Unexpected Inconsistancy error

[jonpanoff]

Hi,

I came home to view my recordings today only to find they had all failed. Then all my recordings were not there!! So I go to record a show manually and it comes up with "No HDD drive found or HDD not initialised!". From there I go to menu > setup > storage > File system check and get the error message of unexpected inconsistency; run fsck manually
This is not the first time this has happened. Not a happy chappie. Last time I reformatted but don't want to do that again as have some recordings I want to get off the drive ...

Help !

[jonpanoff]

I have managed to ssh into the T3 but none of the limited linux commands I know work..

tried fsck /dev/Harddisk but that didn't work
I sshed into the root
tried to cd to Harddisk but everything I try says unknown

See below


root@beyonwizt3:~#
root@beyonwizt3:~# fsck
-sh: fsck: not found
root@beyonwizt3:~# fsck /dev/
-sh: fsck: not found
root@beyonwizt3:~# cd Harddisk
-sh: cd: can't cd to Harddisk
root@beyonwizt3:~# ls -d */
logs/
root@beyonwizt3:~# cd..
-sh: cd..: not found
root@beyonwizt3:~#
root@beyonwizt3:~# fsck /dev/Harddisk
-sh: fsck: not found
root@beyonwizt3:~#


What am I doing wrong? I have very limited knowledge of linux. I grew up with DOS commands (yes I know ...)

[prl]

...
What am I doing wrong?

The internal HDD isn't /dev/Harddisk. It should normally be /dev/sda1.

You can get the names of the devices and where they are mounted using the

mount

command. Look for the '/dev' entry corresponding to '/media/hdd'.

However the immediate error you're getting is that the 'fsck' wrapper program isn't on the T3. You have to call the file system specific fsck.xxx check program. You can find which one to run from the output of 'mount' above, the 'type xxx'. So if mount says '/dev/sda1 on /media/hdd type ext4", run:

umount /dev/sda1
fsck.ext4 -p /dev/sda1
mount /dev/sda1

The umount will give an error if there are any open files on the HDD, e.g. for timeshift or for recordings being made/played.

However the error "No HDD drive found or HDD not initialised!" in your first post suggests problems beyond what fsck can fix. If 'mount' doesn't list /media/hdd or if fsck can't fix the problem it may be a HDD or HDD cabling problem, or even a mainboard problem.

Check the the seating of the HDD cables (also try replacing them if you can). Check that the HDD spins up. In the worst case connect the HDD to a box running Linux (use a Linux Live CD like Ubuntu on a Windows PC if you don't have access to a PC running Linux) and see if it recognises the HDD.


Also, when you use 'cd', you have to separate the path from the command with a space:

cd ..

not

cd..

Similarly for other commands.

The nearest Linux equivalent of the Windows cmd

dir/d

is simply

ls

[jonpanoff]

Hi Peter

This is what I am getting when using the mount command..

root@beyonwizt3:~# mount
rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
ubi0:rootfs on / type ubifs (rw,relatime)
devtmpfs on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,relatime,size=145212k,nr_inodes=36303,mode=755)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,relatime)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,relatime)
tmpfs on /media type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=64k)
tmpfs on /var/volatile type tmpfs (rw,relatime)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,relatime,gid=5,mode=620)
nfsd on /proc/fs/nfsd type nfsd (rw,relatime)
/etc/auto.network on /media/autofs type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=6,pgrp=438,timeout=5,minproto=5,maxproto=5,indirect)
djmount on /media/upnp type fuse.djmount (ro,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0)


and when I tried to use Disk Utility on the mac to read it I get

"cannot read boot block"

Disk Utility can't repair it..


Any suggestions??

[peteru]

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

[prl]

Hi Peter

This is what I am getting when using the mount command..

root@beyonwizt3:~# mount
rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
ubi0:rootfs on / type ubifs (rw,relatime)
...

Please use Code blocks ([ code ] ... [ /code ] tags without the spaces) to display data lika that verbatim.

Anyway, it shows that the internal HDD isn't mounted.

and when I tried to use Disk Utility on the mac to read it I get

"cannot read boot block"

And that's why.

Disk Utility can't repair it..

That's correct no matter what. OS X Disk Utility doesn't know about the extX family of Linux filesystems, and AFAIK there's no third-party software for OS X that can repair an ext4 filesystem.

Any suggestions??

The only option is to use a low-level disk partition program to write a new boot block and GUID partition on the HDD without overwriting any of the file system data. I don't think I can help much on that.

