Grape 1 in emergency mode

[Bill Dornbush]

I tried to connet to my Grape 1 via VNC and could not connect.  I connected a monitor to it and found that it was not on the network.  I tried to reboot it and it did not respond.  I found that it was knocked off its usual spot and I cycled power to see if I could get it working.  When it booted, I see 

You are in emergency mode. After logging in, type "journalctl -xb" to view system logs, "systemctl reboot" to reboot "systemctl default" or "exit" to boot into default mode. Press enter for maintenance.

I have not been able to get past this point.  I do not know if I have a hardware problem or if I damaged the SD card when rebooting.  Please suggest how to proceed.

--Bill Dornbush AA6BD

Station ID S000058

Instrument ID 48

[Rob Wiesler]

Hi, Bill.

I assume simply reinstalling isn't something that can be done in a few
minutes, otherwise that would be simplest.

There are a number of things that could have gone wrong, and
unfortuately the best way to find out is to send us the full output of
"journalctl -xb" (which you may not be able to do comfortably since it's
not booting very far). An alternate way of getting at the logs would be
to remove the SD card and take a look at its contents from another Linux
machine. The files I'd want to see are /var/log/boot (and .1, .2, .3,
etc.) and /var/log/syslog (and .1, .2.gz, .3.gz, etc.).

You could also do the second thing it suggests, which would be to log
in and then run "exit" to try to retry the rest of the boot process. If
you see a big red [ FAIL ] on the left side, that's likely your culprit,
and if you could post a photo of that that easily might be good enough.

I might be available this weekend to get on a call and help if needed.

[Bill Dornbush]

After reading your replies, I recalled that I had made an image copy of the SD card before starting up my Grape1.  I copied that image to a new SD card and booted successfully.  I assume that the original SD card got corrupted.  I hope I got all customization needed which was to connect to my WiFi.  Other than that, it all looks good now.  I browsed to https://pswsnetwork.caps.ua.edu and logged in and my station is showing as "Online."

Thanks for your help.

Bill Dornbush AA6BD

On Wed, Jun 19, 2024 at 9:18 AM Bill Engelke <wden...@retiree.ua.edu> wrote:

Bill -

Something like this happened to me with my magnetometer system - it uses a Raspberry Pi same as Grape 1; not sure how it happened, but the SD card was damaged beyond repair; would not boot.  To recover, I had to do the following:

• download the latest Ubuntu for Raspberry Pi (https://ubuntu.com/download/raspberry-pi ) - now up to version 24.04 LTS

  Install Ubuntu on a Raspberry Pi | Ubuntu Ubuntu is an open-source operating system for cross-platform development, there's no better place to get started than with Ubuntu on a Raspberry Pi ubuntu.com

  
  
• get a new SD card, 32 GB or bigger. Burn the image to the SD card using Balena Etcher.
• Start the new system; name  your primary user "ubuntu"
• Copy the runGrape software package into the Documents directory
• Modify settings in the configuration file to match your current settings

The original documentation on this is on the HamSCI web site.  -73- Bill

---

From: hamsci...@googlegroups.com <hamsci...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Bill Dornbush <bi...@dornbush.net>
Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2024 7:39 PM
To: hamsci-grape <hamsci...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [hamsci-grape] Grape 1 in emergency mode

 

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[Bill Blackwell]

Re-sending this by other email as it didn’t seem to go out..

 

From: bblackw...@gmail.com <bblackw...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2024 9:07 PM
To: 'Bill Dornbush' <bi...@dornbush.net>; 'hamsci-grape' <hamsci...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [hamsci-grape] Grape 1 in emergency mode

 

Bill,

Download the Grape 1-DRF Startup Guide.
Go to Page 15, System Support & Troubleshooting.
Follow the steps under Known Issues, Issue 1.

This should get you past the problem.

73 Bill Blackwell, AB1XB

 

From: hamsci...@googlegroups.com <hamsci...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Bill Dornbush

Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2024 8:39 PM
To: hamsci-grape <hamsci...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: [hamsci-grape] Grape 1 in emergency mode

 

I tried to connet to my Grape 1 via VNC and could not connect.  I connected a monitor to it and found that it was not on the network.  I tried to reboot it and it did not respond.  I found that it was knocked off its usual spot and I cycled power to see if I could get it working.  When it booted, I see 

 

You are in emergency mode. After logging in, type "journalctl -xb" to view system logs, "systemctl reboot" to reboot "systemctl default" or "exit" to boot into default mode Press enter for maintenance.

 

I have not been able to get past this point.  I do not know if I have a hardware problem or if I damaged the SD card when rebooting.  Please suggest how to proceed.

 

--Bill Dornbush AA6BD

Station ID S000058

Instrument ID 48

--

[bblackw...@gmail.com]

Bill,

Download the Grape 1-DRF Startup Guide.
Go to Page 15, System Support & Troubleshooting.
Follow the steps under Known Issues, Issue 1.

