Posts by frankvw

  • How to modify files in /etc?

    In the spirit of experimentation I copied /flash/SYSTEM (which is the squashfs container for the LE root fs) to my Linux box, installed the squashfs-tools package, ran unsquashfs SYSTEM which creates squashfs-root/ in which you'll find the entire contents of the root file system.

    Edit, modify, pillage and burn to your heart's content. :)

    Then use mksquashfs to recreate the SYSTEM container. This I shall cowardly leave as an exercise to the reader, because I have no idea what parameters have been used to create SYSTEM originally and what parameters should be used to recreated the modified SYSTEM squashfs container. If the LE devs can tell you, great; if not, there's trial and error in your future. If it breaks, you get to keep the pieces. :P


    Putting the SYSTEM container back is probably best done by bringing LE down, transferring the flash card from your RPI to the Linux box and copying SYSTEM to it. You could try to remount /flash rw and replace SYSTEM that way using sftp, I suppose, but I expect that would be much like trying to change the wheels on a speeding car, I suspect, and end in a similar manner.


    Personally I'm not going this route, because every LE update will overwrite the changes thus made. In general it shouldn't be necessary, either: for normal LE / Kodi use no write access to / is or should ever be required. If you do need write access, that means you're trying to do something that LE wasn't intended or designed for, and you might be better off using Raspbian instead and simply live without the LE niceties (such as using your TV remote to connect to a WiFi network, having a lot of plug-and-play options, and generally not needing a keyboard/mouse connected to your RPi ever, and all the other goodies).

  • ext HDs not mounted after 11.01 update

    Quote from chewitt

    Ahh, that explains then. Thanks for clarifying. We're contemplating where we go with changes..

    Personally I'd be happy just with the /bin/ntfsfix binary (and the /sbin/fsck.ntfs symlink to it) being restored to LE 11.0.4!

    The ntfsfix command could be linked to a button on a remote control or, since ntfsfix may not be able to solve all NTFS issues but I have yet to see it create a new one, and it's pretty quick to run, too, it might make sense to automate it. All we'd need would be a udev rule (say, /lib/udev/rules.d/99-usb-harddisk.rules) with something in it like

    Code
    ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="block", KERNEL=="sd*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="YOUR_VENDOR_ID", ATTRS{idProduct}=="YOUR_PRODUCT_ID", RUN+="/sbin/somescript.sh %k"

    The script would contain something like

    Code
    DEVICE=$1
if blkid -t TYPE="ntfs" "/dev/$DEVICE"; then
for PARTITION in $(ls /dev/$DEVICE*); do
ntfsfix "$PARTITION"
done
fi

    This isn't exactly copy-and-paste stuff of course, not to mention that it could be improved with an axe, but you see where I'm going with this.

    On second thought, a separate rule file probably isn't necessary; I've had a quick look and an addition to /lib/udev/rules.d/95-udevil-mount.rules would probably do the trick.

    [EDIT: or maybe it's 60-persistent-storage.rules - I'm not too sure at this point. I've never done a deep dig into udev rules before.]

    Anyway - happy contemplating! Looking forward to the outcome.

    In closing, thanks for all your help! It's greatly appreciated. You guys rock!

  • ext HDs not mounted after 11.01 update

    Quote from chewitt

    Copying binaries between different LE major versions or from other distros occasionally works but is never guaranteed. I'm going to have a look at Ubuntu 18.04 and what it's doing (need to find something with an Intel CPU for this though). I'm wondering if they have udev rules that run ntfs or they aliased a script that runs ntfsfix to fsck.ntfs. I'm 100% sure the util-linux tools support FAT/VFAT but do not support (and never have supported) NTFS; so the output from the fsck command needs explaining.

    As far as the fsck output on Ubuntu 18.04 is concerned: that's my bad... :blush:

    Code
    frankvw@dellfvw:~$ ls -l /sbin/fsck.ntfs
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Sep 17  2018 /sbin/fsck.ntfs -> /bin/ntfsfix

    Sorry to have missed that.

    The version of ntfsfix on U18.04 is ntfsfix v2017.3.23. A quick grep for fsck or ntfsfix in /lib/udev/rules yields no results.

  • ext HDs not mounted after 11.01 update

    Quote from chewitt

    The tool that I added to the image is "ntfsfix" not fsck. Please test that.

    chewitt :
    Okay! That works!