If you can get the disk identifier for the HDD from Disk Utility (it'll be something like 'disk2') by selecting the HDD in the left bar and clicking on the 'i' information button in the toolbar of Disk Utility, you can try a low-level read from the HDD using:

sudo dd if=/dev/disk2 of=/dev/null count=10

Replace 'disk2' in that with whatever the HDD's information panel in Disk Utility shows in the Disk Identifier field. It will ask you for your password (you must be logged in in a Administrator account).

It should print something like:

10+0 records in
10+0 records out
5120 bytes transferred in 0.011201 secs (457106 bytes/sec)

If you get an error from that, the HDD has serious issues, and re-writing the boot block and partition table probably isn't an option.

Does the HDD spin up?

[jonpanoff]

Yes PeterU did the full power turn off including back switch. Ended up just buying a new 3TB hard drive today (I just bought the basic 500GB T3 so was always going to upgrade if I liked it). Did the format and seems to create the structure fine..but ...New problem showed up. Went to check my recording of Ellen and it was all black. Murphy's law all the other channels were fine except for the channel 9 block. (9, extra, gem etc). All of them were black. After a while said no transponder data.Was like WTF. Fired up the old P1. No probs. 9 was there.This T3 is turning out way more capable but also way more buggy than my 2 previous DP series. So I do a rescan and still black. Reboot and now it is fine. Didn't help turn back time to re record though Grrr. So this brings me to my next questions. Why does it do this on occasion and also is there a fix? I also noticed a record and zap option. Is this the preferred option? Is this the cause of the situation I just had as I presume zap means change to recording channel before recording?..
Will try the suggestions for my old drive once I get the new main drive setup nice and stable. The old drive will be a data recovery only attempt now as that drive is surplus now...

[jonpanoff]

Any one else feel like they are beta testers for this T3..???

[prl]

... Went to check my recording of Ellen and it was all black. Murphy's law all the other channels were fine except for the channel 9 block. (9, extra, gem etc). All of them were black. After a while said no transponder data.Was like WTF. Fired up the old P1. No probs. 9 was there.This T3 is turning out way more capable but also way more buggy than my 2 previous DP series. So I do a rescan and still black. Reboot and now it is fine. Didn't help turn back time to re record though Grrr. So this brings me to my next questions. Why does it do this on occasion and also is there a fix?

That sounds like a reception issue, and probably should probably be in a new topic since I doubt very much it has anything to do with your HDD problem, other than perhaps a flaky power supply.

I also noticed a record and zap option. Is this the preferred option?

It will change the channel to the recorded channel as soon as it starts recording something. I wouldn't want it to do that, and I can't think of many reasons why anyone would want it, but it's there if that's what you want.

Is this the cause of the situation I just had as I presume zap means change to recording channel before recording?..

Do you have it enabled on recordings? It seems unlikely that it would cause the problems you described, since all the Nine services seem to be affected at once. That points to a tuner or reception problem. At least something before the demux of the services in the broadcast channel.

Will try the suggestions for my old drive once I get the new main drive setup nice and stable. The old drive will be a data recovery only attempt now as that drive is surplus now...

I suspect that the old drive is dead.

Anyway, I suggest starting a new topic for the Nine reception issues.

[A_G]

Any one else feel like they are beta testers for this T3..???

Maybe, but I am enjoying it a lot more than the Win7 Media Centre setup I had before - far less problems and so far more reliable.

Peter's help is fantastic and greatly appreciated so keep persevering...

Beyonwiz support has been good too!

[jonpanoff]

The great features keep me plugging away. Just annoyed I lost recordings. Wanted to watch the Grand Prix I recorded. More the off circuit events like the Hornet in cockpit flight ..
I did solve one problem. I wiggled the tuner cables a bit and the tuners now behave a bit better. I read somewhere to take them out and run an eraser over the contacts and reinsert..., must have contact issues with the tuners...
Yes Peter is a wealth of knowledge and is appreciated

[prl]

... I did solve one problem. I wiggled the tuner cables a bit and the tuners now behave a bit better. I read somewhere to take them out and run an eraser over the contacts and reinsert..., must have contact issues with the tuners...

Yes, reseating the tuners may help with that. It's not clear to me why only Nine had problems, though. Perhaps it was just that the tuner with problems happened to be tuned to Nine's broadcast channel when it lost signal.

There's a good description of how to clean the tuner contacts here. Make sure you pay attention to step 6 and that Tuner C goes back in the same slot that it came from. It has different DIP switch settings from the other two tuners.