Noobs error resizing existing fat partition

[mirojr]

Hi

After great help from Davespice my raspbian download booting is now wonderfully, I am now trying to boot my Noobs download.

Problem is after formatting my SD card twice and copying over the extracted Noobs files, I get the boot screen and an error message: error resizing existing fat partition

I can close this dialogue box and see the list of OS's, but each one I select then gives a notification that I haven't enough space on my card.

Is this a common solvable issue?

Thanks.

[rdb]

Your SD card hasnt been formatted correctly. Try following the steps given in the quick start guide.

[mirojr]

Hi

Yes I did follow this quick start guide and used the formatting tool with correct options, I have done it a couple of times and still have the same issue. My sd card is branded 8gb Kingston

the raspbian os works fine, just the noobs that's a problem

Thanks

[rdb]

Could you provide a list of the files that you have in the FAT partition?

[digable1]

I'm having the exact same issue as duxbuz.

My list of files on SD card FAT partition (formatted with resize option, full overwrite, using the SDFormatter):

11/02/2013 02:21 AM 17,824 bootcode.bin
11/02/2013 02:21 AM 268 BUILD-DATA
11/02/2013 02:21 AM 2,249 INSTRUCTIONS-README.txt
11/02/2013 02:21 AM 71 recovery.cmdline
11/02/2013 02:21 AM 471,736 recovery.elf
11/02/2013 02:21 AM 2,093,824 recovery.img
11/02/2013 02:21 AM 20,579,519 recovery.rfs
11/02/2013 02:21 AM 0 RECOVERY_FILES_DO_NOT_EDIT
11/02/2013 02:21 AM 9,728 riscos-boot.bin
09/27/2013 05:41 AM <DIR> defaults
10/13/2013 07:47 AM <DIR> os

[DeeJay]

It sounds as though you are doing things right, and the list of files looks correct. The final answer has to be the one from @rdb Fri Oct 11, 2013 2:07 pm

One tiny detail to check:

After formatting the SD card with SDFormatter, are you 'safely-removing' the SD card from the system and re-inserting it prior to copying the files across?

[digable1]

Well, I thought I was (I was trying to keep that issue in mind). However, the way you phrased the question, maybe not.

What I did:

1. Formatted
2. Copied the files.
3. Slight bugaboo here: My win7 box wouldn't let me safely eject - said another application was using it although I couldn't see what it was. So I rebooted the machine, and when the machine was off, removed the SD card.

So: I will try doing the reboot between above step 1 and 2 as well as step 3.

[digable1]

No joy.

I did the steps as described in my previous post (two reboots of my box - as it would not let me eject the sd card).

And I omitted stating clearly that "FORMAT SIZE ADJUSTMENT ON" was displayed in SDFormatter each time I've tried this.

You probably already know the Error window, but just in case I wonder if the following information helps (it seems like it's acting like format size adjustment was off after all during formatting in spite of setting it to the contrary and checking what it said afterwards):

"WARNING: you are attempting to use /usr/sbin/parted to operate on (resize) a file system. /usr/sbin/parted's file system manipulation code is not as robust as what you'll find in dedicated file-system-specific packages like e2fsprogs. We recommend you to use /usr/sbin/parted only to manipulate partition tables, whever possible. Support for performing most operations on most types of file systems will be removed in an upcoming release. Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!"

Furthermore, there is a "progress window" that indicates it's trying to re-size before this error window comes up. That progress window says "removing 2, 3, 4" before it goes away and the error window comes up.

So, since this appears to be a recent update to noobs, did something get out of sync introduced by this change?

[DeeJay]

The Error Window is 'generic': it is the specific error reported at the end that is of interest. In this case -

Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!

That takes us back to "@rdb: Your SD card hasnt been formatted correctly."

My suggestion to safely-eject was intended to go between steps 1 and 2 in your list.

The fact that the OS thinks a process is using the card may be relevant - perhaps this is preventing the writes to the card fully completing and leaving an unusable partition table?

I assume you are using an SD card reader slot built into the Windows machine? Is it truly SDHC compatible? Some are not. A cheap usb SD card 'dongle' might be worth a try.

The re-sizing operation is a normal part of NOOBS at first-boot.

[digable1]

Yup - did two reboots: Between step 1 and 2 as suggested and also at the original place.

I thought the fact it wouldn't let me eject was relevant as well. Which is why I did the full reboot in both places, as I figured that would be one way to get the OS to flush everything to the card as it was time to close it.

It is indeed a card-reader built into the laptop - but it was a high end enough machine at the time to where it should be good (2 years old). And if it didn't format, I shouldn't be able to access it for copying the files over to it without a hitch (as well as SDFormatter not noticing anything). Plus there's enough boot-strap information for the rPi to at least start up - so I was presuming enough was working to where this is strange (yes, could easily be presuming wrong).