    After an unclean dismount the NTFS partition cannot be made to mount again, but 'ntfsfix -d /dev/sda2' solves that problem. Progress! :)

    It doesn't directly address the fact that LE11 appears far more critical than Ubuntu 18.04 when it comes to not remounting an unclean NTFS, much less the long-standing problems of Linux vs NTFS in general, but at least it's a usable work-around!

    If ntfsfix can be included in the next point release of LE11, a udev rule to run it every time the NTFS volume is plugged in would go a long way to easing this particular pain.

    Meanwhile I've extracted the /bin/ntfsfix binary from the image and I'll add it to my LE11.0.3 install.

    Tnx!

    Update:
    Simply copying the binary across doesn't seem to work. I put it in ~/.kodi/addons/virtual.system-tools/bin because that's in the path and it's too late in the evening to start figuring out how to remount / to be writeable. But simply running it (as it did on the test image) won't work here:

    Code
    LibreELEC:~/.kodi/addons/virtual.system-tools/bin # ls -l ntfsfix
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root        199360 Nov  9 23:00 ntfsfix

LibreELEC:~/.kodi/addons/virtual.system-tools/bin # sh ./ntfsfix
./ntfsfix: line 3: syntax error: unterminated quoted string

    Time to call it a night.... :sleepy:

  • ext HDs not mounted after 11.01 update

    Quote from petediscrete

    Connect up the damaged disk to your Ubuntu laptop and try running Test Disk. You’ll get a far better insight into what exactly is going on.

    Thanks for the tip! That may save me having to use my wife's Windows laptop. :)

    However that's not the issue we're discussing here. LE won't mount NTFS partitions that my Linux box handles without flinching and the on-board fsck is all there is but that doesn't do much more than print its version. So one unclean dismount and you can't get things going again on LE. And that's a problem. Regardless of whether you need an external Windoze box with Chkdsk or an external Linux box with testdisk.

    Maybe testdisk could be ported to LE if fsck can't be made to do more than just print a message and exiting. But that still leaves LE's finicky behavior with NTFS.

  • ext HDs not mounted after 11.01 update

    chewitt :
    OK. I've put the test image through its paces. TL;DR version: no effect. Details below.

    First I replicated the issue on the LE11.0.3 image that I've been running for the past two weeks or so. The harddisk I'm using is a Seagate 8TB Archive SMR in external enclosure with USB3 interface (which also contains a 2-port USB3 hub). Partitions: 134MB FAT ("Microsoft reserved" rubbish that I never got around to eradicating) and the rest is NTFS.

    After a clean reboot with a previously cleanly unmounted harddisk all is well. Then I arranged for an unclean dismount of the USB harddisk. <yank> :)

    Relevant output of dmesg:

    Replugging the harddisk replicated the issue that started this whole thread: the NTFS partition is not visible from within Kodi.
    Relevant output of dmesg:

    Last two lines of mount output:

    Code
    /dev/sda2 on /var/media/Seagate_8TB type ntfs3(rw,relatime,uid=0,gid=0,fmask=37777600133,iocharset=utf8)
/dev/sdb1 on /var/media/FAT_134MB type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,noatime,fmask=0133,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro)

    However, while mount shows the partition as mounted, it is not visible from within Kodi and /var/media/Seagate_8TB/ is empty.

    Unplugging and replugging the USB drive (which seems the first option a non-technical user would think of) doesn't fix the problem, however the mount command now doesn't show /dev/sda2 at all.

    So let's run fsck /dev/sda2:

    Code
    fsck from util-linux 2.38.1

    Which is profoundly unhelpful and doesn't fix anything. So that's the problem reproduced with the standard 11.0.3 distribution image.

    Then I did the same with the LibreELEC (chewitt): 11.80.0 (RPi4.aarch64) image as per the download link above. This shows one (and only one) difference with the LE11.0.3 distro image, which is the output of the fsck command:

    Code
    fsck from util-linux 2.39.2

    Finally I plugged the USB harddisk into my Ubuntu 18.04 laptop. (Yes, I know, I'm way overdue for upgrading. Deal with it. :)) This system runs kernel version 4.15.0-213-generic #224-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jun 19 13:30:12 UTC 2023 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux.

