Failed to connect external drive (error on power up)

I just bought the whole kit from a local electronics shop and after I power up with everything connected (and Umbrel OS flashed with Balena) I get the external drive error.

Note that the blue light on my SSD flashes a few times after I connect it (to the blue port) but after that I don’t see much activity. The blue light flashes once on the SD about every 30 seconds - apart from that there doesn’t seem to be anything else happening.

I tried it in the other blue port but no joy.

I’d be very grateful for any suggestions.

you are powering both the pi and the drive with a small power supply. ssd enclosure (and ssd drive itself) must be both pretty frugal in power consumption, that’s why only specific one is recommended. it probably can be fixed by having separate power supply for your disk, if that’s the way you wanna go.

Thanks for replying, but I got a Patriot P210 1TB SSD, which simply fits into an enclosure (i-Tec) - there’s no option to power the SSD separately. The USB cable is hardwired to the SSD enclosure (so I can’t try a different cable).

I’ve checked the SSD on MacOS and Windows and it’s OK (it was initialised and formatted as Ex FAT before connection to the Pi).

So I can use this SSD w/o any problems but Umbrel on the Pi doesn’t see it.

Is there any way I can verify I’m connecting properly to the Umbrel on the local network? [Angry IP Scanner won’t run on my Mac]

I’ve SSH’d directly to the Umbrel host now (used the instructions on GitHub).

Are there any scripts or diagnostics I can run to troubleshoot connectivity to my SSD?

thanks

I ran the debug script on the umbrel host (output is below).
Anyone have any idea how to interpret the errors given? It looks like the SSD is recognised but then is unable to be mounted - I have no idea why.

umbrel@umbrel:~ $ ~/umbrel/scripts/debug --upload

= Umbrel debug info =

Umbrel version

0.3.14

Flashed OS version

v0.3.14

Raspberry Pi Model

Revision : c03114
Serial : 10000000864c5648
Model : Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.4

Firmware

May 27 2021 14:02:15
Copyright © 2012 Broadcom
version 7d9a298cda813f747b51fe17e1e417e7bf5ca94d (clean) (release) (start)

Temperature

temp=47.2’C

Throttling

throttled=0x0

Memory usage

          total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available

Mem: 3.8G 143M 3.4G 8.0M 233M 3.6G
Swap: 0B 0B 0B

total: 3.8%
system: 3.8%
tor: 0%
lnd: 0%
electrs: 0%
bitcoin: 0%

Memory monitor logs

tail: cannot open ‘/home/umbrel/umbrel/scripts/…/logs/memory-monitor.log’ for reading: No such file or directory

Filesystem information

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 29G 2.9G 25G 11% /
/dev/root 29G 2.9G 25G 11% /

Startup service logs

– Logs begin at Thu 2021-07-29 20:18:35 UTC, end at Thu 2021-07-29 20:37:26 UTC. –
Jul 29 20:22:30 umbrel systemd[1]: Dependency failed for Umbrel Startup Service.
Jul 29 20:22:30 umbrel systemd[1]: umbrel-startup.service: Job umbrel-startup.service/start failed with result ‘dependency’.

