Raspbian Won't Boot

[BluRazPi]

Hi all, I have yet another little problem with my pi. So yesterday and today I have set up my pi so I can log on to it[raspbian] from the VNC program on a computer and the app on my iPad. I also set up an ssh app from my iPad and puTTy on the computer. Everything has been going fine until just a little bit ago. After playing around on the pi from my iPad, I decided to google setting up a USB webcam. I found a blog where a guy shows how to do it. I installed something called "motion" through terminal, and got my webcam(Microsoft Lifecam VX1000), plugged it in, and rebooted to see what happened. The trouble is, it wouldn't reboot. When it was going through the all those boot strings that you see with the green [ ok ] lines, I saw a line that had an orange "[warn] root file system has insufficient file space...."
Is this important, or does it always show that and I haven't noticed until now? Also, fearing that the pi didn't like the webcam, I unplugged it( from the USB hub. Since my first USB overload, I have always used a hub!) and have rebooted it several times and it finishes the boot strings and the [ ok ] lines and then the screen goes blank, with only a blinking text cursor in the top left corner of the screen(that does absolutely nothing when entering commands!). It just sits there like that forever. Did I do something wrong? Is this program "motion" a known troublemaker?

Any help would be greatly appreciated,
BluRazPi

I have Raspbian, Pidora, and RaspBMC all on one 8GB card. So far Pidora and RaspBMC are booting fine, it's Raspbian that's the problem.

[digipup1]

If you can try reinstalling Raspbian.

[digipup1]

Try without "motion" also

[BluRazPi]

Well, that would seem like a logical answer, but I have put a lot of time and effort into setting up RaspBMC and Raspbian and would like to avoid reinstalling OSes if at all possible. UPDATE: So after writing my first post on this thread, I let my pi boot to the blinking text cursor, then I went into the SSH app I installed on my iPad, and low & behold, I was able to access the command line of the pi! That said, I went to the raspi-config(the one you get when setting up Raspbian for the first time). I updated that tool itself, then set the pi to boot to a command line instead of going straight into the LXDE environment( I previously set it up to boot to LXDE for convenience). After rebooting and signing in, I typed 'startx' but it gave blank screen and eventually gave some sort of load fail message. After this, I rebooted, then ran 'sudo apt-get update' then 'sudo apt-get upgrade' hoping it might fix any bugs, but still it says there is a problem with something like 'x-server'. This leads me to believe that something is wrong with LXDE. Any ideas? Maybe a corrupt card?

Thank you for the help,
BluRazPi

[rpdom]

That [warn] message may be significant. How much space is available on your Raspbian root file system?

Please post output of "df -h /" command, like this

Code: Select all

pi@raspi2 ~ $ df -h /
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root       3.6G  1.4G  2.0G  42% /

You might be able to free up a bit of space with "sudo apt-get clean" which gets rid of old software install files that aren't needed once the software has been installed (like motion, for example).

[BluRazPi]

Ok, so I don't know how to post the command text in that fancy code box, but I will post a cropped screenshot of what the command gave.

image.jpg (13.95 KiB) Viewed 3037 times

This is in my SSH app on my iPad. Another thing, the last time I tried to wipe my card(8GB Micro SD in an adapter), the disk that showed up on the computer was like 1.7GB or something close to that, and I can't figure out why it doesn't show the whole 8GB(or at least something like 7.92GB). Does NOOBS create a partition and then hide the rest of the card?

Than you for the help,
BluRazPi

[DeeJay]

So, the 100% used figure confirms what the Operating System already told you: "root file system has insufficient file space...."

If you don't want to reinstall (and of course in the process reset ALL your OS installations to their initial states) then your only choice is to use the command line to find and delete some unwanted large files in your Raspbian filestore.

Does NOOBS create a partition and then hide the rest of the card?

NOOBS creates multiple partitions. Windows only reports on the first: you might say it is Windows that is doing the hiding, not NOOBS.

[BluRazPi]

Ok, I am willing to try and manually remove programs. I have gotten a few things from the pi store, open arena, little crane, weather app, and openTTD. Since I can access those apps without internet connection, does that mean they are also stored locally on my pi? If so, how would I go about removing them? Is there some sort of way to access all stored program files, kinda like how you do in Windows,(still through command line of course)?

BluRazPi

[DeeJay]

I've never installed anything via the PiStore, so I don't know how it manages its packages. If it uses standard debian packages it *might* be enough to use

Code: Select all

sudo dpkg --purge <name of package>

- but I stress that's only a guess and invite you to wait for a better-informed reply from someone else.

[BluRazPi]

Ok, I am fine with waiting. If at some point later in life I want wipe that card, partitions and all, how do I go about it with windows "hiding" all but the first partition it sees?

BluRazPi

[Tarcas]

You would use Windows to install NOOBS, and let NOOBS install your OS(es).

Noobs keeps a small partition that Windows can read, but sets up the rest of the drive as ext4 partitions that Linux uses efficiently but Windows thinks are full of corrupted data or something, since it doesn't have drivers to read them. In drive management it can see they're there, but it says they're unallocated space and asks if you'd like to format them so Windows can use them. Obviously allowing this would destroy your Linux installation.

[BluRazPi]

Ok, that makes sense, but last time I tried to format the card, it only did the tiny partition that windows treats normally and I never got back to seeing the whole 8GB. Is there something I'm missing here?

[rpdom]

I suppose you could try changing the partition table on your Pi. It would make it unbootable in the Pi until NOOBS (or whatever) is reinstalled (which you don't care about at this stage), but should be possible. (I'd test this myself if I had a spare card).

Boot up your Pi and (using sudo or as root) start up your favourite partition editor (I like cfdisk). Note the type of the first (FAT) partition. Delete all partitions. Create a new partition filling the whole card. Set the partition type to the same as the original FAT one. Write the changes and exit. Shutdown your Pi. Put card in Windows machine and format it. You should see the full capacity.

Or you can download the SD Card formatter as mentioned in the Downloads or FAQs somewhere and use that with "Size Adjust" set on.

[BluRazPi]

Thanks for the info on the formatting stuff, I'll probably come back and use that later, but for the moment, good news! Just now, I SSHed into my pi from my iPad, removed one program with "apt-get remove" then "apt-get clean", and it booted properly! So I guess everything is fine for now! Thank you all for the help(hopefully I won't be back to this thread in an hour!)

BluRazPi

[Pramod Shiva Prasad]

Hi BluRazPi,

I am facing the same issue now. I installed motion and then restarted.Since then pi doesn't boot.The screen goes blank, with only a blinking text cursor in the top left corner of the screen. Please let me know how to correct this.

If any one faced the same problem and came out of it, please let me know how to correct.