PANIC: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(179,2)

[spec1alk]

I have been trying to use either Raspbian "wheezy" or Raspbmc on my Model B, revision 2 board (the 512mb one).

SD Card: Amazon Basics 16gb class 10
USB: Logitech wireless receiver for keyboard & mouse
PSU: 1.05A, I think the brand is "NovaTel"; I have also tried with a 700ma Blackberry charger
Display: HDTV via HDMI

I wrote the 2012-09-18-wheezy-raspbian image to the card using Win32DiskImager. Put the card in the RPi and boot. I get the color screen and then the config screen. I set my configuration and selected "Finish". It booted to a desktop. I opened a terminal and a browser (midori?). After about 10 seconds, CPU usage spiked in tray and the terminal said something like "Segmentation fault" when I would try to execute a command like apt-get or ls. At some point the icons on the desktop disappeared and the mouse & keyboard became somewhat unresponsive. I tried to reboot using the icon in the bottom right, but nothing happened.

So, after waiting ~30 seconds, I unplugged the PSU and plugged it back in. On boot I got all sorts of error messages (sorry, no screenshot of this boot). So I unplugged and plugged back in, and I get this:
http://static.inky.ws/image/3325/image.jpg

I have tried removing the USB devices and I get the same result.

I have had very similar issues with Raspbmc as well where I can get it to boot and install the first time, but at some point it will hit some freeze and upon reboot, it will not boot. If I re-write the image to the card, it installs & boots the first time fine, but then I run into problems within an hour or so and wind up starting over again.

I have a 4gb class 4 SD card I am going to try as well (not sure on the brand).

I did search around quite a bit and it sounds like many people are having trouble with the most recent software, but it sounded like this was only for cases where they had modified their boot parition, config.txt, init, stuff like that.

[do1esz]

Hello,

ive got the same problem. After reading a week of hundert of similar messages i saw a few problems with the pi.
1.) Voltage. Should be stable to near 4,9 V on Testponts 1 and 2 checked ok also on 100% load of cpu overclocked to turbo or not
2.) always use of sudo shutdown -r now for reboot or the -h for go down.
3.) the problem never occurs in use of the pi ,even only after a reboot/shutdown and it only occurs by booting the device mostly after swicht of (gently) the power. The boot partition is fine, only the root partition will be corrupted. Sometimes you can reorganize her in another linux PC with fsck or other recovery methodes. But you will lost a lot!!!
4.)All solutions i ve found in the net will not covers the problem. means
overclocked or not will occur after 40 gently shutdowns -h option reseting power cord in the same problem. it does not depending if you use different models of the pi, i have nearly 4 or five in use also 256 or 512MB versions also different sd cards.
5.) the solutions for rise up emms to 100Mhz failed in the same way, also initial_boot=60 will not help, also changing the elf files ( from github)
all tested with new instalation from new image from download area rasbian always update and upgrade

in my opinion the sd card coruption is a design problem ( SD controler or usage from Firmware) i can always force the problem after max 40 shutdowns -h resets power from different power supplys also on to seven different boards.


Only the newest version of XMBC has never crash, use always the shutdown button on it.
I think this problem should be reported to rasperry pi org as a very relevanted bug, if it not done before.


do1esz

[sjharley80]

I have been suffering with this also, at first I thought it was a duff card but clearly I'm not alone.

Its particularly irritating as a linux newbie that shutting down the Pi safely doesn't appear to be in the official manual as well - that should really be in there and as far as I can see its not.

[spec1alk]

FWIW, I have tried Raspbmc on a 4gb class 4 SD card from Kingston (it is at least 3 years old). It seems to be running fine so far. I will try to update this thread in a week or 2 with my findings.

[psgarcha92]

Guys, ok, i have been shutting down my pi using sudo halt, or rebooting via Sudo Reboot.

My story goes like this, i have been having problems with this bug for the last 24 hours or so. I have literally written to my card, updated it, upgraded it and i just fell back to square one because of this error. It always occurs when i do a dirty shutdown. the problem with this is, the last time it happened, it happened when my pi was hung on the desktop, without any taskbar or terminal. so i switched off the power source, and i am back to square one again. even if i take care and do not do dirty shut downs, it is going to hang up some day and i have to do it, and it just goes corrupt again. WHAT TO DO? i am literally sick of this bug now. Please please please help

Running Raspibian Wheezy, and yes, my SD Card is fine (it was purchased from Element14, and it has to be fine)

to sum it up:

It has almost always happened at unclean shutdowns. Sometimes, when booting even if power is taken off, it gets corrouted.
Regards

[psgarcha92]

I am here to update the thread on the issue i had just posted.