    Strangely enough, the NTFS partition mounted fine. I unmounted it and ran fsck /dev/sdb2 on it:

    Code
    fsck from util-linux 2.31.1
Mounting volume... OK
Processing of $MFT and $MFTMirr completed successfully.
Checking the alternate boot sector... OK
NTFS volume version is 3.1.
NTFS partition /dev/sdb2 was processed successfully.

    I'm not sure why fsck on the old Linux box doesn't see the need to repair anything; on previous fsck runs on that partition it did come up with several messages of issues that were corrected. I wish I'd saved them at the time, but of course I didn't.

    Cleanly dismounting the USB disk from the Linux laptop did not make any difference on the LE side: when I plug it back in I still get the "volume is dirty" error in the dmesg output.

    So in summary:

    1. LE is more critical when it comes to refusing to mount a "dirty" NTFS partition, and
    2. The fsck from util-linux 2..31.1 gives more output and seems to do more than the ones in both the distro and the test LE images that I've tried.
    3. The fsck included in LE11 distro and the test image both don't seem to do much more than print its version number when applied to an NTFS partition.

    Item 1 could be kernel-related. 6.1.58 vs. 4.15.0 is not exactly trivial, although I wouldn't be able to explain why recent kernels would be less tolerant to NTFS issues... ?(

    It took plugging the HD into a Windows box and running chkdsk on it before LE would play ball with it again. Interestingly, chkdsk found no errors! But it still caused LE to mount the NTFS partition again. Uh-huh.

    I've had NTFS issues on the Linux box after a mid-write unclean dismount (files and directories that I couldn't read, write or delete anymore from Linux) and that needed a Windows box to fix. But the partition would still mount. LE seems much more picky.

    And that's it from me for today. Stay tuned - film at eleven... :P

  • ext HDs not mounted after 11.01 update

    I've downloaded it, but I'm not sure what to do. I'm not a hard-core developer and I'm not well-versed when it comes to things like Github commits. I work on in-house PHP website back-ends for a living. The above tar doesn't seem to be an image but contains a file system, so I'm not too sure how to install it. To have a look at the stable release image, thinking that the contents of the tar might replace some of it, I tried to download the current generic image for generic PC (no Nvidia support) which should in theory work on my Dell Inspiron 15 3576 laptop but that results in an error message:

    Code
    redigo: nil returned

    So I'm not sure how to proceed.

    I run LE 20.0.3 on an RPi4 (on which I experienced the above NTFS issues) and I've got my Linux laptop for work (still running Ubuntu 18.04, and I can't install LE on that one because I can't risk nuking my work system). That's pretty much it. Virtualization isn't really an option for testing NTFS issues since the virtualization is more than likely to skew the results.

    So. How now, brown cow? :)

  • ext HDs not mounted after 11.01 update

    Quote from chewitt

    ^ LE uses the full e2fsck binary not busybox.

    I built a Generic/GBM image here: https://chewitt.libreelec.tv/testing/LibreE…_64-11.80.0.tar which should reinstate mkfs.ntfs and include the ntfsfix tool from ntfsprogs. The image is not tested since I don't have any Intel CPU hardware around these days, but please have a play with the binaries to ensure they compiled okay and to see if ntfsfix can resolve the dirty-filesystem issues you're seeing?

    I'm on the road this week; I can only download the image on Friday afternoon. Will revert then and let you know what happens. Meanwhile thank you so much for your support; you, sir, rock! :)

  • ext HDs not mounted after 11.01 update

    Quote from chewitt

    Yup. And the utility that's been dropped with NTFS-3G is "mkfs.ntfs" not "fsck.ntfs" .. and if you do some reading around this topic there is a conspicuous absence of fsck or similar tools for NTFS on Linux. There's an older "ntfsfix" which simply clears the dirty flag; which will probably allow the drive to mount in some/most cases, but risks causing damage in scenarios when proper chkdsk.exe is required to resolve a more serious problem with the filesystem (and due to that, isn't something we'd try to use). It looks like we (and the the rest of the Linux using world) is needing Paragon to clean-up and submit their fsck tool code.

    Agreed! But I'm not holding my breath.

