Failed to start Resin flasher service

eliot · December 14, 2017, 1:24am

I am trying out Resin on a Logic ML210G-12, using a wired ethernet connection (at the moment… I’m hoping to use the internal LTE modem eventually). The internal mSATA SSD came unformatted. I’m using the NUC v2.7.8+rev1 image, as that’s worked for me on a few random x64 computers before.

The boot messages carry on to various things, but always stops at “Failed to start Resin flasher service”. The device shows up in the Dashboard, but just says “Connecting…”. (I think that I saw it say it was downloading once.)

I tried booting up to Ubuntu 17.10 on a thumb drive, which works. Then I tried installing that on to the internal drive, and that worked. I reformatted the drive, making sure to use a GUID partition table, but still getting the same error.

Is there anyway to flip over to a console for me to see what the logs are and why the flasher service is failing?

jviotti · December 14, 2017, 5:57pm

Hey there!

Can you try pressing CTRL + ALT + F2, login as root, and then executing systemctl status resin-init-flasher?

eliot · December 14, 2017, 6:09pm

I type in root (and enter) on the login: prompt and the cursor moves to the next line, but doesn’t come to a command prompt. A few seconds later the screen refreshes to the login prompt.

eliot · December 14, 2017, 6:11pm

Related to this… when I reboot again on the USB image, I get the GNU GRUB command prompt. I haven’t figured out how to carry on to the normal Resin flasher boot without re-Etching this drive.

jviotti · December 14, 2017, 6:19pm

Hey there,

Are you running a dev image? If not, can you try with that, since it will give us much more information?

eliot · December 14, 2017, 6:42pm

Yes, I was using a dev image. I decided to re-flash it and try to check it closer. Looks like I see something! The flasher is trying to use /dev/sda … which is actually the USB drive, not the internal drive. This explains why it starts acting weird after I leave it for a bit and why I have to reflash the USB drive between tries. How is it determining what is the internal drive?

eliot · December 14, 2017, 8:19pm

I found sda referenced in this config file. I just cloned the repo and modified the file to have sdb instead. I’ve got a few things to install before I can build it, but gonna give that a whirl.

eliot · December 14, 2017, 9:42pm

Ooof. Unfortunately running into a lot of issues trying to make my own image.

floion · December 15, 2017, 5:45am

Hi @eliot . This https://github.com/resin-os/meta-resin/commit/7a39577e0a36427e82efeab9a57b609f2c0e7c38 should make it that it won’t try to install on your USB stick from which you are booting.

If it’s the case that on your board the USB device is detected as sda and the internal media is detected as sdb, then you would also need to change https://github.com/resin-os/resin-intel/blob/master/layers/meta-resin-intel/recipes-support/resin-init/resin-init-flasher.bbappend#L3 and add “sdb” there too.

Can you double check please that in your case the USB stick is detected as “sda” and the internal media is “sdb”?

eliot · December 15, 2017, 9:54pm

Thanks for the hints, @floion! I’m getting a Linux image up on my computer since I guess Mac can’t run Yocto build environment?

I confirmed by booting up with a GParted boot USB, and then booting up with the GParted boot and the Resin USB also connected. In both cases, the internal drive shifts to the last position (in the first case, it was sdb, in the second case, it was sdc).

I’ll let ya know how it goes here!

floion · December 16, 2017, 1:47am

You could just etch your USB drive again, mount it on your computer, and then overwrite resin-init-flasher from partition 2 of the USB stick, under the usr/bin directory there with this version:

github.com

resin-os/meta-resin/blob/master/meta-resin-common/recipes-support/resin-init/resin-init-flasher/resin-init-flasher

#!/bin/bash
#
# Script which burns an image from an external device to an internal device
# Assumptions:
#   * image is in boot partition of external device
#   * all needed variables are configured in resin-init-flasher.conf
#   * filesystems labeling scheme is persistent (flasher-*/resin-*)
# Variables in resin-init-flasher.conf
#  INTERNAL_DEVICE_KERNEL                 - internal device (enumerated by kernel) to be flashed
#                                             * it's impossible to known what dev to flash because
#                                               we don't have any labels before flashing something
#                                               so we need this info
#                                             * when multiple entries provided, the first block device
#                                               found will be used
#  INTERNAL_DEVICE_BOOTLOADER_CONFIG      - name of the bootloader config for internal media boot
#  INTERNAL_DEVICE_BOOTLOADER_CONFIG_PATH - relative path to internal boot partition where
#                                               INTERNAL_DEVICE_BOOTLOADER_CONFIG will be copied to
#  RESIN_IMAGE                            - image to be flashed on internal device
#                                             * this is defaulted to
#                                               resin-image-${MACHINE}.resinos-img and should be

This file has been truncated. show original

Then, on the same partition, you should be able to find the file resin-init-flasher.conf in the etc directory. Edit that file and add “sdb” to the INTERNAL_DEVICE_KERNEL definition.

Save these changes, unmount the USB stick and use it to flash your device.

Please let us know how this goes

krix · August 1, 2019, 12:39pm

In case you end up here because of this error message: I faced this when the PC wasn’t able to find any target harddisk.

mrsaatci · March 3, 2022, 10:06pm

Where does one insert this code?

rahul-thakoor · July 13, 2022, 12:32pm

hey @mrsaatci

looks like your are following up on a very old thread.

Can you please describe what you are trying to achieve and your use case please?

There has been a lot of changes in between so just want to make sure we are on the same page and advise accordinly.

thanks