward

sounds like a reflash / install of your OS is needed :P

GingerBot

wait, you're from DBA.SE right?

Thomas Ward

me? nope.

GingerBot

hm, I remember you from that time radvylf dumped a bunch of messages into the DBA.SE main room tho

regardless

Thomas Ward

well i am a diamond moderator, when people start throwing flags, diamond mods get summoned

GingerBot

Jul 19, 2022 16:19

Thomas Ward

that applies on chat.stackexchange.com - any diamond moderator from any site can respond to chat flag

home site is askubuntu.com but i lurk in multiple places

TNB has nice people so :)

GingerBot

well thx

I still have hope bc NOOBS tells me I have 12GB of space on my card - the same amount I had before this debacle

so my data is there, I just need to make NOOBS realize I have an OS installed

how do I do this? fuck knows

Thomas Ward

(might want to tone down the swearing though, just saying)

GingerBot

if you thought you had lost your data forever you'd swear too

but sorry

Thomas Ward

points at backups

GingerBot

Jul 19, 2022 16:21

will do

Thomas Ward

i'm in IT, rule #1 is keep backups

GingerBot

this is where I'd put my backups... if I had any

Thomas Ward

points at the 10s of hard drives that hold all the backups of his critica linfrastructure

GingerBot

points at the single 128GB MicroSD card holding their life's work

so, my plan is simple. I think this issue is due to me forgetting to put a file called installed_os.json in the boot parition during the update

I just need to figure out how to get it in there

I have an idea. It is stupid and will likely fail. I will do it anyway.

NoHaxJustRadvylf

I would suggest removing the SD card, copying its contents, then trying stupid stuff

GingerBot

Jul 19, 2022 16:26

If I could do so I would have done so by now

but I can't

NoHaxJustRadvylf

← 36 messages moved from The Nineteenth Byte

GingerBot

so my plan is basically use this clunky ass browser to download the file into the boot partition and restart

NoHaxJustRadvylf

What are you booted into right now?

GingerBot

NOOBS

NoHaxJustRadvylf

Is it on the same SD card, like, another partition?

GingerBot

Jul 19, 2022 16:28

yes

ok plan wouldn't work

Thomas Ward

NOOBS is like an easy to start with RPi boot environment

NoHaxJustRadvylf

Seems like you could mount the other partition, and copy all of the important data into google drive or some similar thing

Thomas Ward

you can set up a new OS

GingerBot

for some unknowable reason NOOBS mounted the main partition

Thomas Ward

or you can boot to it for recovery

but it's almost like chainloading an OS

GingerBot

Jul 19, 2022 16:29

but I need boot partition to be mounted

and I do not have access to a commandline from NOOBS

NoHaxJustRadvylf

GingerBot

can't install new OS bc only have 12GB of space on card

also since NOOBS thinks I don't have an OS it would likely overwrite my data

NoHaxJustRadvylf

What OS is NOOBS based off of? I'd assume it's some sort of Linux, in which case you could surely access a command line somehow

GingerBot

in case you want to know why I did this to myself: got new Pi4 8GB and needed to upgrade NOOBS to make it work

NoHaxJustRadvylf

Yeah I would really recommend finding another computer, even if you have to go to a public library or something, and making a backup of that SD card

GingerBot

Jul 19, 2022 16:35

right

will see what can do

but it's not a day with Ginger without some horrendous bodge that threatens your data and your sanity!

oh, this is very interesting! this browser has an option to "use an external downlaod program"

so maybe I can paste a command to mount /boot into there!

more research needed

aw fuc read-only filesystem

okay guess I get to do the boring solution and find another computer

I'll let yall know if it works

signing off

NoHaxJustRadvylf

mathcat

Jul 19, 2022 17:18

@ThomasWard (especially in the shadows) [ • •]

@GingerBot hope you manage to restore your data!

3 hours later…

NoHaxJustRadvylf

Jul 19, 2022 20:21

Just read the most underwhelming news article in history

Unrelated String

oh boy

NoHaxJustRadvylf

"Hoover Dam explodes" sounds like it'd be really bad but it's just a transformer on fire lol

Unrelated String

LMAO

GingerBot

I have not in fact fixed it

Do any of you kind humans have a raspberry pi with NOOBS installed?