External storage service logs

– Logs begin at Thu 2021-07-29 20:18:35 UTC, end at Thu 2021-07-29 20:37:26 UTC. –
Jul 29 20:22:21 umbrel systemd[1]: Starting External Storage Mounter…
Jul 29 20:22:21 umbrel external storage mounter[475]: Running external storage mount script…
Jul 29 20:22:21 umbrel external storage mounter[475]: Found device “Patriot P210 1TB”
Jul 29 20:22:21 umbrel external storage mounter[475]: Blacklisting USB device IDs against UAS driver…
Jul 29 20:22:21 umbrel external storage mounter[475]: Rebinding USB drivers…
Jul 29 20:22:21 umbrel external storage mounter[475]: Checking USB devices are back…
Jul 29 20:22:21 umbrel external storage mounter[475]: Waiting for USB devices…
Jul 29 20:22:22 umbrel external storage mounter[475]: Waiting for USB devices…
Jul 29 20:22:23 umbrel external storage mounter[475]: Waiting for USB devices…
Jul 29 20:22:24 umbrel external storage mounter[475]: Waiting for USB devices…
Jul 29 20:22:25 umbrel external storage mounter[475]: Waiting for USB devices…
Jul 29 20:22:26 umbrel external storage mounter[475]: Waiting for USB devices…
Jul 29 20:22:27 umbrel external storage mounter[475]: Waiting for USB devices…
Jul 29 20:22:28 umbrel external storage mounter[475]: Waiting for USB devices…
Jul 29 20:22:29 umbrel external storage mounter[475]: Waiting for USB devices…
Jul 29 20:22:30 umbrel external storage mounter[475]: USB devices weren’t registered after 10 tries…
Jul 29 20:22:30 umbrel external storage mounter[475]: Exiting mount script without doing anything
Jul 29 20:22:30 umbrel systemd[1]: umbrel-external-storage.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jul 29 20:22:30 umbrel systemd[1]: umbrel-external-storage.service: Failed with result ‘exit-code’.
Jul 29 20:22:30 umbrel systemd[1]: Failed to start External Storage Mounter.

External storage SD card update service logs

– Logs begin at Thu 2021-07-29 20:18:35 UTC, end at Thu 2021-07-29 20:37:26 UTC. –
Jul 29 20:22:30 umbrel systemd[1]: Dependency failed for External Storage SDcard Updater.
Jul 29 20:22:30 umbrel systemd[1]: umbrel-external-storage-sdcard-update.service: Job umbrel-external-storage-sdcard-update.service/start failed with result ‘dependency’.

Karen logs

tail: cannot open ‘logs/karen.log’ for reading: No such file or directory

Docker containers

NAMES STATUS

Bitcoin Core logs

ERROR: The Compose file ‘./docker-compose.yml’ is invalid because:
networks.default.ipam.config.subnet is invalid: should use the CIDR format
services.tor.ports contains an invalid type, it should be a number, or an object
services.bitcoin.ports contains an invalid type, it should be a number, or an object
services.electrs.ports contains an invalid type, it should be a number, or an object
services.lnd.ports contains an invalid type, it should be a number, or an object
services.lnd.ports contains an invalid type, it should be a number, or an object
services.nginx.ports contains an invalid type, it should be a number, or an object
services.lnd.ports value [‘9735:9735’, ‘:’, ‘:’] has non-unique elements

LND logs

{Same errors as for Bitcoin Core above}

Tor logs

{Same errors as for Bitcoin Core above}

==== Result ====

You have either no external drive connected to your Raspberry Pi or the drive is not being detected.
Please shutdown your Raspberry Pi (‘sudo shutdown’), then plug the SSD into the other USB3 port.
After you’ve finished that, boot your Raspberry Pi back up. If it still still doesn’t work,
you can contact us on Telegram (t.me/getumbrel) and share the output of this script.
You can also share these links instead:
tail: cannot open ‘/home/umbrel/umbrel/scripts/…/logs/memory-monitor.log’ for reading: No such file or directory
tail: cannot open ‘logs/karen.log’ for reading: No such file or directory
ERROR: The Compose file ‘./docker-compose.yml’ is invalid because:
networks.default.ipam.config.subnet is invalid: should use the CIDR format
services.tor.ports contains an invalid type, it should be a number, or an object
services.bitcoin.ports contains an invalid type, it should be a number, or an object
services.electrs.ports contains an invalid type, it should be a number, or an object
services.lnd.ports contains an invalid type, it should be a number, or an object
services.lnd.ports contains an invalid type, it should be a number, or an object
services.nginx.ports contains an invalid type, it should be a number, or an object
services.lnd.ports value [‘9735:9735’, ‘:’, ‘:’] has non-unique elements
https://umbrel-paste.vercel.app/

I did some tinkering and tried a suggestion from githubmemory to edit the UAS blacklist and now I get different output.
It still fails to mount but now it sees the file systems on the SSD.

