Reset button warning

I recently accidentally hit the reset button (again), which created some issues, and it occurred to me how nice it would be if, when the button is hit and the device is operating normally, a warning would pop up to confirm the user wants to reset. Idk if it’s possible to warn the user only when things are operating “normally”, but I’ve had to reflash a couple times because of this damn button!

Unfortunately this is not possible, as the reset button is hardwired to instantly cut all power, it’s like pulling the plug on your PC while it’s running.

If we could have software control over the button, we would have disabled it a long time ago due to the damage it may cause.

You can find more information on this here:

1 Like

You know, I read that somewhere here and totally forgot it. Thanks for the explanation! I hate that button.

you could always take your device apart and sand the button down to make it harder to press. or even a piece a tape across it can make it harder to press

Good call, I’ll give some tape a shot and consider shaving it a bit.

You know, I’m fairly lost thinking about this. I’ve seen the issue posted about before, and I’ve dealt with it several times. What I haven’t been able to find is why recovering from corruption is unsolvable. (I’m talking about Anbernic RG__XX devices, with their readily available reset button). Please help me understand and learn something.

As far as I can tell, any issues with the root fs on ext4 would have to be a novel issue, so I’m curious to know if that’s the case so I can learn something. But the roms partition is exfat, which isn’t journaled. But none of that partition is necessary to run the operating system, so I assume there’s a dirty bit set at boot and an opportunity to try and recover from corruption on boot.

I figure that the likely issues are:

  1. exfat corruption from powerdown with unwritten data in the write cache. There are no mechanisms with exfat for recovering from that corruption, so extra software would have to do it. The software solution would probably have to involve read-only foo.config.backup files. Maybe it would involve some clever use of rsync, backup management, and setting the live file as link so the changeover could happen practically in an instant. Recovery from corruption would basically involve re-linking or copying back the important files, all from the last good backup instance. The same software could be applied generally for save file management, or for the second particular issue I can think of.

  2. Corruption of the all important retroarch config file, specifically. Even if the filesystem itself was fine, if this file alone was borked then I could see that throwing a massive wrench in the works. But recovery from that seems solvable. Just a simple backup and recovery to the last known good config.

  3. Recovery from reset button corruption is already robust and implemented — if it’s borked and OS can’t recover, then it’s a hardware issue, likely the sd card.

I hope that explains my thinking. Can anyone explain what the actual issue is?

I found a pretty good tip, costs probably the same as a couple sheets of sandpaper. Get privacy shutters for laptop webcams.

_manster_'s reddit comment

2 Likes

that is a great idea

1 Like