"Oh no! Something has gone wrong. [...] Please log out and try again."

nolan

USB drives don't last long with an operative system inside.

brent

nolan algent
disagree with your assessments: ran solus flawlessly off two usb sticks in 2.5 years.
agree with your assesments: the life of an OS is FINITE on a USB stick and you notice when the hardware starts going to heck--at first you don't get it but it comes

[deleted]

if you used balena etcher to flash the ISO to the usb drive,then you would have been notified of any errors on the drive.

tz2000

brent To be precise, I installed Solus last year in October. I really liked it and used it almost every day, which in hindsight was probably a bad idea. As of right now, I can still access the files on the USB, so should I just back up what I need and call it quits?

Also, the USB in question is a Samsung Bar 256GB.

DJSupertel

Same here! Been using Solus Mate and Solus Budgie full installs on two separate USB s for 3 years and they still run fine.
USB's are Sandisk Ultra 3.0 64gb and 32gb respectively.

tz2000

algent Any tips for checking USB health? I've been messing around with smartctl but I can't seem to get it enabled on the USB.

Disclaimer: idk what I'm doing

brent

In gnome-disks there are a couple troubleshooting tools (check filesystem, benchmark, etc) for the usb tz2000
edit: and in gparted too I think

tz2000

brent Do you know how to use them through the command line though? I'm doing everything with tty

brent

tz2000Disks is a gui program in your drop down menu. But if you only have terminal access then I do not know how to run Disks (gnome-disks) through the terminal.
Maybe someone does.
But in the terminal ~ $ man gnome-disks does bring up its instruction manual.
edit: nevermind I just read the whole Disks manual....it only had 3 commands and USB troubleshooting and benchmark is not any of them...
...paging anyone who knows which programs/commands assess and troubleshoot drives...gotta be a way but not sure I would understand output....

brent

brent smartmontools in the repo...operates as smartctl in terminal, supposed to do the trick
https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-check-an-hard-drive-health-from-the-command-line-using-smartctl

edit: I'm not entirely convinced you have a dying usb anyway. Type that fail command into a search engine. WILDLY different reasons for this from display manger, display drivers, bugs, kitchen sink...After 2 pages of reading I oddly see no [SOLVED} tag on any of them.
sudo eopkg check | grep Broken | awk '{print $4}' | xargs sudo eopkg it --reinstall = hail mary play
So much troubleshooting left to do vs. fresh install. I prefer the former but the latter is pain-free.

tz2000

brent I messed around with smartmontools couldn't get it enabled on the USB; I did sudo smartctl -s on /dev/sdb1

The eopkg check basically checks for broken packages and reinstalls them right? I did the first half: sudo eopkg check | grep Broken and it didn't show anything, so I assume that nothing is broken.

Maybe a reinstall is the way to go.

brent

tz2000 Never used or installed smartctl. And the whole command there is better than half the command because it will put humpty back together if humpty needs to be back together.
the commands you did in the OP were also solid.
journalctl commands willl bring up logs if you still want to try this...
in systemctl you can check to see if any services are stopped (like lightdm etc) but I don't know the command to check to see what services (sometimes accidentally get) are actively disabled or stopped. And I'm not sure what services you should be looking for other that display manager but sometimes services stop and the OS changes like this.

All I got. Backup then fresh install on another drive always a great way to go, too🙂