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Excito B3 cannot start after Power failure

Posted: 02 Jun 2016, 04:37
by easy77
Hello,
in my house was a Power failure with the electricity. Now my Excito B3 cannot start again. The purple light burns, but nothing happens.
It is the second time with this problem and i don´t want to install the software again and again. What can i do?

Greetings

Isabel

Re: Excito B3 cannot start after Power failure

Posted: 02 Jun 2016, 05:54
by Gordon
Normally if such a thing occurs, a checkdisk will be done when you boot the next time. This will take time and sometimes it will complete by itself and sometimes it will prompt you for action. Which of course is rather difficult on a headless machine (assuming you did not grab your soldering kit to create a serial console connection on your B3).

What you can do is get yourself one of the Live USB editions and use that to run checkdisk on the internal hard drive. To be able to access the home partition use:

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vgscan
vgchange -ay bubba
You should then be able to run checkdisk on /dev/bubba/storage

Re: Excito B3 cannot start after Power failure

Posted: 02 Jun 2016, 06:52
by easy77
This Time the Problem is much more. I cannot install the Firmware. The light turns green since 1 hour. :evil:

Re: Excito B3 cannot start after Power failure

Posted: 02 Jun 2016, 07:21
by Gordon
During install you can connect to the box with a ssh client (if you are on Windows, try Putty). Some basic knowledge of Linux does help, but the tools provided by the original Excito installer are quite limited. I do believe checkdisk is on it though, so it should be possible to verify the disk (and that it is accessible).

Note that to gain access to the installer, you need to connect to the WAN port of the B3 and there has to be a DHCP offering device (like your ISP provided router) to assign it an IP address.

Re: Excito B3 cannot start after Power failure

Posted: 02 Jun 2016, 07:22
by easy77
After turning out and on i have a blinking purple light! :cry:

Re: Excito B3 cannot start after Power failure

Posted: 02 Jun 2016, 08:14
by Gordon
That means your disk is no longer recognized. It may be broken or uninitialized as a result of the failed reinstall.

You may try again to reinstall but if you get stuck once more you'll really need to connect to the box using ssh (login: root, password: excito). Then try this:

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parted -l
Verify that you have two disks and that /dev/sdb is your rescue stick (size = 1GB?)

Then:

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parted /dev/sda mklabel msdos
parted /dev/sda mkpart temp ext3 0 -1
mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1
Provided you see no error here, run the first command once more and verify that you have now one partition that spans the whole /dev/sda disk and the 'Partition Table' type is 'msdos' (like /dev/sdb).

Reboot into the installer

PS: that is 'dash lowercase L' in the first code block and 'dash one' in the second code block)

Re: Excito B3 cannot start after Power failure

Posted: 02 Jun 2016, 15:59
by easy77
Thank you for helping me. The Problem is that i don´t understand how to do. I try to read more about Putty and how i can start it with excito B3 on my Fritz Box. :? :P

Re: Excito B3 cannot start after Power failure

Posted: 02 Jun 2016, 16:07
by Gordon
It can be somewhat of an issue if you never used command line tools, but it's really not that different from DOS (i.e. Windows cmd). Putty defaults to using ssh, so all you need to do is enter 'b3' in the hostname field en click 'open'. A cmd-like screen will (should) open and prompt you for a login. After login you can enter commands I posted earlier.

Re: Excito B3 cannot start after Power failure

Posted: 03 Jun 2016, 04:37
by easy77
I connected Wan Port of B3 with the LAN Port 3 of my Fritz Box, but i cannot see B3 in my Network. Putty cannot find b3, too. :roll:

Re: Excito B3 cannot start after Power failure

Posted: 03 Jun 2016, 06:50
by sakaki
Hi Isabel

can you copy the Gentoo live USB image onto a USB stick and boot your B3 with that? It should work whether or not your internal hard drive (on the B3) is operational., and will (if you have a WiFi-enabled B3) allow you to log in via the WiFi interface (the SSID is "b3").

Please note that if you do boot the Gentoo live USB it has a green LED as its 'normal' state.

Best, sakaki

Re: Excito B3 cannot start after Power failure

Posted: 03 Jun 2016, 07:59
by easy77
Hey!
I copied the files on my usb stick. The B3 starts with a green light, but after one hour ist blinks purple again. Is there no option to uninstall the failed system with an usb stick?
Or can anybody help me to get a connection with b3 on my Fritz Box? WAN Port of B3 is in the WAN Port 3 of my Fritz Box, but there is no function.

Re: Excito B3 cannot start after Power failure

Posted: 03 Jun 2016, 09:38
by easy77
I´ve get a connection with Putty and this is what happened:

http://abload.de/image.php?img=unbenanntfajra.png

Re: Excito B3 cannot start after Power failure

Posted: 03 Jun 2016, 10:04
by Gordon
Hmmm. I'm not really accustomed to parted, but it looks like it is dropping you into its own shell where of course parted itself is not a valid command.

In the first command you entered you appeared to have used dash-one as the parameter. That is incorrect. For better reading use this:

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parted --list
Putty has copy-paste btw: everything you select goes straight into the copy buffer. A right click pasts whatever is in the copy buffer.

To avoid being dropped in parted's own interactive shell, use the following adapted commands instead:

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parted --script /dev/sda mklabel msdos
parted --script /dev/sda mkpart temp ext3 0  -1
mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1

Re: Excito B3 cannot start after Power failure

Posted: 03 Jun 2016, 10:26
by easy77
After the first Code i have an error and it shows only my usb stick:
Image

Re: Excito B3 cannot start after Power failure

Posted: 03 Jun 2016, 10:45
by easy77
I was blind! At the beginning my 2000 GB hard drive is listed. :!: :?: