I’ve been running StartOS for couple of months with following DIY setup:
ThinkPad X13 Yoga Gen 1: Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM with 2TB ScanDisk external portable SSD Hard Drive.
StartOS is the only operating system running on the machine. It ran good for 2-3 months. I had Knots full node, mempool, LND, Datum Gateway (5 Th/s miner), Vaultwarden, Alby Hub, noStrudel running.
One day, after coming home the server had stopped working and I got following Errors in my log:
Oof, though break man. So, little unclear what you want as 2 and 3 are in conflict
Restoration:
Lightning) I hope you have your seed phrase written down somewhere. If you don’t have that, you’re hosed
VaultWarden) Looks like you’re going to need a backup file of that as the db is encrypted even if you could recover it
Was the OS running from the external drive?
Do you have another computer that can read the drive?
This looks to me like a corruption on the internal drive, where StartOS is installed. You didn’t mention the internal drive. I assume it’s a small SSD, which is fine. Failure on this drive is a distinct possibility. Please confirm that I’m on the right track here.
I don’t have neither seed phrases backed up manually. I only have Vaultwarden admin token written up which probably doesnt help.
After removing external drive and booting up the machine it gives me additional StartOS disk not found error as well. Does it mean I flashed it on my external SSD partition? I wiped the original machine clean from any OS and data before installing StartOS. I thought installed the OS on the machine’s internal drive. The startOS logo and stuff pop up when I boot up the machine. This is what I get when booted up with no SSD:
Two of my other Ubuntu machines recognize the external SSD but neither of them are mounting it automatically. I could try manual mount but I’d like to hear your recommendations first.
I’m unclear as to why you are starting up the server with no drives attached.
I’m also unclear what drives and partitions you actually have.
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StartOS uses two partitions, these are both on the same drive, or they are on separate drives, but there is always an OS partition and a Data partition.
Let’s assume the drive(s) you are using are not dead, and let’s assume your data partition is recoverable, do this:
Flash a USB thumb drive, boot it, and select your OS partition following this guide: Start9 | StartOS (x86/ARM)
Thanks for the reply @StuPleb! My apologize for the confusion. Here’s the breakdown:
When I found my machine in the bad state I had Disk management error. displayed in the StartOS - Diagnostic Mode. My external SSD was still attached to the machine.
When I removed the external SSD and tried to boot into StartOS the StartOS Diagnostic Mode displayed 2 StartOS launch errors: Storage drive not found;, StartOS disk not found
Keep in mind, I always thought I installed the StartOS on the machine internal drive and external 2TB SSD was just to accommodate bitcoin blockchain as m internal drive is only 500GB. But now I’m confused if the StartOS itself is also installed on the external drive or not.
I did some digging in the grub shell WITHOUT external drive attached to see what partitions I have. This is what I got:
So looks like you placed both OS and Data on the USB. You can place things wherever you want. But I don’t know what this information you’re providing is for exactly. You can see my previous message for what you need to do next.
I tried to dig into your comment “I’m also unclear what drives and partitions you actually have.” as it was unclear to me as well where I installed my StartOS.
Anyway, I followed the guides:
Installed StatrtOS on the server internal drive
Booted the server → attached external data drive → Selected “Recover” → “Use excisting Drive” → and during the initializing I got the same RPC ERROR: Disk Management Error grub-probe-default: error: unknown filesystem
This looks to me like the data partition, if not recognized as ext4, is likely in a bad way. I’m not sure of there’s a next step, at least within the StartOS context. Outside of StartOS, you’d need to look at possible specialist recovery techniques I’m afraid.
Thanks @StuPleb. For an extra comment I plugged the external SSD to my main machine and tried to find the filesystem type. With the help of chatgpt the FSTYPE=crypto_LUKS, FSVER=2 and it’s summary is:
The logical volumes (main and/or package-data) use LUKS encryption (FSTYPE=crypto_LUKS).
That’s why:
blkid and file couldn’t detect the real filesystem — it’s inside the encrypted container.
Mounting fails — because LUKS containers must be unlocked first before mounting.
It then suggest to decrypt it with cryptosetup and mount it. To access the encrypted volume I need the passphrase for the LUKS volume, which I don’t have. I tried using StartOS passphrase but no dice. If anybody knows, How is this passphrase created in case for StartOS when external drive is used for data storage? Is it created by the StartOS software?
You’re right @StuPleb, I followed the guide and after the command:
sudo mount /dev/mapper/startos_data_unlocked /mnt/startos_data
I get:
mount: /mnt/startos_data: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/mapper/startos_data_unlocked, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.
dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.
dmesg didn’t reveal anything about failed mount. Does it mean my SSD got corrupt somehow and all data is cooked for good?
