Version: Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie) and FreedomBox version 25.9.3
The memory card is showing as full and scheduled backups have failed. None of the apps are working. I have a 1T SSD attached and thought that I had set that as the backup location.
It is showing errors for snapshots, backup, users/groups and the other apps that are installed.
I tried to manually delete a backup and it gave me an error that there is not enough memory to complete the action.
I tried to access Cockpit and it gave an error of wrong password, but I used the correct login.
Other than the apps, backups and snapshots (both set using the default save/delete settings), there shouldn’t be anything on the SD card.
Are you able to login with ssh through the terminal from a computer? I have a thought on backups. Recently I did survey the backup folder and recognized, that old Backups do not get deleted, they stay, even if you delete them in the GUI under System.
If you enter sudo ls /var/lib/freedombox/borgbackup/data then you will see some numbers like 0 1 maybe 2 and more. They are all full and use a lot of space.
I deleted the backups with rm -rfv /var/lib/freedombox/borgbackup/*
But: After this you will have an error showing on the internal backups. I managed to copy the content from a new installation to this folder and the error was gone. Since then I do backups only to external storages, because there you can delete the folder FreedonBoxBackups and just add a new backup location and start over again or just take another e.g. USB-STICK, mount it and start over again. So you can keep old backups.
Well, if you can live with a warning sign (orange triangle) on the internal FreedomBox backup (system > backups), then just go ahead and delete the Borg backups. When you are logged in with SSH first make sure, you have the right path with sudo ls /var/lib/freedombox/borgbackup/data
If you see numbers like 0 etc, then delete the folder with sudo rm -rfv /var/lib/freedombox/borgbackup/data. This is safe and just has a blemish as I said (warning sign). If you don’t copy another intact folder there, then you can’t use this internal backup anymore. But you always can make backups to an external storage. But: after this you will have free storage again. If you don’t like the warning sign, then you have to copy the same folder from a new FreedomBox installation to the existing one, which is some work. Or there is another way I didn’t read in to. For this read the Borg docs: https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/usage/delete.html
While I was researching exactly how to delete old backups, the Pioneer became completely unreachable.
I do not know if it’s possible to access the SD card any other way to delete files and free some memory.
Is there any other method I could use to get it back online other than a complete re-installation?
You can try to delete this folder on a notebook or pc. Insert your card (maybe with an adapter) and like you navigate to folders on your computer, you can go to the folder on the card and try to delete the folder “data” in var > lib> freedombox > borgbackup. You need root permission. I am able to do it on my computer with Linux Mint. I don’t know how if you use Windows…
I used a Linux laptop (Pop_OS) based on Ubuntu.
I only have one Freedombox with an attached SSD.
It recognized the SD card (sda), the boot partition (sda1), and the btrfs partition (sda2), but would not mount sda2.
The SSD has two folders and I set it up to be the storage location for backups, but there doesn’t seem be anything actually stored on it.
There have been several other posts about the SSD possibly requiring more power, so I purchased a 5V, 4amp power supply.
Good that you have Linux on your computer. If your sd card is connected with your computer, but not mounted, what do you see when you navigate to /media/user/.. or whatever? Can you see the card? In my case it looks like /media/user/long-number-like-UUID
If you can see this, you can copy this path in your terminal: sudo ls /media/user/long-number/var/lib/freedombox/borgbackup/data
Are you able to see this number somewhere in media?
To open it in terminal, it needs to be mounted. I tried mounting in terminal yesterday and was unable to access it.
Today, I manually entered the file path of the partition AND the path suggested above and used cd to try again and got the message “No such file or directory”.
The card is there, with a 268 MB volume and a 32 GB volume, but the 32 GB volume is blocked somehow.
One more idea: take a larger sd card and copy the existing card with dd to the new one. Then enlarge partition 2 with the btrfs file system with e.g. Gparted. You could also copy just partition 2 to a usb stick with dd or gparted. In this case you have to delete partition 2 on the sd card. Then enlarge the partition…
I’m willing to try this, however, I don’t understand how cloning would fix it.
Would I use the new/larger card to try and boot the Pioneer? As in, rather than trying to delete files to make more room, I essentially making a bigger room?
This issue you are facing was on the agenda of yesterdays call (see the the notes in the announcements). I forgot to tell you, that you can try to make room with the borg command “compact”. But I never did try it myself… I run an email server with several GB’s of emails in the user accounts, and with backups to the internal storage it does use a lot of disk space. And since the old backups did not get deleted it did eat up the whole disk. So a big “thank you” to the developers for solving this issue!!!
Variant 1 - btrfs file system on another device as the sd card in case you have e.g. a USB stick laying around:
The Pioneer FBX just needs the boot partition on a sd card. The btrfs root file system can also be on a ssd, USB stick or HDD. Your OS on your pc has a graphic disk managment tool. Use this to figure out which partition to copy and delete, and to delete the btrfs partition on the sc card after the cloning process. You maybe have another tool. With dd you can clone the partition, but make sure you have the right one. Otherwise it will delete your partition.
I use sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdc bs=4096 status=progress to clone a partition (in the example to clone a whole drive). bs ist the block size and with progress you see the progress of the copy process. Maybe your system recognizes the partition on the card as /dev/mmcblk0p2. In this case you have to use this expression instead of /dev/sda2, as example.
‘if’ is the device you want to copy from and ‘of’ is the device you want to copy to.
After cloning you can enlarge the partition 2 (btrfs) with e.g. GParted.
Variant 2 - clone to a larger sd card:
Just clone your sd card e.g. /dev/sda to /dev/sdb with sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=4096 status=progress
After cloning you can enlarge the partition 2 (btrfs) with e.g. GParted.
Hopefully your FreedomBox will start after this process!