After what was happening over and over again with my element14 (preloaded) purchased SD Card, i decided to try a 4GB Micro SD i had lying around collecting dust. First i formatted it with SD Formatter properly, as the SD and SDHC cards are supposed to be formatted.
Then i wrote the image on it using W32DiskImager program, please note this is the image available in the downloads section, namely 2012-09-18 wheezy Raspibian.

Once written, i put it into my Raspi and booted. All booted up fine.
Then it was time to treat my Pi rough. I rebooted it, set the Overscan values in the tool, enabled ssh, all to keep the variables of the cases where the Pi misbehaved the same.

Now i rebooted it, and let it boot fully, to the desktop. Everything working fine.
Then rebooted it, and while it was preloading files (first terminal before raspi-config tool appears), i shut off the supply completely. Booted again, and it started normal and came to the desktop.
I rebooted the Pi, and this time i shut off the supply when the OS Desktop was loading.
Booted up fine again.
Now i added my un-powered hub with a mouse, USB pendrive and keyboard attached. Booted just fine. Misbehaved a little bit more at first terminal and loading desktop. Still worked fine.

Then i remembered that adding the Wlan USB adapter i had made it reboot. So i connected the adapter to RasPi at boot time, it rebooted (involuntary). But the device booted fine again to dektop. I have since done a lot of clean shutdowns, and all i have lost is the taskbar due to some error in openbox config xml file.

All in all, i am very very happy that the pi is working fine, and over that i have a working Wlan adapter on the port.

P.S. i had read at alot of places that overclocking also caused absurd behaviour. So i overclocked as i have done with my element14 card,
CPU Freq 1000
GPU 500
MEM 500
current_limit_override=1

But but but, i am here loading updating the system to the latest packages using sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade. after it finishes i would perform sudo apt-get update and upgrade again just to be sure. after that when it reboots, in raspi-config i would select update, where it updates the firmware and config.txt

if it starts misbehaving, then we would surely know that the problems are with the software updates or the Firmware update or with the preloaded SD card

I hope all would end well here. At last i would be able to sleep properly.

Regards

[spec1alk]

psgarcha92, so do you believe it is your SD card?

[BPK]

Hi All,
Are people still having this problem? It has happened to me a couple of times now and I suspected that it was just the SD card getting corrupted. However, from what I have read, and this post, it appears it can happen if you don't shut down the Pi cleanly.

I think this will become a frustrating problem for people as 99% of people will probably just kill the power to shut down the Pi and from the Raspberry Pi FAQ:

Where’s the on / off switch?
To switch on: just plug it in!

To switch off: remove power.

I have also not yet found a fix for this for people who only have a Windows PC.

Thanks

[spec1alk]

I haven't seen this happen nearly as much recently. I don't know if the boot procedure has been enhanced to address this or what. It also seemed to occur more often when I was overclocking.

[BPK]

I am overclocking at the second highest level. It does seem to happen remarkably often across different SD cards for me.

It seems to be this is quite an issue if it does occur regularly with other people. I can fix relatively easily by re-flashing the card but I can imagine lots of disappointed teachers who lose a lot of time with this if it happens as often to them as me.

Maybe it is something else I have done to my distro that has caused this to happen more frequently than normal?

Thanks

[spec1alk]

Try running at the default clock and see what happens.

[rdohmen]

Hello,

I had this issue several times in the last days.
- NOOBS 1.3.3
- no overclocking
- model B 512MB
- I think this happened all the time: programm freezes -> unpluged main - > sd contents damaged (works normal again after reinstalling NOOBS).

I wonder:
- what can I do about it?
- how can I update the firmware in NOOBS (Raspian)?

kind regards,
René

[DougieLawson]

Ditch NOOBS and go with the Raspbian image.

[AndrewS]

NOOBS 1.3.4 was released yesterday which includes the latest Raspbian image with the latest firmware.