    On my current (old Ubuntu 18.04) Linux laptop there is a /sbin/fsck.ntfs but that's just a symlink to /bin/ntfsfix, the manpage of which is quite honest about what it doesn't promise: "ntfsfix is a utility that fixes some common NTFS problems; ntfsfix is NOT a Linux version of chkdsk. It only repairs some fundamental NTFS inconsistencies, resets the NTFS journal file and schedules an NTFS consistency check for the first boot into Windows." Relevant command line options are limited to -b (Clear the list of bad sectors) and -d (Clear the volume dirty flag if the volume can be fixed and mounted). And that's it - not a whole heck of a lot. But as of right now that's about as good as it gets.

    And the fsck implementation in busybox (which I believe to be the one in LE, although I might be wrong) looks to be even more limited.


    In short, it looks like NTFS on LE11 is even less of an option than it is on other Linux platforms, and although I would say that from a UX standpoint proper and robust NTFS support is non-optional, I'm not sure it's realistically feasible at this point in time. :(

  • ext HDs not mounted after 11.01 update

    Quote from chewitt

    LE normally does fsck before mounting drives but there is no fsck.ntfs utility to do this (ext2/3/4 etc. use /usr/sbin/e2fsck). In the past there was an fsck tool from NTFS-3G and I'm wondering if we might need to restore the package; not to switch back to the older driver, but to build and pick the fsck tool to the image.

    I would be a great fan of that idea! Right now I'm seriously considering pulling a hat out of a rabbit somewhow to turn my NTFS into ext4 partitions, since every time there's the slightest hiccup with a USB drive (connector noise, the wife unplugging the wrong wall wart, anything like that) I can't just re-plug and re-mount; I've got to take the USB disk to the only Windows box we have in the house (my wife's laptop) and it's becoming a real problem.

    So yeah, this sounds great! If it's technically feasible without devs having to bend themselves over backwards into a pretzel knot, of course. :)

  • ext HDs not mounted after 11.01 update

    I have been mounting NTFS partitions on Raspberry Pi boxen running OpenElec, LibreElec and Raspbian (now Raspberry OS). And yes, an NTFS partition that has not been unmounted cleanly often refuses to mount, and in several cased I have been forced to use Windows to fix it. All that has been sad about that in previous posts in this thread is absolutely true.

    BUT... Right now I'm seeing things that I have not seen before migrating to LE11. Specifically, I've got an NTFS partition that will mount perfectly on my Ubuntu Linux laptop (Dell Inspiron) without any complaints, but on the RPi4 running LE11.0.3 it refuses to mount, and dmesg tells me that

    1409.985335] ntfs3: sda2: volume is dirty and "force" flag is not set!

    Is LE11 somehow more critical in deciding what is and is not a sufficiently "dirty" state to refuse mounting?

    NTFS on *ix has always been somewhat problematic, and I get that. But right now, as of LE11, I'm looking at a situation where I need to connect my external Kodi HD to a Windows box to "repair" the file system after even the slightest hiccup!

    If converting an almost full 8TB Seagate Storage + SMR drive to ext4 without having a spare 8TB to park the files while the file system is being modified I'd already have done that, but at present I just don't have that option.

    So yeah, it's a bit of a pain... To a large extent this renders USB NTFS disks on LE unusable.

    PS: It also doesn't help that LE and Kodi currently have no option to cleanly umount USB harddisks with NTFS partitions. At this point in time you unplug an NTFS HD without first shutting down LE and you can't use it again before you've connected it to a Windows box. The fsck that comes with LE (I assume part of Busybox) is limited, especially in its ability to kick NTFS back in shape.

  • Where did the "screen" command go?

    Quote from HiassofT

    It's in the system-tools addon

    so long,

    Hias

    I had that one installed, but 'screen' wasn't there. So I uninstalled and reinstalled it, which solved the problem.

    It looks like a few add-ons that I installed were not installed properly somehow. I've been battling with Wifi issues on the RPI4 (the dreaded "invalid-key" error issue) which may or may not have had anything to do with it.

    Thanks!

    // FvW

  • Where did the "screen" command go?

    On LE9.x there was an add-on that included the "screen" command, It would let me start processes, log off, then come back later, re-attach the screen (console) and continue. (This one: https://linux.die.net/man/1/screen)

    On LE 11.0.3 this seems to be missing. I've installed all possible add-ons (I think) that could provide this but no luck so far. Which add-on provides support for this console command? Or has it been discontinued?

    // F