[Freedombox-discuss] HELP! The dist-upgrade bricked my FreedomBox and new images don't boot.

[A. F. Cano]

THANK YOU!  The original FreedomBox is back up and running, via the
"Recovering Grub boot failure" procedure.  Details interspersed with
your very good and valuable advice.

On Wed, Sep 10, 2025 at 08:14:38PM -0700, Sunil Mohan Adapa wrote:
> 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

I'll try this next.  Hopefully the BIOS is smart enough to recognize a
usb keyboard and a DVI monitor plugged into a DVI to USB adapter.  The
2015 manual says to connect a terminal emulator to the DB-9 RS-232
connector via a null modem cable.  I'll have to dig into the box of old
RS-232 cables and connectors and see if I have the proper combination.

> 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.

Good to know this.  Thanks.

> 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):

None of these were applicable.

> # 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)

After mounting to the usual /media/<user>/<long random string> I went
there (cd), then

> # 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

Slightly different, as I was already there, ie: mount -o bind /proc proc

> # chroot /mnt

I actually did # chroot .

> # dpkg --configure -a

Returned no output.

> # apt -f install

Summary:                        
  Upgrading: 0, Installing: 0, Removing: 0, Not Upgrading: 0

Looks like everything had already been installed.

> # apt full-upgrade

Summary:                        
  Upgrading: 0, Installing: 0, Removing: 0, Not Upgrading: 0

Apparently all the work had already been done.

> # upgrade-grub

bash: upgrade-grub: command not found

Mmm...

> # grub-install <disk_device>

# grub-install /dev/sdb
Installing for i386-pc platform.
Installation finished. No error reported.

This was probably the reason for not booting.

> # exit

exit

> # umount /mnt/dev/pts
> # umount /mnt/dev/
> # umount /mnt/sys
> # umount /mnt/proc
> # umount /mnt/boot/efi
> # umount /mnt/boot
> # umount /mnt

Again, slightly different since I was already there.

> Now, eject the disk and try to boot with it.

And it worked!

> 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.

That's not what I see.  There are options to:

Create Backup
Upload and Restore
Add Backup Location
Add Remote Backup location

I am using the stable FreedomBox, it's possible that the testing version
has all this set up differently.

I did "Add Remote Backup Location" a long time ago, and it's been
working fine, doing regular backups.  Hopefully all my user data is
safely stored remotely.  The "Backups" page shows the remote backup
location as <user>@<IP>:~/backups/fbx but it doesn't show the differnent
backups by date, as is necessary for a restore.

The "Upload and Restore" option has a "Choose File" button which allows
you to choose a file to select for the restore operation.  This means
that you have to have one file with everything you need to restore
alredy prepared.  This has to be done on the machine where the remote
backup resides.  That's why it's necessary to install borg backup there
and do the export to tar after listing the different backups.  Thus my
suggestions in my original email.

> 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.

I'm trying to get away from micro-managing the network with the
interfaces files.  This is how I set up the main machine, but as the
network grew and changed it became too much work.  I have noticed an
improvement already.  It used to be that the moment you changed the IP
address of an interface, it instantly became inaccessible.  When I tried
that a couple of days ago, when the testing FreedomBox was still working
id didn't do that.

> 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

Good to know this, unfortunately, the image I did this with has been
wiped after installation of a new one.  It is strange that this happened
repeatedly but only near the end of the transfer.

> Further Help
> ------------
> 
> I am available on IRC and Matrix channels should you require urgent
> assistance. Feel free to reach out to me.

Thank you very much.  The original FreedomBox is up and running, so no
more urgency.  I'll keep playing with new images on the apu2 and see
what I discover.

I have noticed that the supposedly up to date trixie freedombox has 4
services that refuse to start: apparmor, pmcd, pmie, pmlogger and
pmproxy.  Hopefully this will be resolved in the next update.

> -- 
> Sunil