What can I try next? I’m new to Umbrel and willing to read up and troubleshoot but I don’t know how to proceed. AFAIK the hardware looks okay and I can log into the umbrel itself.
[DEBUG OUTPUT BELOW - just the External SSD mounting debug stuff]


– Logs begin at Thu 2021-07-29 20:18:35 UTC, end at Thu 2021-07-29 21:20:14 UTC. –

Jul 29 20:42:26 umbrel systemd[1]: Starting External Storage Mounter…
Jul 29 20:42:26 umbrel external storage mounter[474]: Running external storage mount script…
Jul 29 20:42:26 umbrel external storage mounter[474]: No block devices found
Jul 29 20:42:26 umbrel external storage mounter[474]: Waiting for 5 seconds before checking again…
Jul 29 20:42:31 umbrel external storage mounter[474]: Found device “Patriot P210 1TB”
Jul 29 20:42:31 umbrel external storage mounter[474]: Blacklisting USB device IDs against UAS driver…
Jul 29 20:42:31 umbrel external storage mounter[474]: Checking USB devices are back…
Jul 29 20:42:31 umbrel external storage mounter[474]: Checking if the device is ext4…
Jul 29 21:16:09 umbrel external storage mounter[474]: No, it’s not ext4
Jul 29 21:16:09 umbrel external storage mounter[474]: Formatting device…
Jul 29 21:16:26 umbrel external storage mounter[474]: /dev/sda: 8 bytes were erased at offset 0x00000200 (gpt): 45 46 49 20 50 41 52 54
Jul 29 21:16:26 umbrel external storage mounter[474]: /dev/sda: 8 bytes were erased at offset 0xee77a55e00 (gpt): 45 46 49 20 50 41 52 54
Jul 29 21:16:26 umbrel external storage mounter[474]: /dev/sda: 2 bytes were erased at offset 0x000001fe (PMBR): 55 aa
Jul 29 21:16:26 umbrel external storage mounter[474]: /dev/sda: calling ioctl to re-read partition table: Success
Jul 29 21:19:00 umbrel external storage mounter[474]: Warning: Error fsyncing/closing /dev/sda: Input/output error
Jul 29 21:19:00 umbrel external storage mounter[474]: mke2fs 1.44.5 (15-Dec-2018)
Jul 29 21:19:00 umbrel external storage mounter[474]: The file /dev/sda1 does not exist and no size was specified.
Jul 29 21:19:00 umbrel systemd[1]: umbrel-external-storage.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jul 29 21:19:00 umbrel systemd[1]: umbrel-external-storage.service: Failed with result ‘exit-code’.
Jul 29 21:19:00 umbrel systemd[1]: Failed to start External Storage Mounter.

External storage SD card update service logs


It looks to be an issue with /dev/sda1 (see the error output above).

So I tried doing an fsck of /dev/sda1 and this is what I got:

fsck.ext2: No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/sda1
Possibly non-existent device?

Any ideas guys? :pray:

FIXED

The drive had got corrupted during the setup process so I reconnected it to my Mac and initialised it as APFS. After reconnecting and powering up the umbrel node I was able to get the drive mounted.

Currently about 40K blocks synced :relaxed:

Hi, I’m having a similar issue as you did is your drive still up & running ? TIA /Tim

In the end I couldn’t get the Lightning Wallet or Bitcoin Wallet to sync. I tried reflashing the OS and re-downloading the blockchain, but then the issues above reappeared and this time I could never get the drive to mount (despite reformatting and doing ‘fsck’ on the sda partition).

I’ve given up now and switched to RaspiBlitz, which works perfectly.

isn’t the proper format for the SSD : Ext4?