[olpc-help] XO won't boot

[Doug Jones]

Sounds to me like you hit this bug:

http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/5317

Which is scheduled to be fixed in Update.1 (which is already a month 
behind schedule):

http://dev.laptop.org/milestone/Update.1

Other people have seen this...

http://en.forum.laptop.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1160

http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=135.0;prev_next=prev

The only solution anyone seems to have mentioned is the extreme one:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activated_Upgrade


By holding down the appropriate key when booting, you can get the 
machine to stay in the Open Firmware, where you can talk to it in Forth. 
  Supposedly, you can do lots of things from here, but you really need 
to be expert in the Forth language and how it's implemented on the XO. 
Perhaps it is possible to delete files on the NAND flash from here, but 
I don't know how, and I haven't found any references anywhere that gives 
a clue about this.  There are probably developers hanging around IRC 
that would know, but they are probably hoping that people like us 
haven't been keeping really important files on the XO and will be 
willing to take the easy way (for them) out...  :-)

I put a 16GB SDHC card in my XO, and occasionally move the larger files 
from the Journal into there.  But that can't guarantee that you will 
avoid this fate, as one person hosed their machine by simply clicking on 
a browser link that pointed to a large video file, which of course 
downloads the whole file before trying to play it.


[...If you got into Pong, you must have held down the entire rocker pad 
(pressing on the middle).  If you just press on the left arrow, it's 
supposed to do the test-all with no Pong, and leave you at a Forth 
prompt.  If you type test-all there, it runs the tests again.]





Laurie DeMott wrote:
> I believe I have build 656 and I have not gotten any disk full error 
> statements.  I tried the boot process below where you hold down the 
> left game key to do diagnostics.  First Pong comes up (nice to know I 
> can at least play Pong if nothing else) and it began going through 
> the diagnostics.
> 
> At the end, it said, "Tests complete" and powered off.  When I tried 
> booting up again, I still only got as far as the icon with one dot 
> below it and then it freezes.
> 
> I then tried the boot with the check mark.  Some of the stuff goes by 
> too quickly to read but it did stop for a while at 68.416793 JFFS2 
> notice (618) check_mode_data: wrong data CRC in data mode at 
> 0x3e881090: read 0x3f8e529e, calculated 0x4d6f7239.
> 
> It finally then spit out a few lines about files and stopped with the 
> following message:
> JSError: [Errno 28] No space left on device.
> 
> So I'm guessing that, in fact, I did overfill it.  Is the only 
> solution trying to boot it from the flash drive (which so far hasn't 
> worked)?  I don't suppose there is a way to hack into the system and 
> delete some files, is there?
> 
> Laurie
> 
> At 11:14 PM 2/26/2008, you wrote:
> 
>> Perhaps you have the dreaded "disk full" error?
>>
>> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Support_FAQ#How_do_I_recover_from_a_.22Disk_Full.22_error.3F
>>
>> In the shipped build (650), if you fill up the disk completely, the
>> laptop won't boot any more.
>>
>> The developers have been talking about a way of preventing this problem,
>> but I'm not sure if this has been implemented yet.
>>
>> What happens if you do a verbose boot?  Do you see an error message
>> going by about the disk being full?
>>
>> (Various different ways of booting are described here:
>>
>> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Startup_Diagnosis
>>
>> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Cheat_codes
>>
>> Try the check key while booting, and then try the rocker left key.)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Laurie DeMott wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I also posted this to the forum.  I'm hoping someone has some advice
>>> for me.  I think I overtaxed my XO and now it won't boot. Here is
>>> what I did -- I moved a 27MB pdf file from my SD card to the journal
>>> and then tried to open it. It was taking a while to open and so,
>>> becoming impatient, I also started Opera. Both Reader and Opera just
>>> blinked and blinked, never opening, and I couldn't get the reboot
>>> menu to come up so I finally had to push the power button to turn it
>>> off. Now it won't boot -- I just get the music, the X with one dot
>>> under it and it hangs there forever.
>>>
>>> I tried removing the battery for awhile and restarting, but no dice.
>>> I tried booting with the x on the gamepad and then with the o on the
>>> gamepad but nothing changed either time. I tried copying the build to
>>> a flashdrive and booting from that as explained in some other forum
>>> threads but all I get is "Failure to boot" and the little sad face icon.
>>>
>>> I will try using a couple of different flash drives since some people
>>> seemed to have luck doing that but is there anything else I can try?
>>>
>>> Laurie
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
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> 
>