This should get you past the problem.

73 Bill Blackwell, AB1XB

 

From: hamsci...@googlegroups.com <hamsci...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Bill Dornbush
Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2024 8:39 PM
To: hamsci-grape <hamsci...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [hamsci-grape] Grape 1 in emergency mode

 

I tried to connet to my Grape 1 via VNC and could not connect.  I connected a monitor to it and found that it was not on the network.  I tried to reboot it and it did not respond.  I found that it was knocked off its usual spot and I cycled power to see if I could get it working.  When it booted, I see 

 

You are in emergency mode. After logging in, type "journalctl -xb" to view system logs, "systemctl reboot" to reboot "systemctl default" or "exit" to boot into default mode Press enter for maintenance.

 

I have not been able to get past this point.  I do not know if I have a hardware problem or if I damaged the SD card when rebooting.  Please suggest how to proceed.

 

--Bill Dornbush AA6BD

Station ID S000058

Instrument ID 48

--

[Joe Hobart]

Bill,

My eclipse edition Grape failed after an Ubuntu update.  My symptoms are similar to Bill's; following the troubleshooting instructions in the startup guide gets me into emergency mode, which I cannot get past. 
I suspect I need to re-flash the  SD card - and ignore Ubuntu updates.  If you agree, where can I get the latest file?
Thanks,
Joe, W7LUX

[Bill Blackwell]

Hi Joe,

In the troubleshooting steps, when you are in Emergency mode, do you get a prompt like this?
root@ubuntu-desktop:~#

If so, you can try to edit the /etc/fstab file using the nano editor:
nano /etc/fstab

If you get this far, continue with Step 6 of the Troubleshooting procedure (page 15 of the Grape1-DRF Startup Guide).

If these steps don’t work, try sending me a snapshot of the screen you are seeing and I’ll try to diagnose.

To re-flash the uSD card you will need to contact Bill Engelke, AB4EJ.

73,
Bill AB1XB

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[Joe Hobart]

I was able to edit the fstab file per the startup article, but I keep ending up in emergency mode.  Here are two images before using nano and after; the edit did work.
I see a different message after a continue; third image.  KB and mouse batteries measure good.

Thanks, Joe

[Bill Blackwell]

Joe,

Since you mentioned batteries I guess you are using wi-fi mouse and keyboard.
I was going to suggest changing temporarily to a wired mouse and keyboard to see if you can get around the current issue, but realized you successfully edited the /etc/fstab file, so the wi-fi connection must be working.

At this point I think it is best to follow Bill Engelke’s email advice and burn a new SD card.
Sorry the recovery didn’t work.

73,
Bill AB1XB

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/hamsci-grape/c1b84bc0-fa8b-4cf8-9fe1-cf6687593cedn%40googlegroups.com.

[Rob Wiesler]

Hi, Joe.

On Fri, Jun 21, 2024 at 12:46:04 -0700, Joe Hobart wrote:
> I was able to edit the fstab file per the startup article, but I keep
> ending up in emergency mode. Here are two images before using nano and
> after; the edit did work.
> I see a different message after a continue; third image. KB and mouse
> batteries measure good.

The message you see in the third image is irrelevant. That kind of
message is unfortunately quite common, and doesn't even necessarily
indicate a significant issue with the wireless keyboard or mouse in
question. Thank you for posting something you thought might be
important, though.

Interestingly, the first image you provide demonstrates that it's not
simple SD card corruption, i.e. the filesystem journal did its job
correctly. Actual SD card corruption should have required manual
intervention via fsck, but after the journal was recovered the
filesystem was confirmed "clean". There's still room for something
wonky like alpha decay or an erroneous write due to crosstalk or some
other kind of nonsense to have caused corruption, but I strongly doubt
it.

I highly recommend you follow the advice I gave Bill and provide the
output of "journalctl -xb" and/or the logs I mentioned, namely the boot
log at /var/log/boot.log and previous logs (.1, .2, .3, etc.). You
could also take video of what happens when you type "exit" at the
emergency mode prompt (i.e. it will attempt to reboot, and the reason it
went into emergency mode will go by again).

I also cannot recommend skipping normal software updates until you
confirm that the system update was the culprit. I've had systems break
on me after system updates, and those cases fall into three categories:
(a) I was running a bleeding-edge distribution intentionally and a
package maintainer messed up more than is typical, (b) my system powered
off during an update and I had to recover from that, and (c) literal bad
RAM caused my system to crash in the middle of performing a normal
update back in the pre-ext4 days, which was largely the same as (b)
except more annoying.

[Gary Mikitin, AF8A]

All - The Grape1-DRF Ubuntu image is available on the HamSCI website. Look for a link to a Zip file.

https://hamsci.org/grape1-drf-docs/

73 de AF8A