Pogoplug won't boot...how do I reinstall?

[rickstone]

I've set up Arch on an external HD and all has been working fine for the past year or so. The power went out the other day and I hadn't had a chance to fix the kernel issue yet (where Pacman couldn't be upgraded, etc.). Now the Pogoplug won't boot at all. I'm not quite sure at which point of the instructions to start in order to reinstall. Also, if this even works, I'd really like to keep my settings and installed packages (if that's even possible).

I'm still pretty much a noob with regard to Arch (not Linux in general, though), but any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[moonman]

hook up the hard drive to any other linux box and do a fylesystem check. Most likely the rootfs is corrupt as ext2 is very prone to corruption

[rickstone]

hook up the hard drive to any other linux box and do a fylesystem check. Most likely the rootfs is corrupt as ext2 os very prone to corruption

fsck came back clean and it still doesn't boot. Or at least it doesn't grab an IP address on the router.

[moonman]

What device do you have? Any chance for netconsole or serial?

[rickstone]

What device do you have? Any chance for netconsole or serial?

A pogoplug. I know nothing about either of those.

[WarheadsSE]

Alright, look at the bottom of the device, and tell us what the model number is.

[rickstone]

Alright, look at the bottom of the device, and tell us what the model number is.

It's an E02.

[WarheadsSE]

The simple answer is format & extract the latest rootfs tarball, as root (not! sudo, but sudo su if necessary), onto your USB drive. Save anything you want from it, of course, and especially your configuration files.

[rickstone]

The simple answer is format & extract the latest rootfs tarball, as root (not! sudo, but sudo su if necessary), onto your USB drive. Save anything you want from it, of course, and especially your configuration files.

That's what I suspected, somewhat. I say "somewhat" because I don't understand the steps involved in doing (most of) this. Obviously, I understand formatting the drive. However, "extract the latest rootfs tarball" is a BIT foreign to me. (See the 'noob' comment in my original post ) I understand HOW to extract a tarball, but where do I find a rootfs tarball? And WHERE do I extract it? (Just in the root of the drive?) I mostly use Ubuntu and have had little exposure to this stuff.

Also, when you say to save anything I want especially configuration files, which folders contain the appropriate config files? I am only running samba, Subsonic and Transmission on this unit.

Not that I expect you to hold my hand, but maybe pointing me towards a how-to or some such if you can would be great help, if such things exist.

I am running Arch on a USB hard drive rather than a flash drive. Aren't there bootloader files or something that I need to be careful of, or are those written to the NAND on the Pogoplug?

Sorry to sound so helpless, but I simply followed the original install instructions and everything pretty much worked from the get go and I haven't had to do much outside of some pacman and/or yaourt updates...thankfully!

Thanks much for your help.

[WarheadsSE]

Not a problem.

The boot loaders are in NAND, so that's not an issue.

You will want to use a tar command to extract the rootfs to the base of the newly formatted USB drive.