How can I read files from my LibreELEC formatted SD card?

Question

I've installed LibreELEC 9.2.1 on my Raspberry Pi 4's SD card. For technical reasons, I need to remove the card from the Pi and read a log file using my laptop.

I've tried mounting the SD card from my Ubuntu 16.4 machine but have not been able to do so. It's as if Ubuntu fails to recognize the specific file system being used.

What type of file system is the SD card formatted with? How can I access files on it from a Windows or Ubuntu Linux machine?

Partition 2 is an ext4 filesystem - Windows, not much chance - Ubuntu, mount it — Jaromanda X, Mar 22 '20 at 22:39
Does this answer your question? How can I mount a Raspberry Pi Linux distro image? — M. Rostami, Mar 22 '20 at 23:15
Why not use 'scp' to copy the file across your local network? — CoderMike, Mar 22 '20 at 23:16
@CoderMike the issue I'm debugging is wi-fi connectivity. I can't use SCP because I have no network connectivity. — urig, Mar 23 '20 at 14:53
Please attach the SD Card with a card reader to the Ubuntu machine. What is the error message when try to mount the SD Card? Please execute lsblk and put its output to your question. — Ingo, Mar 24 '20 at 10:04

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 23 '20 at 10:33

It is not easy to read or modify a libreELEC installation. To be stable and have no data lost on interrupted power it uses a sophisticated read only filesystem named squashfs. And to make it more complex it is in addition compressed. Because this is a special Linux filesystem I don't see any chance to manage it from MS Windows, so you have to use your Ubuntu box. Here you can look how to decompress and unpack the libreELEC filesystem, so you can read and modify it.

How can I read files from my LibreELEC formatted SD card?

1 Answers1