CherryPal Troubleshooting
I’ve managed to “unbrick” my CherryPal – hurrah! – but it’s still not out of the woods yet. As I mentioned in my last post, I had tried the reset hole on the bottom of the machine, but it did not seem to do anything. Then Max Seybold told me to try the reset hole on the CherryPal boards, not knowing I’d already tried it. So I decided to try it again. Ah! There is a trick to it. I have discovered the secret of the CherryPal reset hole. Here it is:
Using a paperclip, push down in the hole right when you turn the machine on. Hold it there until you start seeing a bunch of boot-up information appear on the screen. This installs the Linux recovery firmware in the box.
For some reason, my machine hangs when “inetd” is being started, but if you press CTRL-C you will get to a prompt. This is not your actual CherryPal filesystem. It is a virtual filesystem and any changes you make to it will disappear when you reboot. There is a huge lost+found folder in there that obviously has the CherryPal data on it, but it’s inaccessible.
In order to rescue your CherryPal, you must mount the flash drive onto your virtual filesytem. Follow these commands:
mkdir /mnt/hda1
mount -t ext3 /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1
Then you can go into the /mnt/hda1 directory and make any changes as necessary. PLEASE BE CAREFUL, because deleting anything important here will ruin your operating system!
(Note: When finished with your edits, you might want to unmount your drive manually to be on the safe side, so before rebooting, type in: umount /dev/hda1)
I discovered that in trying to add a new CherryPal user with the graphical interface, somehow my entire passwd file got hosed. The gdm user had been deleted, which is why I could not login. I manually entered in a gdm user (copying what was in my passwd, shadow, and group files from a Mint installation on my laptop). I rebooted and voila! I was able to login and see my CherryPal desktop again.
Unfortunately, I still have some clean-up to do. I only added the gdm user during my rescue and apparently all the users were hosed, including those automatic users that run important things like networking. Additionally, my default limeos user now no longer has sudo priveleges so I can’t make any changes to anything. I am going to go back into the failsafe Linux (using the reset hole) to manually reconstruct my passwd, shadow, and group files following what’s in my laptop Linux files. This may be painstaking but it should fix things. I’ll post an update when I have it all working again.
Moral of the story: Do not add users to CherryPal using the graphical interface!
UPDATE: I asked for copies of the default passwd, group, and shadow files on the CherryPal Ning boards. A kindly Brand Angel posted them and I used them to reconstruct my default files. Everything is working again. Phew! I am actually typing this update from my CherryPal. 
I’m glad you were able to get it working. But your knowledge of Linux was what made it easier. For someone without your savvy this would have been an RMA situation. This software does not appear to be ‘bullet proof’.
Hello Greentech Girl! I’m “jcmarcos” at “www.morphzone.org”, a group of computer geeks hooked to the same processor family the CherryPal has (PowerPC). Actually, the relation of our group and the Cherrypal device goes further than you can imagine, but that’s another story.
The details you are providing here is, for us, some of the most sought after information in years. Could you please make some photos or videos of your Cherrypal device in action? How about putting them in YouTube, for example? Or does the company prevent you in doing so?
By the way, your technology expertise is impressive, after seing what you’ve done to recover your Cherrypal.
Thank you. Now that I have my CherryPal working again, I’ll be posting more reviews of it very soon, with some screen shots. It’s really not much different from any other Linux machine in terms of how it looks or works.
The Cherrypal looks suspiciously similar to the Limepc.
Check out limepc.com select products, Limepc X1.
They use their own OS Limefree. Curious?
I’ve read that LimePC and CherryPal use the same board. There is lots of interesting history at powerdeveloper.org in the “5121e and LimePC” forum:
http://www.powerdeveloper.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1478
John,
Thanks for the link. Any news on when the LimePC might be available in the USA?
Chuck,
I don’t know anything other than what I’ve scanned from powerdeveloper.org. The LimePC.com web site has lots of pretty pictures, but not much in the way of useful information. All their products are described as “A new book including study,game,cartoon andsurf on the net…etc,all of the interesting things”.
It’ll be interesting to see if CherryPal and/or LimePC are actually able to make a go of it. I really like the Freescale 5121e “motherboard on a chip”… truly amazing performance and capabilities at low power — at least on paper. PowerPC is such a nice architecture. It would be so nice to see X86 supplanted by something vastly more efficient… with no fans!
John,
Agree with all. I see LimePC will be at CES in January. Maybe we’ll get some reviews from there.
Lime, unlike Cherrypal, is not ‘Cloud Computing’ which may be better for them not to have to maintain a server.
From the very first boot of my cherrypal, the default limeos / limeos login credentials have been rejected. I have reset the system and reinstalled linux several times and gotten the same result. When I notified cherrypal support that the limeos / limeos credentials didn’t work, I got a reply saying “did you try userid: limeos / password: limeos ?” It’s like this company is actually shooting for worst company in history.
Anyway, you’re my only hope since Cherrypal support is atrocious. Thanks.
Andrew,
Did you succeed in logging on?
Andrew, usernames and passwords in Linux are case-sensitive. So make sure you are typing in limeos and not Limeos or LIMEOS.
Keep us posted. Thanks!
In other news, CherryPal’s “fearless leader” Max Seybold has posted a new item on his ‘blog http://maxseybold.blogspot.com/ entitled “CherryPals are shipping, and shipping, and shipping …” First post there since October 24th.
He mentions the mysterious Green Maraschino project. Does anyone here know any details about it?
Yeah, I have typed in limeos / limeos in all lowercase several times and it hasn’t worked from the very first boot. Unreal.
Andrew,
I’m grasping at straws here and most likely totally wrong, but I wonder if there’s some sort of networking issue going on, like the CherryPal server uses some sort of unusual protocol that is blocked by a firewall somewhere? Since CherryPal has WiFi, it might be worth bundling up the system and trying it from a nearby WiFi-equipped coffee-house.
John
Stephanie, I am so impressed with your daring expertise! I have to wait for the user-friendly version. The people I considered the target market for CherryPal won’t be able to deal with this either. I’m sure they will come through with more coherent support soon, as they see what we are running into.
Danine
Andrew, have you fixed your problem? You could potentially go into the computer using the rescue system as described above and manually change the limeos password in the shadow file.