Glo HD Following a SD Card change, the new partition size is not acknowledged by the reader

[joachim]

Hi!

After reaching the internal storage limit of my Kobo Glo HD, I extracted the SD Card and cloned it to a bigger one (4GB to 16GB). Then the problems started.

I'm on Linux, using the command line (because my Mac can't interact with Linux file systems)

When trying to resize it using resize2fs on the 3rd partition (the data partition), I had the following error: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/mmcblk0p3. I then used growpart on that partition. The command executed successfully, and both lsblk and fdisk showed the new disk size.

lsblk:

mmcblk0                  179:0    0  14,8G  0 disk
├─mmcblk0p1              179:1    0   256M  0 part
├─mmcblk0p2              179:2    0   256M  0 part
└─mmcblk0p3              179:3    0  14,3G  0 part

fdisk -l: (forgive my French)

Disque /dev/mmcblk0*: 14,84 GiB, 15931539456*octets, 31116288*secteurs
Unités*: secteur de 1 × 512 = 512*octets
Taille de secteur (logique / physique)*: 512*octets / 512*octets
taille d'E/S (minimale / optimale)*: 512*octets / 512*octets
Type d'étiquette de disque*: dos
Identifiant de disque*: 0xe543e14b

Périphérique   Amorçage   Début      Fin Secteurs Taille Id Type
/dev/mmcblk0p1            30720   555008   524289   256M  b W95 FAT32
/dev/mmcblk0p2           555010  1079298   524289   256M 83 Linux
/dev/mmcblk0p3          1079300 31116254 30036955  14,3G 83 Linux

So far, so good, right?

Wrong, sadly.

If I check the disk usage using df, I get this result:

Sys. de fichiers               blocs de 1K    Utilisé Disponible Uti% Monté sur
…
/dev/mmcblk0p3                     3309752    3019960     289792  92% /media/usb_drive

Basically, the partition has the right size for fdisk, but not for df. If I try to use that SD Card on my Kobo, the free space has the same problem, it displays the old value of 4GB.

If I try to check the properties of that partition using tunefs -l, it gets recognized as a vfat file system

tune2fs 1.46.5 (30-Dec-2021)
tune2fs: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/mmcblk0p3
/dev/mmcblk0p3 contains a vfat file system labelled 'KOBOeReader'

If I mount the drive on my Linux machine it shows up as a vfat file system in findmnt

├─/media/usb_drive                 /dev/mmcblk0p3 vfat        rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=rem

So. My understanding is that the partition is listed as Linux (see the output of fdisk), but the filesystem is FAT. The partition has been resized to the available space (~14GB), but the filesystem doesn't recognize it.

The way I would fix it would be to copy the contents of the partition (not clone), delete the partition, then re-create the partition with the same UUID and name "KOBOeReader", as a FAT partition.

Here are my questions:

- Have you had the same problem?
- What's your fdisk -l output? (do you have a discrepancy between the partition type and the filesystem)
- Do you think my way to fix it could work?
- If not, what would you do?

[joachim]

Solved!

I used frostschutz's KoboRoot-MagicMemory-Resize mod, and it worked. Thanks!

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by joachim

The way I would fix it would be to copy the contents of the partition (not clone), delete the partition, then re-create the partition with the same UUID and name "KOBOeReader", as a FAT partition.

Here are my questions:

- Have you had the same problem?
- What's your fdisk -l output? (do you have a discrepancy between the partition type and the filesystem)
- Do you think my way to fix it could work?
- If not, what would you do?

I just did something similar last week for my Kobo Mini. I’m glad to see you solved your own problem. Always a satisfying feeling.

The interior microSD card has two Linux partitions (invisible to the Mac if you mount the Kobo as a device). They’re also invisible to the Finder when you pull out the card and mount it without the Kobo. But if you run “diskutil list” in Terminal, you’ll see the Linux partitions are there.

The problem is that when you clone the microsSD card to a larger card in order to keep all three partitions, including hidden system files, the cloned card has an incorrect partition size as you discovered. I realize you solved your problem already, but should you ever want to upgrade your card size again and run into problems with the resize mod as I’ve done in the past, I’d recommend using GParted on Linux to quickly expand the FAT partition to utilize the larger card size.

Unfortunately, the Mac can’t resize FAT partitions with Disk Utility or I’d do it there.

Good work getting it done!

[animaldh]

I don't see how frostshultz adds the Memory Mod to the Kobo. There must be a separate thread on this

Or just drag and drop using usual Kobo interface?