Kernel Panic after power outage

[HouseholdGeek]

After enduring an electrical outage, my Hometroller Zee S2 (20th Anniv. Edition!) will not boot. I've connected a monitor/keyboard, and the boot stops with the line "end Kernel panic - not syncing: no working init found...." (screen-photo attached below)

I've pulled the SD-card and mounted it in my OS-X system and an Ubuntu system. I ran OS-X's diskutil from Terminal on it and saw no errors.

I'm able to boot to the Recovery menu, but would like to not lose all my device configurations (I don't remember if I ever backed up).

If I must do a full Factory Recovery, can I back up the SD-Card somehow before I do the recovery, and then restore the configurations?

Jon at HomeSeer support said I should "grab the HomeSeer folder located in /usr/local", but being unable to boot, I'm unable to access the filesystem.

Any hope?

Thanks for any help!

--
HCW3

[zwolfpack]

There are multiple partitions on the SD card. Did you verify more than one on your OS-X machine?

[HouseholdGeek]

I verified the two that showed in OS-X's Disk Utility. They were 'Boot' and 'Recovery'.
I just realized today when I plugged it into my Ubuntu machine that it had those extra partitions. I was cautious about using anything in OS-X. Cautious hoping that I can save my configurations.
I don't really know Linux or Ubuntu well enough to feel confident messing with partitions without guidance!
What Ubuntu app would be best for checking and correcting errors?
I wonder if Steve Gibson's SpinRite would work on an SD Card...

[zwolfpack]

Those two are 'vfat' (MS-DOS) formatted partitions. The partition containing the Linux OS and HomeSeer is 'ext4' formatted. Windows doesn't natively read these; likely same is true for OS-X.

Suggest you google 'OS-X ext4 software'. Once you gain access, look for a partition named 'root'; that's the one that the HomeSeer files live in.

Or, on you Ubuntu machine, run

lsblk -o name,fstype,size,label,mountpoint

to display the partition map. You can try mounting the Linux partiition

sudo mount /dev/sdb7 /mnt

where /mnt is an existing, empty folder

[HouseholdGeek]

Ok, I've been working on the SDCard through Ubuntu. I can see the Partition map there.

At this point, my inability to get into the Homeseer filesystem seems to say I need to simply go back to factory settings... and likely lose all my device configurations - argh.

I've been able to mount all the partitions (although there are three free-space partitions that don't mount, one at the very start of the drive map - so boot partitions are not at the beginning of the drive in Linux? I have antique experience...)

The partitions are:

• [free space 4.2M]
• partition 1: Recovery - 127M FAT
• partition 2: Extended Partition 7.7G with:
  • [free space 3.2M]
  • partition 5: Settings 34M Ext4
  • partition 6: Boot 63M FAT
  • partition 7: root0 7.6G Ext4
• [free space] (remainder of card)

I used DD in Ubuntu Terminal to copy the partitions to image files, each partition separately, as well as the full SDCard.
Using Disks (GUI), I've made a clone of the original SDCard from the SDCard full image file, so I can work
with it, preserving the original SDCard.

I thought a DD copy might correct any potential corrupted file enough to boot, but No Joy - same Kernel Panic using the cloned Card.

Questions:

• Does it make sense that there is no Partition 4?
• The 'root' partition you mentioned is actually labeled 'root0' - Is that acceptable?
• Ubuntu's Files app shows the "root0" partition to be "Folder is Empty" when I mount it. - I assume it's the system partition - Is there a way to show the files without the system being 'Live'?
• The error I'm getting on boot is that the init file is not found. Is that to suggest that the filesystem is missing, or is it just that one file that should be discoverable?

Thanks for your help / suggestions.

[zwolfpack]

Hmmm, if you are actually mounting partition 7 and it's empty, that's bad. Let's try once more...

sudo umount /dev/sda7
sudo mkdir /tmp_mnt
sudo mount /dev/sda7 /tmp_mnt

Then

ls /tmp_mnt

should yield something like

bin dev home lost+found mnt proc run srv tmp var
boot etc lib media opt root sbin sys usr

* change /dev/sda7 to appropriate device if necessary

[zwolfpack]

PS. No partition 4 is normal:

NAME FSTYPE SIZE LABEL MOUNTPOINT
sdb 14.9G
├─sdb1 vfat 121M HS3Pi3v6
├─sdb2 1K
├─sdb5 ext4 32M SETTINGS
├─sdb6 vfat 69M boot
└─sdb7 ext4 7.1G root

[I've renamed partition 1 to help differentiate all my cards]

[HouseholdGeek]

Ok, thanks.
Yep, there's no listing shown after the ls /tmp_mnt command...

[zwolfpack]

https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/repai...le-system.html

sudo umount /dev/sda7
sudo fsck -t ext4 /dev/sda7

[zwolfpack]

Something else to check, with the filesystem mounted

df -h /tmp_mnt
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb7 6.9G 2.2G 4.4G 34% /tmp_mnt

If all is lost, use% will be zero/near zero

[HouseholdGeek]

well... I'd guess root0 is shot.
An unending list of inode errors - lots of different errors... I said fix all and now when I try to mount I get an error "mount system call failed: structure needs cleaning"...
I did make a backup of these partitions (and the whole SDCard) before attempting this, but is there any hope?...
Thanks for your help!

[zwolfpack]

Doesn't look good I'm afraid.

root0 vs. root might be an indication that a recovery attempt was triggered earlier. Unsuccessful, obviously.

[HouseholdGeek]

Well, I sure appreciate your help with this. It looks like I'll be getting to know the system a little better!
Honest, I'm normally a backup freak with everything, but this one got by me!
Thanks again for your efforts.