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Thomas Manthey avatar image
Thomas Manthey asked

How can I flash the filesystem of a MultiGx if the Gx does not boot anymore?

My system has worked without problems for a few months until today I had to see that the Gx device no longer boots and is stuck in the init process. On the serial console you can see that a file for the init process is missing. My guess is that the file system was corrupted for some reason.

Venus OS
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Alexandra avatar image
Alexandra answered ·

@Thomas Manthey

You will have to strip your machine to get the SD card of the GX and flash it with the nanopi image for Victrons OS. This may or may not work.

This is potentially, if not done carefully, can damage things so if you aren't used to or comfortable doing so take it in for a warranty repair.

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Alexandra avatar image Alexandra ♦ commented ·
The link above is for when the os is working but if you boot with the micro sd in it should boot from the card and install. Might take a few goes.

Make sure nothing else is on the sd/usb card. It will not work if there is other content.


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Thomas Manthey avatar image Thomas Manthey commented ·

After trying to boot from my USB stick with the USBBOOT command, I have now copied an image to a MicroSD card and tried to boot with it. @mvader It is really an understatement to describe the SD card slot as "not visible". It took my inspection camera, a pair of tweezers and a very steady hand to even get an SD card in there.

The biggest problem for me is that there is no description of this procedure. With the USBBOOT command, I already failed at the correct spelling for the USB device. I have read the U-Boot documentation from back to front, but have not found an example.

Same with the mmc subsystem: There is no command to boot from the MMC card, you can only boot from the memory, which you have to load with LOAD first (I assume). But if I don't have a memory map of the nanopi, I don't mean a physical one, I already found that. I mean a logical one, which shows free areas that can be used to load such an image, for example.

I still refuse to go to the trouble of dismantling the Multi, including the cables etc., just because of a file system error! If someone can give me complete instructions on how to fix this error, I am perfectly capable of doing it myself. And without sending it in for repair!

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Thomas Manthey avatar image Thomas Manthey commented ·

@Kevin Windrem, in the meantime I have already found out how to change the boot device in the submarine. Unfortunately it did not change the behavior. I am sure that there is a working "preversion" on the GX device. This can normally be selected via the remote console when the GX would start.

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Thomas Manthey avatar image
Thomas Manthey answered ·

@Kevin Windrem,the submarine thing seems to be a translation feature of Deepl, meaning U-Boot of course,

It would also help me if I could boot from my stick with USBBOOT. Unfortunately I haven't found a correct notation for the USB device yet.

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Kevin Windrem avatar image Kevin Windrem commented ·

You can change the active boot partition from the boot menu as follows:

editenv version

change 1 to 2 or 2 to 1

saveenv
boot
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Thomas Manthey avatar image Thomas Manthey Kevin Windrem commented ·

Thanks a lot! Now my GX is running again. It was worth to use Victron, because there is no better quality and more robust software than OpenSource.

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