Partition Manager - unexpected disconnection

Title says it all. System: ARMX6, external powered hub supporting a KVM, and sometimes a USB-SATA disc containing an SSD, FAT32 formatted.
RISC OS is 5.29 21-DEC-2022 supplied by R-Comp for the ARMX6.

During boot, at the end of the list of loaded modules I get the message “unexpected disconnection, press space or click mouse to continue.” Pressing space completed the boot, apparently successfully.
At other times it boots to the desktop, then the error appears on a grey screen in an error box with Partition Manager as the title.

It occurs whether the external disc is present or not, but that might determine which of the above forms happens.

What is Partition Manager, and why does it do this? As far as I know nothing on the system has partitions.

(The history of the SSD is that it was originally the boot device of the ARMX6, later replaced. When it was used in the adapter, RISC OS locked up trying to access it. HForm failed to format it, so I tried FAT32form. That initially failed to find it. I then formatted it to exFAT on Windows, then put it back in the ARMX6. FAT32Form then worked.)

[EDIT] The above happened at least 5 consecutive reboots, but has now stopped, and I can’t reproduce it.

A small niggling thought is that I use StrongED, and I wonder whether it might be remembering something on that external drive. It has the annoying habit of doing that for network-attached drives, and complaining when the drive isn’t present, even on some occasions requiring the use of Edit to change configuration files so StrongED would start.

then the error appears on a grey screen in an error box with Partition Manager as the title.

A problem of RISC OS is that if something low level throws an error in an unexpected place, there’s a good possibility that something else will end up faulting because of it?

Is Partition Manager an application? If so, it’s not the culprit as if it happens during boot, then Partition Manager won’t be running, surely?

Ditto StrongEd – it isn’t running (even if autoloaded) until the desktop is reached.

“unexpected disconnection, press space or click mouse to continue.”

Something like that, I’d be inclined to suspect either the SATA/SCSI/USB drivers or something to do with networking.

even on some occasions requiring the use of Edit to change configuration files so StrongED would start.

If this is a problem, it might be worth seeing if unticking Choices → Edit → By default, remember files when quitting helps?

This ought to cause StrongEd to cease remembering previous files. Which may or may not be useful, but we live in a world where it’s not necessarily always obvious what is and isn’t removable (and, indeed, if the user would like to remember such files or not).

“unexpected disconnection, press space or click mouse to continue.”

Something like that, I’d be inclined to suspect either the SATA/SCSI/USB drivers or something to do with networking.

Okay, I’ve just had a rummage in the sources. Can’t help with SATA as my archive is for the Pi, however if it was a capital ‘U’ in “unexpected”, then that’s a message from SCSIDriver when…….an unexpected disconnection happens. ;)

What SCSI devices are connected ¹? Are they all appearing on the iconbar?

¹ Note that this also includes USB storage.

@Rick Thanks.

I haven’t added anything called Partition Manager, so if it’s there it either came with RISC OS or the associated Disc Image from R-Comp. I’ll forget about it for now – as you say, the fact that I saw the message (once) during an early phase of boot suggests it’s the wrong culprit.

I make a lot of use of StrongED remembering files. I can see why it would have difficulty distinguishing removable drives, but it should be simple to detect ShareFS files, and if it has remembered them, at least not abort on starting up if one was open when it had previously quit.

I’ve reinstated Harinezumi in case the problem occurs again, on the offchance it would help. I had to remove it when testing the new ROD stack, but I can’t currently use that stack for a different reason.

On checking, I find a module in the ROM at position 70 called PartMan (2018). This might be the culprit, and I think it would have been loaded before the error was shown. It occurred at the end of the listing of loaded modules, before the desktop starts.

I make a lot of use of StrongED remembering files. I can see why it would have difficulty distinguishing removable drives, but it should be simple to detect ShareFS files, and if it has remembered them, at least not abort on starting up if one was open when it had previously quit.

As far I know StrongED doesn’t abort when it can’t load previously remembered files. If it does, please send me a bug report.

If a share isn’t available, there will be messages like ‘please insert disc …’ but they’re from ShareFS not StrongED.

In light of the above, I’ve added some code to StrongED to check whether a share is available before trying to load files from it. This should stop the ‘insert disc’ messages.

If it does, please send me a bug report.

It hasn’t happened recently, so I wonder whether it was with an older version. If it happens again, I’ll send you the report.