Raspberry Pi not booting

[Anonymous]

Hey, I had my Raspberry Pi working all week, but then today I botched something somehow and I think I might need to wipe it and start over? Hopefully not. Anyway, long story short, when I start it up it now says: “Could not chdir to home directory /home/pi: No such file or directory”

[Dan]

is the SD card in place correctly? does it show any of the startup text on the screen?

I hope you don’t have to reset BUT if you do, here’s a way:
https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/931/how-do-i-install-an-os-image-onto-an-sd-card

[Anonymous]

Ugh, sounds like I might have to reset. Yeah the SD card is in place. It only says:

“Linux raspberrypi 4.1.19+” followed by the date etc.
“The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software…” etc. paragraph
“Last login: Mon Jan 22 23:20:22” etc.
“Could not chdir to home directory /home/pi: No such file or directory”
“pi@raspberrypi:/$” (this line is in white, not color–before when it worked it was in color)

It was working fine and then I messed around with some commands to try and get a menu bar in the GUI because it wasn’t showing. I rebooted it and then kablooey. Good lesson though and the perfect time for it before there’s anything on there.

For future, do you have a recommendation for the best way to back up all the files on a pi? I have a card reader but my pc is running on Windows.

[Dan]

before you reset, try

cd /home
ls

Maybe somehow the /home/pi folder got deleted and everything else is fine.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Dan. after cd /home, ls just returns me to the command line… which I think means it didn’t find any files?

1. To reset, do I need to reformat my card as FAT and install NOOBS? https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/noobs.md

2. Is my card 32GB (or less)? For bigger cards it has different instructions but I don’t know how to tell.

[Dan]

you’ll probably need to download the NOOBS SD card image and use an SD card image writer to copy it onto the SD card. 9_9

Before that, try

sudo mkdir /home
sudo mkdir /home/pi

and paste the results from

cd /
ls -al

[Anonymous]

pi@raspberrypi:~$ sudo mkdir /home
mkdir: cannot create directory `/home’: File exists
pi@raspberrypi:~$ sudo mkdir /home/pi
mkdir: cannot create directory `/home/pi’: File exists
pi@raspberrypi:~$ cd /
pi@raspberrypi:/$ ls -al
total 96
drwxr-xr-x 22 root root 4096 Jun 19 2013 .
drwxr-xr-x 22 root root 4096 Jun 19 2013 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 15 00:14 bin
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 16384 Jan 1 1970 boot
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 3300 Jan 23 18:45 dev
drwxr-xr-x 99 root root 4096 Jan 23 18:45 etc
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jan 23 18:37 home
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4096 Jan 15 00:03 lib
drwx—— 2 root root 16384 Jun 19 2013 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 19 2013 media
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 15 2013 mnt
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jun 19 2013 opt
dr-xr-xr-x 80 root root 0 Jan 1 1970 proc
drwx—— 2 root root 4096 Jun 19 2013 root
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 580 Jan 23 18:45 run
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 15 00:19 sbin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 20 2012 selinux
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 19 2013 srv
dr-xr-xr-x 11 root root 0 Jan 1 1970 sys
drwxrwxrwt 4 root root 4096 Jan 23 18:45 tmp
drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 4096 Jan 22 21:53 usr
drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 4096 Jun 19 2013 var

[Dan]

looks like all the usual suspects are where they belong. now that /home/pi exists (Because of the sudo commands) the error should be gone next time you log in.

[Anonymous]

Hmm. So the “Could not chdir to home directory /home/pi..” is gone now, but it still isn’t booting properly. The same brief start screen:

“Linux raspberrypi 4.1.19+” I noticed the date here says March…
“The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software…” etc. paragraph
“Last login: Mon Jan 22 23:20:22” etc.
“Could not chdir to home directory /home/pi: No such file or directory”
“pi@raspberrypi:/$” (this line is in white, not color–before when it worked it was in color)

Any last ditch ideas before I try https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/931/how-do-i-install-an-os-image-onto-an-sd-card

[Author]

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