I’m going to include as much as I possibly can - I’d rather include too much and have people skim than leave things out.
I’d include version numbers, but when I go to the Supervisor page, I only see HA versions. It’s October 25, 2021 and at about 2 AM, after doing a fair amount of changes, I was on the Supervisor page and saw that HA and HAOS both had pending updates. I didn’t want to update HA yet, since I’ve heard that often requires an update to ZWaveJS2MQTT, which I have on a 2nd system in our barn. But I figured I could update the OS.
I’m running HAOS on a Pi 4 and it’s set to boot to the USB. HAOS is on a USB drive. (I’m in a rural area, which means internet is not always reliable and power can go out at times or just flicker. We have a generator, but it takes about 45 seconds for that to kick in. I’m using a UPS for my HA system, but some systems still act up when the UPS kicks in. SD cards are way too sensitive so I run all my Pis off USB RAM drives.)
I went to the Supervisor page and saw teh 2 pending updates. As I said, it was 2 AM and I was thinking, “Yeah, update the OS. Leave HA until later, when I’m not groggy so I can update ZWaveJS2MQTT if I need to.” I click “Update” for the OS and go off to find something to watch while I fall asleep. Then I realize, “I forgot to back it up!!” But it’s already started.
It updates, then apparently reboots and nothing happens. I go downstairs to check on the system. The red LED on the Pi is on, but the yellow one isn’t flashing and the red LED in my USB drive is off. It’s been over 5 minutes. So I turn the Pi off. hook up a monitor, then turn it on. Nothing. Just a blank screen. I wait and nothing happens.
I power off, then put in an SD card and boot. It boots and sees the HAOS volumes and warns me about the format of at least 3 partitions:
I do use the default file browser on Raspbian to check them out - I see files on the volumes, but I don’t touch them. I just close the window. I shut down, then power off. I pull out the HAOS USB stick and put in another I use on Pi 4 systems when I need to check things out. The system boots properly. (I was wondering if, somehow, HAOS, had changed the boot sequence or something.)
I take out the Raspbian USB stick and reboot to HAOS. It comes up fine - but I realize the SD card is still in there, so I shut down, power off, pull the SD card, then reboot to HAOS and it’s okay.
Questions:
- Any idea why HAOS did not want to reboot normally after the update?
- What did I do that fixed it so it booted okay the next time I tried booting it?
In the past, with RetroPie, I had the OS on a SD card and when power went out and it wouldn’t reboot, I found that just pulling the SD card, putting it in another Linux system, mounting it, and reading the volumes (no writing!), then unmounting it and putting it back in its own Pi would work. All I had to do was access the file systems on the RetroPie SD card and it fixed it. I’m wondering if that could have fixed the HAOS USD drive. (Hey, it’s my only theory. It’s past 3:30 AM and even I get fuzzy at some point in the late night hours!)
This isn’t something that I absolutely have to solve, but I’d like to figure out what’s going on so I know if I have to do something special in the future when I update HAOS. For instance, does HAOS assume it’s on an SD card or something like that?