Updated and now bricked

EndersEnigma

Any idea why my system wont even boot after updating all packages from the retropie setup screen?

3b+ stretch. No idea what version was or is currently on there any more thanks to brick.

mitu

@endersenigma Are you sure it's not just this problem ?

EndersEnigma

Nope! no splash screen, no loading screen, no command line, no rainbow window, no green flashing light, just red power light, 0 input detected from pi. Tried a different SD card with old load, worked fine. Updating though the prompt somehow bricked my card.

Is there a way to repair the boot sector or something?

EndersEnigma

I think what I need to do is rebuild my FAT boot partition as almost all of the files are now gone. Is there a way to do this for stretch without formatting the entire card?

mitu

@endersenigma You could get the files from a different card. Try copying the boot partition files from the good SD card to another.

EndersEnigma

@mitu

Trying a similar solution now, grabbing the boot sector from the latest image off the retropie website. will update when completed.

EndersEnigma

@mitu

after recovering the boot partition, I now have 4 raspberry logos on my screen with a blinking underscore icon.

mitu

@endersenigma Well, the kernel loaded, but the rest of the files in on the other partition are either unreadable or it's the wrong kernel version and it cannot load any of the kernel modules from the 2nd partition.

EndersEnigma

Recovered to a 4.3 boot partition and got it to load partially to a login screen. However, I cannot SSH into the system and it locks up after login locally on the pi. It attempts to load EmulationStation but no further prompts, no inputs at all, just a screen "no controller detected" but there is no way to interact with the system. Keyboard non responsive, controllers wired and bluetooth both non responsive .

I am going to try and recover all of my ROMs, Saves, Scrapes, and themes. If that is successful I am going to do a clean install and start over. Hopefully I can recover the files.

madmodder123

That is why you always create a backup before you update

EndersEnigma

@madmodder123

Super helpful. Post here much?

madmodder123

@endersenigma I'm just saying, to you or anyone else who reads this, that you should always backup your setup before updating. Hell you should backup your setup when you have everything configured the way you want it, just to be safe :)
I run this small github page: https://github.com/madmodder123/retropie_saves/
Let me know if you have anything to contribute, bud. I am always glad to have extra help :)

Also you should try a new 4.3 image, update it and then copy over the boot partition files :)
Have a good night!

pjft

Just a note, obviously it won't help much at this stage, but certainly don't take it as an attack. I'm sure that was not the intention of @madmodder123 either, and I can imagine how frustrating it may be.

This last weekend not only was I backing things up to my laptop, but also to two separate external drives, and then even to Google Drive, just because if I do have to do it all over again - curating the games, artwork, media, settings, etc - I can imagine I'll lose motivation somewhat.

So, while I'm not going to repeat the suggestion for backing things up often, I can suggest for future setups to have your ROMs in an external USB thumb drive. At least for me it's been extremely helpful as if the SD card gets bricked because of an update, even though it's somewhat painful to have to reconfigure it all, it's nothing compared to having to recover your games, artwork, media, savegames, highscores, etc.

That might help you somewhat for the future.

Still, the warning is important. Wondering if it's kernel related or other packages - likely kernel but I'm not a Linux expert here.