[Freedombox-discuss] HELP! The dist-upgrade bricked my FreedomBox and new images don't boot.
Sunil Mohan Adapa
sunil at medhas.org
Thu Sep 11 04:14:38 BST 2025
Hi,
I am sorry to hear that your FreedomBox went down. Let's get it back up.
New Images not working
----------------------
Regarding new images not booting on apu2 and apu1d4, please note that
the newer images for amd64 require UEFI for booting. I don't know if the
APUs support UEFI booting. They likely do. Reach the BIOS of the machine
(connect to a monitor and keyboard, start the machine, and press the
BIOS key which is F1, F8, F10, F12 or DEL keys usually), then find the
booting options and enable UEFI booting. In case APUs don't support UEFI
booting, you can still run FreedomBox on them by using the Debian
installer and choosing the FreedomBox Home Server Blend during
installation in the final task selection step (this is new with Trixie).
It will ask some questions by just leave everything to default.
Recovering Grub boot failure
----------------------------
It is likely that the distribution upgrade process was interrupted
leading to the grub boot failure.
To recover, please connect the failed disk to another machine (using
USB, or SD card reader) and run the following commands (roughly):
# lsblk (to note the disks and partitions on the effected drive)
# mount <root_partition_device> /mnt
# mount <boot_partition_device> /mnt/boot
(usually not need in x86/amd64)
# mount <efi_parition_device> /mnt/boot/efi
(only on newer EFI disk images)
# mount -o bind /proc /mnt/proc
# mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys
# mount -o bind /dev/ /mnt/dev
# mount -o bind /dev/pts /mnt/dev/pts
# chroot /mnt
# dpkg --configure -a
# apt -f install
# apt full-upgrade
# upgrade-grub
# grub-install <disk_device>
# exit
# umount /mnt/dev/pts
# umount /mnt/dev/
# umount /mnt/sys
# umount /mnt/proc
# umount /mnt/boot/efi
# umount /mnt/boot
# umount /mnt
Now, eject the disk and try to boot with it.
Restoring/downloading backup from remote
----------------------------------------
Typically, on a new installation, one can setup a remote backup location
in FreedomBox -> System -> Backup and Restore. After the location is you
can list all the archives in the backup location. You can restore or
download those archives as you choose.
Network connection restoration
------------------------------
If you have placed files into /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections and
boot your FreedomBox image, then those connections will be used until
FreedomBox starts. Then it sets up its own connections and actives them.
Sorry, I see there is scope of a lot of improvement in this situation.
One way to overcome this is to create /etc/network/interfaces file and
do all your configuration there (in Debian style) in that case Network
Manager will not touch those interfaces despite FreedomBox's attempts to
configure them.
Proxy Error
-----------
The proxy error you are seeing happens when the backup application is
not running or failed to start (in this case it is likely the FreedomBox
service). You can check it's status and get the logs:
# systemctl status plinth.service
# journalctl -u plinth.service
Further Help
------------
I am available on IRC and Matrix channels should you require urgent
assistance. Feel free to reach out to me.
--
Sunil
On 9/10/25 18:09, A. F. Cano via Freedombox-discuss wrote:
>
>
> The dist-upgrade of a few days ago made the FreedomBox totally inaceessible.
>
> Just tried to boot it on an old laptop and I get:
>
> Grub loading...
> Welcome to GRUB1
>
> error symbol 'grub_disk_native_sectors' not found.
> grub rescue>
>
> What do I need to enter there? I can mount it on my desktop under /media,
> but what can I do to recover the bootable status?
>
> This was the latest attempt. Before that I tried an old testing FreedomBox
> from about a year ago. It booted but needed massive upgrades. I replaced
> testing with trixie in /etc/apt/sources.list, did the modernization that
> was called for and kept upgrading, but the upgrades kept using up more and
> more memory, freezing it, making it inaccessible. I kept cockpit running
> to keep an eye on what was going on and upgrading via ssh. After many
> tries, it seemed that I was in the final round and the upgrade removed
> network manager and everything froze. Since then I haven't been able to
> access that FreedomBox image.
