4

I run sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade every month on my pi.
A couple weeks back this occurred during the upgrade part.

> pi@ngpi:/var/log $ sudo apt upgrade Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree        Reading state information... Done You
> might want to run 'apt --fix-broken install' to correct these. The
> following packages have unmet dependencies:  libraspberrypi0 :
> Depends: raspberrypi-bootloader (= 1.20200902-1) but 1.20200819-1 is
> installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt --fix-broken install' with
> no packages (or specify a solution).

I did a bunch of debug and it appears the /boot file system is read only even though mount reports is as rw. How do I fix this?

I tried sudo apt --fix-broken install and get this error

   pi@ngpi:/var/log $ sudo apt --fix-broken install
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  raspberrypi-bootloader
The following packages will be upgraded:
  raspberrypi-bootloader
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 37 not upgraded.
17 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0 B/4,543 kB of archives.
After this operation, 1,024 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
Reading changelogs... Done
(Reading database ... 153773 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../raspberrypi-bootloader_1.20200902-1_armhf.deb ...
Adding 'diversion of /boot/start.elf to /usr/share/rpikernelhack/start.elf by rpikernelhack'
dpkg-divert: error: error checking '/boot/start.elf': Read-only file system
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/raspberrypi-bootloader_1.20200902-1_armhf.deb (--unpack):
 new raspberrypi-bootloader package pre-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/raspberrypi-bootloader_1.20200902-1_armhf.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I've tried a fix-install for raspberrypi-bootloader ad libraspberrypi0 to no avail.

More info: Linux ngpi 5.4.51-v7+ #1333 SMP Mon Aug 10 16:45:19 BST 2020 armv7l GNU/Linux Model : Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Rev 1.2 Debian ver: 10.4

Thoughts?

Based on more research, I tried this: sudo apt install libraspberrypi0 raspberrypi-bootloader Results:

pi@ngpi:/var/log $ sudo apt install libraspberrypi0 raspberrypi-bootloader
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
libraspberrypi0 is already the newest version (1.20200902-1).
The following packages will be upgraded:
  raspberrypi-bootloader
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 37 not upgraded.
17 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0 B/4,543 kB of archives.
After this operation, 1,024 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
Reading changelogs... Done
(Reading database ... 153773 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../raspberrypi-bootloader_1.20200902-1_armhf.deb ...
Adding 'diversion of /boot/start.elf to /usr/share/rpikernelhack/start.elf by rpikernelhack'
dpkg-divert: error: error checking '/boot/start.elf': Read-only file system
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/raspberrypi-bootloader_1.20200902-1_armhf.deb (--unpack):
 new raspberrypi-bootloader package pre-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/raspberrypi-bootloader_1.20200902-1_armhf.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Here is the pertinent part. Why would the boot file system be read-only?

Preparing to unpack .../raspberrypi-bootloader_1.20200902-1_armhf.deb ...
Adding 'diversion of /boot/start.elf to /usr/share/rpikernelhack/start.elf by rpikernelhack'
dpkg-divert: error: error checking '/boot/start.elf': Read-only file system

I ran sudo mount -o remount, rw /and see this in /var/log/messages Oct 22 22:03:37 ngpi kernel: [1762400.628213] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p2): re-mounted. Opts: (null)

and this running mount: /dev/mmcblk0p2 on / type ext4 (rw,noatime)

but re-running sudo apt install libraspberrypi0 raspberrypi-bootloader gives the same read-only file system error. A restart did not fix anything.

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1
  • Added OS & model info
    – uSlackr
    Commented Oct 23, 2020 at 1:33

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
10

I had the same issue and the fix was just to:

mount -o remount, rw /boot

then update/upgrade works.

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4

Turns out the /boot file system was set to read-only in /etc/fstab. Changing that to rw did the trick. Of course, I have no idea how it wound up this way.

proc                    /proc           proc    defaults          0       0
PARTUUID=9975ff21-01  /boot             vfat    defaults,ro          0       2
PARTUUID=9975ff21-02  /                 ext4    defaults,noatime  0       1
//hda/music             /music          cifs    credentials=/etc/samba/hda.cred,uid=1000,gid=1000,vers=1.0 0 0
//hda/docs              /docs           cifs    credentials=/etc/samba/hda.cred,uid=1000,gid=1000,vers=1.0 0 0
# a swapfile is not a swap partition, no line here
#   use  dphys-swapfile swap[on|off]  for that
Improve this answer
3
  • Please mark the answer as the accepted one with a click on the tick on its left side. That prevents your Question from being shown as an unsolved Post to the community and saves them/us a lot of work.
    – Ingo
    Commented Oct 31, 2020 at 17:43
  • Are you sure you didn't change it to ro yourself? I'm at loss imagining who else might have done such a change.
    – Dmitry Grigoryev
    Commented Mar 3, 2021 at 17:48
  • I didn't change it
    – uSlackr
    Commented Mar 4, 2021 at 14:10

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