Updated dietpi now I can't boot I just get a black screen

AJRobson · August 31, 2022, 11:11pm

I updated a DietPi intance on a raspberry pi 3 today, I’ve just looked and noticed I couldn’t ssh to it. I connected it to a screen but it doesn’t seem to boot, my TV turns black instead of blue so it’s getting a signal but nothing appears. Is there anything I can do besides start again?

If I open the MicroSD in Windows I can see the boot patriation and if I mount the MicroSD in another Pi I’m able to see the EXT4 partition and can see my files etc. Is there anything I can do to get it to boot?

Joulinar · September 1, 2022, 9:44am

Does the LED’s are flashing on our RPi3? Some kind of code? How does it behave plugging the SD into a space Pi?

AJRobson · September 1, 2022, 9:56am

I can mount it in a spare PI and see the contents
If I put the card into another pi and try to boot I get the same black screen.
The LEDs the Red one is always on (as usual?) and the green one is flashing in pulses of 7 then a second or 2 gap then another 7 flashes.

Joulinar · September 1, 2022, 10:17am

The error code is indicating an issue with the kernel image not being found Raspberry Pi Documentation - Configuration

Can you share the content of /boot (from the broken SD card)

AJRobson · September 1, 2022, 10:28am

Sure, I’ve zipped up everything in the boot drive

Joulinar · September 1, 2022, 10:29am

a simple ls -la /path/to/boot would have been totally fine.

AJRobson · September 1, 2022, 10:35am

Thanks, I’ve removed that. Do you know the Windows version of ls -la?

This is from dir:

Directory of I:\

31/08/2022 15:57 overlays
01/01/1601 01:00 68,096 FSCK0000.REC
01/01/1601 01:00 10,240 FSCK0001.REC
20/08/2020 10:47 145 issue.txt
01/09/2022 01:15 2,612 config.txt
20/02/2021 15:28 7,682 DietPi_OpenVPN_Client.ovpn
19/09/2021 17:49 101 cmdline.txt
04/08/2022 21:18 12,940 dietpi.txt
17/08/2022 08:00 2,973,312 start.elf
17/08/2022 08:00 803,740 start_cd.elf
17/08/2022 08:00 4,816,680 start_db.elf
17/08/2022 08:00 3,720,200 start_x.elf
17/08/2022 08:00 7,258 fixup.dat
31/08/2020 22:02 12,130 dietpi-README.md
31/08/2020 22:02 18,092 dietpi-LICENSE.txt
17/08/2022 08:00 3,172 fixup_cd.dat
12/08/2022 00:25 dietpi
17/08/2022 08:00 10,228 fixup_db.dat
17/08/2022 08:00 10,224 fixup_x.dat
17/08/2022 08:00 52,460 bootcode.bin
17/08/2022 08:00 2,249,024 start4.elf
17/08/2022 08:00 803,740 start4cd.elf
17/08/2022 08:00 3,744,680 start4db.elf
17/08/2022 08:00 2,996,488 start4x.elf
17/08/2022 08:00 5,399 fixup4.dat
17/08/2022 08:00 3,172 fixup4cd.dat
17/08/2022 08:00 8,379 fixup4db.dat
17/08/2022 08:00 8,379 fixup4x.dat
17/08/2022 08:00 1,594 LICENCE.broadcom
27 File(s) 22,350,167 bytes
2 Dir(s) 240,387,584 bytes free

Joulinar · September 1, 2022, 10:37am

Yes, you are missing all kernel*.img files What kind of system you are running exactly? RPi3? ARMv6/7/8?

dir

AJRobson · September 1, 2022, 10:39am

Is there a way to find out by the board? It says Raspberry Pi 3 Model B V1.2 Raspberry Pi 2015

Joulinar · September 1, 2022, 10:52am

ok found it in your zip archive under /boot/dietpi/.hw_model Seems to be 32bit system.

@MichaIng
I would need your support. Whole bcm2*.dtb; kernel*.img and /boot/overlays/* seems to be missing. If I’m not mistaken it is possible to manually download the kernel and store it in the boot partition. Right?

AJRobson · September 1, 2022, 11:06am

Thanks, so I might be able to get it working again without a clean install?

MichaIng · September 1, 2022, 3:43pm

The missing files can be either downloaded from here: firmware/boot at stable · raspberrypi/firmware · GitHub

Or the latest/matching kernel + bootloader .deb packages downloaded from here: Index of /debian/pool/main/r/raspberrypi-firmware
7-Zip can extract them very well to get the contained files.

Joulinar · September 1, 2022, 3:45pm

@AJRobson
You should be able to copy the files to the SD card directly on your Windows box.

MichaIng · September 1, 2022, 4:11pm

Ah, there was a package upgrade just today, so the “stable” branch from GitHub wouldn’t match. Either the matching commit needs to be found, or easier take kernel + bootloader packages from the package archive (second link) which are dated 2022-08-15 resp 1.20220811-1 in their file names.

AJRobson · September 1, 2022, 4:23pm

I tried the first link before you posted that, it booted but then I got an error about a kernel panic

not syncing VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(179,2)

From the second link can you tell me which kernel and bootloader I need please?
There are multiple if I search 1.20220811-1

MichaIng · September 1, 2022, 4:32pm

https://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian/pool/main/r/raspberrypi-firmware/raspberrypi-bootloader_1.20220811-1_armhf.deb
and
https://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian/pool/main/r/raspberrypi-firmware/raspberrypi-kernel_1.20220811-1_armhf.deb
are the ones which contain the boot directory with bootloader, kernel, dtb and overlay files.

AJRobson · September 1, 2022, 4:38pm

Thanks, I’ve just done that but I get this message when I try to start now:

Joulinar · September 1, 2022, 4:51pm

Yeah there is some file system corruption I guess. Probably we could try to fix if you plug the SD into another Linux box and run some file system scan.

AJRobson · September 1, 2022, 5:19pm

Would I be able to do that using my other Diet pi and my microSd to USB adapter?
I also have Ubuntu running under windows

Joulinar · September 1, 2022, 6:59pm

Another DietPi is fine. Just connect your SD card

dosfsck /dev/sda1
fsck -a /dev/sda2

Where you need to replace sda1/2 with the device name of the attached SD card.