And the SD card is the PNY SDHC P-SDHC8G10-GE (8G, class 10) - specifically called out as being good in http://elinux.org/RPi_SD_cards if you're not on a Mac.

I guess it's time to try a CentOS 6 VM via virtual box thtat's on this machine and see if "dd" will work (or get a USB reader on a dongle).

And since I'm not the originator of this thread, there appear to be 2 of us with this issue. Yeah I know, not enough for significance.

[Phill Rymer]

try formatting in windows as restore defaults then format again with sd set to full size on load image and try again when ive had problems that's normally solved them it was originally suggested for flashing android but works on raspberry as well windows should safe eject doing that

[gsh]

Try again, then when you get the error:

Press Ctrl-Alt-F2 and log in username: root password: raspberry

Code: Select all

$ cat /tmp/debug

The command line to parted should be there, can you paste that?

Also do

Code: Select all

$ parted /dev/mmcblk0
(parted) unit s
(parted) p

And paste the result (or take photos)

This should tell us if the problem is with parted or NOOBS and how we can reproduce it to fix the problem

Thanks

Gordon

[RaTTuS]

Well, I thought I was (I was trying to keep that issue in mind). However, the way you phrased the question, maybe not.

What I did:

1. Formatted
2. Copied the files.
3. Slight bugaboo here: My win7 box wouldn't let me safely eject - said another application was using it although I couldn't see what it was. So I rebooted the machine, and when the machine was off, removed the SD card.
....

this is probably the problem
windows is telling you that either it is still writing to the SD card or that you have it open [both will give the error]
if you reboot or anything you are likely to fail to get a good image

wait for it to finish
or
make sure that windows does not have any explorer window open on the drive

or it may be that your SD card reader is not SDHC and only SD

[digable1]

The parted invocation: "/usr/sbin/parted --script /dev/mmcblk0 resize 1 8192s 1286M"

Now for the errors:

mount: mounting /dev/mmcblk0p3 on /settings failed: No such file or directory
(you might now expect this one) mount: mounting rw on /settings failed: Invalid argument
can't find /settings in /proc/mounts

Note: /proc has mmcblk0 and mmcblk0p1 (indeed, no mmcblk0p3).

[gsh]

Did you run parted?

Gordon

[digable1]

You mean run parted manually? Yes. Same error. Used the same invocation as listed in the debug file (reported in last email).

[gsh]

No I mean like a asked you in the previous post:

Code: Select all

$ parted /dev/mmcblk0
(parted) unit s
(parted) p

[digable1]

Sorry, missed that request.

When I tried the third one, 'p', it said "Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!" (the first two were silent).

[gsh]

That's not a very useful error from parted!!!

What I'm trying to find out is the actual size of the SDCard in sectors (which isn't pre-determined). I think it's probably available somewhere in

/proc/bus/mmc/mmc???/

There are a number of bits of information there! Might be worth searching around a bit...

Gordon

[jojanonone]

1. Formatted
2. Copied the files.
3. Slight bugaboo here: My win7 box wouldn't let me safely eject - said another application was using it although I couldn't see what it was. So I rebooted the machine, and when the machine was off, removed the SD card.

So: I will try doing the reboot between above step 1 and 2 as well as step 3.

I had the exact same problem, could not safely eject and I think a reboot is not good enough. Here's how I solved it:

1. Rebooted my Win 7 with the middle choice in msconfig (Diagnostikstart in Swedish)
2. Formatted my SD card
3. Safely ejected, no problem now
4. Copied the files
5. Safe eject
6. No problem when booting NOOB in the RaspberryPi

Hope this will help you as well.

[dokken]

I had the same problem and finally got it working with the msconfig solution. Thanks, jojanonone.

[ndebras]

I had the same problem and solved it this way :
1) The SD formatter created me a partition that occupied the whole SD card space (16Gb), so I resized it to 1.5Gb using a gparted under ubuntu linux
2) I added a new FAT32 on the remaining space

It then booted like a charm

[AndrewS]

I once saw a similar error on a particular 4GB SDcard when I formatted it as FAT16 instead of FAT32. If I switched to FAT32, or if I tried using other 4GB SDcards formatted to FAT16, it always worked fine. See also https://github.com/raspberrypi/noobs/issues/121
I haven't investigated it fully, but I believe that the partition-check that parted is running before doing the resize operation is being overly-strict, and sometimes complaining about a partitioning layout that it thinks is invalid (even though other tools think it's okay), and then refusing to go any further

[mstarnes]

I was experiencing this problem, too. Turns out my Toshiba Tecra R940 could not format my card properly but my HP 8440p could.

[worldofchris]

Thanks for sharing your experience.

My son and I just had the exact same problem. We solved it with the suggestion above of using a SDHC compliant USB card reader instead of the internal reader on my olde ThinkPad X60s.