Peter

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This is actually not an Engine Driver problem but one of you(r Pi).

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Obviously, you made your own RPI-JMRI installation on your Pi with using NOOBS – only then you have the OS re-installation feature with the shift-key, which caused/causes loss not only of your JMRI installation but also of all later updates and all your configurations (Raspbian and JMRI) – AND you did not save an image of your SD-card as long as it was functioning (aka BACKUP your data).

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Because you seem to have a Pi3 I’d suggest to use the RPI-JMRI image prepared by Steve Todd (download from ).

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If you intend to setup all by yourself again, start with a “Raspbian Buster with desktop” image rather than with NOOBS (download from - here you don’t have the re-installation option/risk with the shift-key). Particularly if you’re using an 8 GB SD-card. – NOOBS uses a considerable amount of memory by itself and installs plenty “recommended software” you won’t ever need on an RPi-JMRI access point to control trains. Both eat up a lot of SD-card memory and soon there is not enough for JMRI, if your SD-card is not at least 16 GB or bigger.

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I think, this is quicker than trying to repair the mess you’ve made.

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Bring your Raspian Buster to latest state with update/upgrade in every case.

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Once you have an RPi-JMRI installation configured and working on your Pi, then _SAVE_ that SD-card image into a file on your computer with Win32DiskImager (download from ). Although raspberrypi.org recommends Etcher for flashing images onto SD-cards, Etcher cannot save SD-card contents into an image file on the computer. Win32DiskImager can do both. – I personally like to use Etcher to flash SD-cards and Win32DiskImager to save SD-card contents into an image file on the computer.

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_REPEAT SAVING_ ?your SD-card image every time after you changed something (f.e. Raspian updates, changes in or of JMRI). Use different file names for each saved SD-card image (f.e. include a date code like 2019-09-08 at the beginning or within the file name, maybe even with time or an added suffix like a, b, c, d, … for more than one image saved at the same day). Then, you can relax next time and only fire your latest image again onto the SD-card. If something goes wrong, you can easily use the previous state of your SD-card image. Delete malfunctioning images as soon as you have a newer good one, only keep good image files.

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Additionally, I recommend transferring/saving the whole directory “/home/pi/JMRI_UserFiles” with WinSCP (download from ) from the Pi to your computer (over WLAN or Ethernet) whenever you are saving the SD-card image. Therein are all your JMRI configurations and rooster files. If you have to do a new installation, transfer this directory back onto your Pi with WinSCP (what is not possible out of a saved SD-card image file). You might need to do a rebuild rooster within JMRI after installation of a newer JMRI but all your locos and decoder data is there (unless you don’t have this directory assigned for user files in the JMRI preferences, which is strongly recommended. Never use the JMRI program directory for user files as this is deleted by a JMRI update.).

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Sure, I love redundancy. But better have two backups than none. My last loss of some data occurred 1988 (during an intercontinental move of my home). Ever since no computer crash, disk failure, virus or user mishap caused me headache, only needed a bit of time for restoration.

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Daniel Sieber

Zurich, Switzerland

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