I hope I posted this in the right forum - if not, please forgive me.

I am running XBIAN Alpha 3

All worked absolutely fine until this morning. My Pi has been running constantly, never turned it off. No changes made to overclocking, runs on XBIAN speed (I believe that's 840 MHz).

This morning tried to ssh into Pi to check if any updates were available. Got "no route to host", so checked "Attached Devices" in my router. Sure enough: the Pi failed to show up.

Tried to reboot by physically disconnecting and reconnecting the power plug (something I would never do under normal circumstances!!)

The boot screen shows the usual processes until it gets to this:

(the following had to be written down on a piece of paper first so some stuff is incomplete...)

EXT4_fs (blah blah..)
ext4_check_descriptors: Checksum for Group 15 failed (.. blah....)
EXT4_fs (blah blah..)
group descriptors corrupted!

... blah blah

No file system could mount root, tried ext4
Kernel panic - not syncing:VFS:unable to mount root fs

..... another 4 or 5 lines of numbers and letters - then the booting process stalls

+ + +

Firstly I checked if the PI itself had a hardware problem. Inserted another SD card with the stock Raspbian OS. Boots just fine, runs normal so convinced that the PI itself is healthy.

The SD card I am using is an AMICR 8GB Class 10 SDHC which has been working just fine for almost 3 months.

I am not a complete Linux novice, all my other machines are running various Linux distros, so I have a fair understanding of the whole boot process.... still - I am lost what to do now!

Can anyone give me a hint on how to try and recover this install please?

Thanks / Frank

Download a linux live cd, boot it, then open a terminal. Then do:
Check which device is your SD card. then for e.g.

(22nd Jan, 2013 10:29 PM)CurlyMo Wrote:  Download a linux live cd, boot it, then open a terminal. Then do:

Code:

sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 4012 MB, 4012900352 bytes
4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 122464 cylinders, total 7837696 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000f06a6

        Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/mmcblk0p1            2048       73727       35840    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/mmcblk0p2           73728     7837695     3881984   83  Linux

Check which device is your SD card. then for e.g.

Code:

fsck /dev/mmcblk0p2

Thanks for your speedy reply CurlyMo - I will do that tomorrow and report back with findings. Too late here in Australia now, time for bed.

Thanks bi God that I have a stack of live distros in the cupboard, saves downloading and burning.

Thanks again / Frank

aquarius18 / Frank

Welcome to another fellow Australian Maybe I'll see you in the IRC channel at an Australasia-friendly time?

@CurlyMo

Tried your suggestion on my 2 machines with SD card readers, neither of them even recognizes the SD card but all other disks and partitions are showing as expected.

So, me thinks that this SD card is a write-off

Would you have any other suggestions please?

Thanks / Frank

I can't help you any further if the SD card isn't even recognized. Maybe indeed a broken one.

(23rd Jan, 2013 07:12 PM)CurlyMo Wrote:  I can't help you any further if the SD card isn't even recognized. Maybe indeed a broken one.

Thanks again for your efforts CurlyMo - might try and find a card with XBIAN pre-installed to save some time.