Recovering settings from failed SD card

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M0LMK
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2019 4:02 pm

Recovering settings from failed SD card

Post by M0LMK »

I've had an SD card failure in a repeater and yes, I know, I should have a back up image but I don't. Quite frankly, I'm ashamed! In this case, it won't help much because the repeater has been tweaked over the years. The card failed after attempting an update to the latest release.

The Pi halts with "Kernel panic - not syncing - Attempted to kill init!" but I can put it in a USB -> SD adaptor and mount it on another Pi with no problem. Is there a way I can recover the Pi-Star settings from the mounted card file system so I don't have to start from scratch? I have written a new card with a new pi-star download so I can start with a good card.

Thanks!

Matt
M0LMK
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Re: Recovering settings from failed SD card

Post by AF6VN »

M0LMK wrote: Tue Sep 14, 2021 9:13 am The Pi halts with "Kernel panic - not syncing - Attempted to kill init!" but I can put it in a USB -> SD adaptor and mount it on another Pi with no problem. Is there a way I can recover the Pi-Star settings from the mounted card file system so I don't have to start from scratch? I have written a new card with a new pi-star download so I can start with a good card.
That doesn't sound like a "failed" SD card. That sounds more like a bad file system and corrupted boot files. See what running fsck on the ext4 partitions of the card reports... And also check the FAT partition (using something -- Windows doesn't know ext4 but may reveal the FAT partition for checking.

You might also try copying contents from the FAT partition of a good image to the "bad" SD card, since many of the R-Pi initial boot is stored in FAT.

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AF6VN
Dennis L Bieber
M0LMK
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Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2019 4:02 pm

Re: Recovering settings from failed SD card

Post by M0LMK »

Thanks for the replies all.

I created a new SD card with a fresh Pi-Star install and then copied over the /etc/mmdvmhost file. That seems to have done most of the work and the repeater is back up and running.

I did try running fsck by putting the bad card into a USB adaptor and plugging in into a Linux box but it reported the ext4 partition as clean with no errors. I used dosfsck to check the FAT32 partition and that also came back with no errors.

Matt
M0LMK
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