>
> Then I installed a brand new image on a brand new SD card. Neither the
> trixie imeage nor the testing image even appeared to boot. I tried them
> on a spare FreedomBox (apu2) from a computer with the interface manually
> configured to appear as 10.42.0.3 since I read that a newly-installed
> FreedomBox can be reached from a browser at 10.42.0.1.
>
> Then I mounted it and manually copied the files I had saved a long time ago
> into /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections:
>
> FreedomBox WAN
> FreedomBox LAN enp2s0
> FreedomBox LAN enp3s0
>
> This sets the IP addresses for the internal networks. In the past, this
> pre-configuration has allowed me to access a new FreedomBox from the
> existing internal networks (192.168.200.x and 192.168.224.x), but I'm not
> quite sure how those are interpreted on first boot. In any case, it appears
> that all these newly created FreedomBox images don't boot, not on the apu1d4
> (the all-important main FreedomBox), not on the apu2 with the testing
> computer at 10.42.0.3, and not on the laptop. Even though the boot
> subsystem on the latter recognizes a USB HD, if I select it, it boots the
> OS on the HD, and the mouse doesn't work.
>
> While it booted and was accessible, I tried many times to do a restore of
> my user data. I all cases it failed at the very end (the tar file was
> about 3.6GN) and there was no file left to restore. Maybe this was caused
> by old versions of software, so I kept upgrading until the last attempt
> bricked the whole thing by deleting network manager and somehow making it
> unbootable. This is the error: (when the upload failed)
>
> Proxy Error
> The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
> The proxy server could not handle the request
>
> Reason: Error reading from remote server
>
> Apache/2.4.58 (Debian) Server at fbx Port 443
>
> This happened both with and without privoxy, so the proxy is at least
> misleading.
>
> As a side note, it would really be helpful if the documentation (at the
> FreedomBox itself) specified the steps one must take at the host where the
> remote backups are kept. I had to install borg backup and then run the
> commands (from a post I found)
>
> $ borg list /path/to/backup
>
> and then copy/paste the last backup into
>
> $ borg export-tar /path/to/backup::"<name of backup>"
>
> Even better would be if the FreedomBox did an ssh remote command of the
> first one, presented the user with the output and allowed the selection of
> a backup, that would then be put as part of the second command that would
> also be remotely executed.
>
> I then wiped the old testing FreedomBox and put brand new images on that SD
> card (256 GB, the other 2 are 128). Neither the stable nor testing images
> seemed to boot. arp-scan never detected any, in either the main network
> (192.168.200.x) or the test network (10.42.0.x)
>
> So, tried 2 separate SD cards one brand new and one that used to boot and
> neither seems to now. Tried testing and stable images on both networks
> and neither are visible to arp-scan and of course are not accessible by
> either IP or freedombox.local, as the manual says it should be.
>
>
> For completeness, this is how I burned the images, just like the web page
> says:
>
> xz -d freedombox-trixie-amd64.img.xz
> sudo dd bs=1M if=freedombox-trixie-amd64.img of=/dev/sdf conv=fdatasync status=progress
>
> sudo ifconfig enp3s 10.42.0.3 (setting of the interface on the test computer)
>
> What am I doing wrong? Why does nothing show on arp-scan? Why does nothing
> appear to boot? Why do the browsers keep saying "Unable to connect? Even
> when typing 10.42.0.1 or http://10.42.0.1 they all insist on https.
>
> This is quite urgent, my whole network is out of commission. Can anyone
> suggest something to try or how to fix any of these issues?
>
> Once I get the FreedomBox to its working state with all the data backed up,
> I intend to keep an SD card plugged into my main computer and regularly do
> a unison sync between the live, running FreedomBox and this backup, so the
> backup is ready to go if the main one fails. This was an absolute disaster.
>
> Thanks for reading this far. I eagerly await any suggestion.
>
> Augustine
>
> _______________________________________________
> Freedombox-discuss mailing list
> Freedombox-discuss at alioth-lists.debian.net
> https://alioth-lists.debian.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
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