Not able to login after restart

StartOS Support
1

Hello,
I am not able to login after restart StartOS.
on the local IP adress is shown “StartOS - Diagnostic Mode” with: Database Error

Job for postgresql@15-main.service failed because the service did not take the steps required by its unit configuration. See “systemctl status postgresql@15-main.service” and “journalctl -xeu postgresql@15-main.service” for details.

and following logs:

2025-10-21T16:15:55+02:00 2025-10-21T14:15:55.449300Z INFO inner_main :setup_or_init : startos::bins::start_init: Loaded Disk 2025-10-21T16:15:55+02:00 2025-10-21T14:15:55.511216Z INFO inner_main :setup_or_init :init :secret_store :init_postgres :bind : startos::disk::mount::util: Binding /embassy-data/main/postgresql to /var/lib/postgresql 2025-10-21T16:15:58+02:00 2025-10-21T14:15:58.227864Z ERROR inner_main : startos::bins::start_init: Job for postgresql@15-main.service failed because the service did not take the steps required by its unit configuration. 2025-10-21T16:15:58+02:00 See “systemctl status postgresql@15-main.service” and “journalctl -xeu postgresql@15-main.service” for details. 2025-10-21T16:15:58+02:00 2025-10-21T14:15:58.227881Z DEBUG inner_main : startos::bins::start_init: Job for postgresql@15-main.service failed because the service did not take the steps required by its unit configuration. 2025-10-21T16:15:58+02:00 See “systemctl status postgresql@15-main.service” and “journalctl -xeu postgresql@15-main.service” for details. 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 2025-10-21T14:16:01.001011Z ERROR inner_main :init : startos::context::diagnostic: Error: Database Error: Job for postgresql@15-main.service failed because the service did not take the steps required by its unit configuration. 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 See “systemctl status postgresql@15-main.service” and “journalctl -xeu postgresql@15-main.service” for details. 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 : Starting diagnostic UI 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 2025-10-21T14:16:01.013805Z DEBUG inner_main :init : startos::context::diagnostic: Error { source: 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 0: Job for postgresql@15-main.service failed because the service did not take the steps required by its unit configuration. 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 See “systemctl status postgresql@15-main.service” and “journalctl -xeu postgresql@15-main.service” for details. 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 0: 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 Location: 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 startos/src/util/mod.rs:163 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SPANTRACE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 0: startos::init::init_postgres 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 at startos/src/init.rs:46 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 1: startos::context::rpc::secret_store 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 at startos/src/context/rpc.rs:92 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 2: startos::init::init 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 at startos/src/init.rs:192 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 3: startos::bins::start_init::setup_or_init 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 at startos/src/bins/start_init.rs:23 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 4: startos::bins::start_init::inner_main 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 at startos/src/bins/start_init.rs:198 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 Backtrace omitted. Run with RUST_BACKTRACE=1 environment variable to display it. 2025-10-21T16:16:01+02:00 Run with RUST_BACKTRACE=full to include source snippets., kind: Database, revision: None }

I tried to Restart Server and System Rebuild from Diagnostic Mode page, but without success.

Could you help me, how to resolve it?
Thank you

2

Please provide some more info about the hardware you are using, and the circumstance which the error occurred. Why were you doing a restart?

3

Lenovo ThinkCentre M910Q - Intel Core i5-6500T, 16GB RAM DDR4, Crucial MX500 2TB SSD

Today mornig fan was on higher speed as ussual, temperature was 67°C - i tried to restart. Restart was successful, but the system froze during connection. After about 5 minutes of inactivity, I did a hard shutdown and restart using the hardware button. I got to the login screen (when connecting using Host Name), but when I tried to log in, I received a “Gateway Timeout” message. When opening via the IP address, I got to “Diagnostic Mode.”

4

It’s possible that you have a hardware issue at the base of this problem. But the next step from where you are is, to re-flash your server, using the “Use existing drive” recovery option. make sure to use the x86, non-free image.

5

Will this affect the data on the disk, installed applications, and opened LN channels? Will the Host Name and certificates remain the same?

6

The recovery option I mentioned is meant to restore the server back to as it was, with all the services, and their data intact, host-names all the same. However, if your drive is failing, this process may fail if your data is already corrupt. I hope you have backup your server.

7

During initialization after re-flashing, the following message popped up and initialization “froze.”

image
image731×159 7.45 KB

What is your suggestion for the next steps?
thank you

8

Hi Hugo!

We’ve seen this error before. It’s most likely caused by database corruption. To fix it, you’ll need to reflash your system with a development build of StartOS. Use SSH to clean the corrupted directory and flag that the migration needs to be redone. After that, reflash with the standard StartOS build. If the data on your StartOS isn’t critical, it’s best to wipe everything and start fresh.

9

Hello h0mer,
thank you for your reply.
I am not a Linux user. Is there a step-by-step guide somewhere describing the procedure you mention above? Where can I find the development build of StartOS?

I would like to keep everything I have running on the server. Fresh installation is my last option.

10

Hi, sorry for the late response.

You’ll need to join the Start9 support server — someone there should be able to help you get a development version of StartOS and guide you through the process.