Running Raspbian?

@RadvylfPrograms you have a pi right?

NoHaxJustRadvylf

Yeah, no NOOBS though

GingerBot

Jul 19, 2022 20:30

I need the help of someone who satisfies the above conditions

Sad

My plan is to copy the NOOBS settings from a functional Pi into my broken one

NoHaxJustRadvylf

You can probably google the default ones, right?

GingerBot

You're not going to believe me when I say this: I didn't think to try that

nothing

The issue is that the settings are a folder and not just one file

Please spread the word of my plight

Meanwhile I will try another solution

OOH

I can actually get to a shell from NOOBS!

Okay I have logged in as root

...now what

NoHaxJustRadvylf

Jul 19, 2022 20:46

Well first, I'd back it up to google drive or some other online service

Then you could probably just reinstall the OS and partially restore from backup if it overwrites any data

GingerBot

I don't think drive can hold 100gb of data

Also that would take a long time

NoHaxJustRadvylf

Oh, hm. You have 100gb of un-backed-up data?

GingerBot

It's not quite that much but yea

That's why I want to not have to reinstall

And all my data is there!!! I just need to fix NOOBS and we're good

But the fixing is the problem

So, I have come up with an idea

Install raspbian using NOOBS on spare SD card and copy the settings over

But that would also be slow

So if anyone has a pi that satisfies the above criteria please tell me!

@JoKing hi do you have pi

Jo King

yeah, i have a spare one lying around

GingerBot

Does it have NOOBS

As summarized above I need to restore the /settings from a functional pi

Jo King

Jul 19, 2022 20:53

dunno, been saving it for a project

GingerBot

If you turn it on and it says "press shift to enter recovery" it has NOOBS

NoHaxJustRadvylf

Why don't you just download a second .img of NOOBS?

GingerBot

Can't

NoHaxJustRadvylf

What?

GingerBot

It's not on the site anymore

NoHaxJustRadvylf

Jul 19, 2022 20:54

I'm sure there's a copy of it somewhere

GingerBot

NOOBS is ostensibly deprecated

Maybe I can find a copy

NoHaxJustRadvylf

github.com/raspberrypi/noobs

GingerBot

No img just zip

Jo King

maybe the real NOOBS were the friends we made along the way

NoHaxJustRadvylf

No, but the settings folder doesn't magically appear. It's in the repo somewhere.

GingerBot

Jul 19, 2022 20:57

It does magically appear, actually

NOOBS generates a per-os settings folder upon install

and when I foofed up earlier it deleted it as part of its setup process

NoHaxJustRadvylf

Do you need NOOBS?

GingerBot

Oh wait a sec

NoHaxJustRadvylf

It seems like it'd save you a lot of trouble to just install Raspbian directly

GingerBot

AHA FOUND AN IMG

ok, flashing now

NoHaxJustRadvylf

Wait

Flashing?

Make sure not to overwrite anything, I was gonna suggest mounting it as a loop

GingerBot

Jul 19, 2022 21:00

...wat

I haven't started yet, fortunately

What is this "loop" of which you speak?

NoHaxJustRadvylf

mount -o loop xyz.img /mnt

Mounts the .img so you can poke around and take what you need

GingerBot

well what I really need is to RUN NOOBS to generate the settings

Thanks for the help tho

nvm it wasn't the img

GingerBot

Jul 19, 2022 21:34

Okay, I have successfully created a new settings directory

Copying now

Update: turns out it wasn't correct, trying again

hey @GingerBot should've asked earlier but are you okay with me possessing your body?

@GingerBot yea no problem bro go ahead

Ok nice

Alright install complete, let's yoink these files

Here we go

Oh shid

It's stuck in a boot loop

Conversation ended Jul 19, 2022 at 21:54.

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Ginger bricks their Raspberry Pi by failing to copy a file

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Thomas Ward 9%
Jo King 1%
mathcat 1%
Unrelated String 1%

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