[Freedombox-discuss] UPDATE and SUMMARY Re: Mounted FreedomBox SD card, expanded partition, mount mounts old size.

Sat May 6 19:17:07 UTC 2017

I have now installed FreedomBox on 3 separate SD cards and all became
unusable at some point.  Details below:

On Tue, May 02, 2017 at 09:29:30PM -0400, A. F. Cano wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Since the expand partition function didn't work, the 3.8 GB FreedomBox
> image got filled up with snapshots and eventually (presumably because
> it got totally filled up) became unbootable and inaccessible by ssh.

I did receive an off-list suggestion to use a command line utility called
snapper to manage the snapshots.  Unfortunately since this particular SD
card is not bootable or accessible (can't tell which: ssh doesn't
connect and the web interfaces hangs) I can only attempt anything by
mounting it.

> So, I mounted it on a Debian testing system (the only one that seems to
> be able to handle btrfs) and saw the 3.8 GB partition.  I could not

This situation has improved.  Probably because of a kernel upgrade, I
can now mount the FreedomBox SD card on a Debian 8 system (stable) as
well as on the Debian 9 system.

I installed snapper on the Debian 8 system (same amd64 architecture as
the Freedombox) but even after specifying the path to the config file
to the one on the FreedomBox FS:

snapper -c /mnt/etc/snapper/configs/root delete all

I get "Unknown config." in response to any snapper command, not just
"detele all".

I have also tried to run the snapper executable on the FreedomBox FS
(mounted under /mnt) by setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the ones on the
FreedomBox FS:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/mnt/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu:/mnt/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu

/mnt/usr/bin/snapper -c /mnt/etc/snapper/configs/root list-configs

but I get "Segmentation fault"

The system on which Debian 9 is installed is a 32 bit system, so it
can't run the executable from the FreedomBox.

> remove the .snapshots directory.  It claimed to be a read-only FS.  I
> double-checked and the SD card was mounted RW.  Does the FreedomBox
> somehow create a FS within the FS that is visible to mount?  So I
> unmounted it and expanded the partition with parted.  After
> a few tries parted sees the expanded partition (to 32GB), as does fdisk.

No change on this:

df -h
...
/dev/sdb1       3.6G  3.2G     0 100% /mnt

But:

# fdisk /dev/sdb

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.25.2).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.

Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sdb: 29 GiB, 31167873024 bytes, 60874752 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xe11c53a4

Device     Boot Start      End  Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1  *     2048 60817408 60815361  29G 83 Linux

A check of the FS finds no errors:

# btrfs check /dev/sdb1
Checking filesystem on /dev/sdb1
UUID: 01a0ef42-4c28-45e8-b716-ffd83cecb7bf
checking extents
checking free space cache
checking fs roots
checking csums
checking root refs
found 1830880736 bytes used err is 0
total csum bytes: 3057572
total tree bytes: 121831424
total fs tree bytes: 110559232
total extent tree bytes: 6995968
btree space waste bytes: 29089600
file data blocks allocated: 5049839616
 referenced 4843188224
 Btrfs v3.17

> ...

Another FreedomBox SD card became inaccessible via ssh or web interface
when it filled up.  This one I could recover by finding out that
/var/log/syslog had grown to 1.2 GB being filled up with named errors:

Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving './NS/IN': 198.97.
190.53#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving 'G.ROOT-SERVERS.NE
T/AAAA/IN': 2001:7fe::53#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving 'E.ROOT-SERVERS.NE
T/AAAA/IN': 192.33.4.12#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving './NS/IN': 2001:50
0:1::53#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving 'E.ROOT-SERVERS.NE
T/AAAA/IN': 2001:500:2::c#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving 'E.ROOT-SERVERS.NE
T/AAAA/IN': 2001:503:c27::2:30#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving './NS/IN': 192.203
.230.10#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving '1.debian.pool.ntp
.org/A/IN': 202.12.27.33#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving 'E.ROOT-SERVERS.NE
T/AAAA/IN': 192.58.128.30#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving 'G.ROOT-SERVERS.NE
T/AAAA/IN': 192.36.148.17#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving 'E.ROOT-SERVERS.NE
T/AAAA/IN': 2001:500:2f::f#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving '1.debian.pool.ntp
.org/A/IN': 2001:dc3::35#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving './NS/IN': 192.33.
4.12#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving './NS/IN': 2001:50
0:2::c#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving 'E.ROOT-SERVERS.NE
T/AAAA/IN': 192.228.79.201#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving './NS/IN': 2001:50
3:c27::2:30#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving 'E.ROOT-SERVERS.NE
T/AAAA/IN': 2001:500:84::b#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving 'E.ROOT-SERVERS.NE
T/AAAA/IN': 192.112.36.4#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving 'G.ROOT-SERVERS.NE
T/AAAA/IN': 202.12.27.33#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving '1.debian.pool.ntp
.org/A/IN': 2001:7fd::1#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving './NS/IN': 192.58.
128.30#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving './NS/IN': 192.228
.79.201#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving 'E.ROOT-SERVERS.NE
T/AAAA/IN': 192.5.5.241#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving 'G.ROOT-SERVERS.NE
T/AAAA/IN': 2001:dc3::35#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving './NS/IN': 2001:50
0:2f::f#53
Apr 30 10:25:01 fbx named[497]: network unreachable resolving '1.debian.pool.ntp

I realize that many of these requests come from the inside and that the
router connected to the WAN interface is not associated at the moment,
but turning off that router (making the WAN interface inactive) only
causes the frequency of these messages to be even higher.  Like I said,
a 1.2 GB log file quickly fills a 3.8 GB FS.  Not sure what the best
solution for this is...

The way I currently connect the FreedomBox to the internet is via
sporadic ppp calls, but that is also not working at the moment.  I have
sent details to the network-manager list.  A similar problem occurred in
January and then got fixed.  Now it seems another variation of this is
currently preventing ppp from connecting.

In any case, the most puzzling thing right now is: why is the expanded
partition not reflected when mounted?  If this could be solved I could
probably boot and access this FreedomBox image and delete the snapshots
the native way, via the plinth interface.

Augustine