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

[Sunil Mohan Adapa]

On 9/11/25 13:08, A. F. Cano wrote:
> 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.

Glad to know it is working again.

> 
> 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.

We haven't done anything special to run a terminal on a DB-9 RS-232 in 
the FreedomBox images. I don't know if systemd runs something like this 
by default. Perhaps using DVI to DisplayPort (or HDMI) converter/cable 
will be easier to deal with.

>> # upgrade-grub
> 
> bash: upgrade-grub: command not found
> 
> Mmm...

It was supposed to be 'update-grub'. Sorry.

[...]
> 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.
> 

Perhaps the remote location is not mounted. There is a button to mount 
the remote location. It looks like an Eye icon on the right side of the 
backup location. After mounting successfully, you should see the list of 
all archives (each with a Restore and Download option). We need to make 
this more intuitive.

[...] > 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.

Typically if the network configuration is just about assigning a static 
IP address (needed for port forwarding etc.) to the network interface, I 
configure the router and set a DHCP allocation instead of network 
configuration on FreedomBox. This way, I can:

- Manage all the assignments from the central point.

- Avoid accidentally assigning an IP that could be allocated to some 
other machine via DHCP.

- Avoid network configuration migration when reinstalling.

- Get things working identically whether the configuration is in 
/etc/network/interfaces or NetworkManager.

[...]
> 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.

Another user has reported issue with apparmor not starting. The error 
being in a profile called 'su'. It is likely a bug with upstream or 
Debian packaging and not FreedomBox. Best to investigate.

pmcd, pmie, pmlogger and pmproxy are related to Performance metrics 
collection. We are not aware of any issue with this app currently in 
Trixie. Please post logs or report an issue for this.

-- 
Sunil
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