Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting

Most install problems fall into a few buckets. If your issue isn't here, ping Discord — answers come fast and we'll add common ones to this page over time.

Can't reach http://dashusb.local

The Pi is up but its hostname isn't resolving on your network.

Try:

1. Open your router's admin page and confirm the Pi shows up as dashusb. Use the IP directly in your browser instead (e.g., http://192.168.1.47).
2. On Windows, install Bonjour Print Services — Windows doesn't ship with mDNS by default.
3. Some corporate / mesh / guest WiFi networks block mDNS broadcasts. Try a different network or use the IP.

The car never starts recording to the Pi

The car isn't seeing the Pi as a USB drive.

Try:

1. Check the cable — make sure it's a USB-C data cable, not charge-only. The cheap ones bundled with most USB chargers are charge-only.
2. On a Pi Zero 2 W, connect the car's cable to the port labelled USB, not PWR IN. The PWR IN port can power the Pi, but it does not carry the USB data connection the car needs.
3. Try a different USB-C port in the car — any of them should work.
4. Make sure the vehicle is on. The Surround Vision Recorder only records while the vehicle is on/driving, not while parked and locked.
5. Power-cycle the Pi (unplug, wait 5 seconds, plug back in).
6. SSH into the Pi and check the main service: systemctl status dashusb. It includes the USB-gadget functionality; there is no separate gadget systemd unit.

Notes that save head-scratching:

• The car auto-creates its folder tree on the blank drive — there's no in-car format step, and no folders to create yourself.
• GM requires a drive of ≥64 GB with ≥32 GB available or it refuses to record. Dash USB presents a 64 GB FAT32 virtual drive and automatically keeps 32 GiB free on it, so this should never be the cause — but if you edited CAM_SIZE below 64G by hand, that's why.
• The car spec says USB 3.0, but a Pi's USB 2.0 gadget is accepted fine (confirmed on a 2026 model).

Footage older than 2 hours is gone from the drive

That's not a bug in Dash USB — it's GM's firmware. The car hard-deletes recordings older than a rolling ~2 hours from any USB drive, no matter how large.

Dash USB's whole job is to defeat this: it snapshots the recordings every 15 minutes (before the rolling delete reaches them) and archives them to your server. Your preserved footage is in the web UI under Viewer → Recordings (organized by day) and on your archive server — not on the virtual drive the car sees.

If footage is missing from the Viewer too:

1. Check the Snapshots page — are snapshots being taken?
2. Check Logs for archive errors, and journalctl -u dashusb-archive -n 100 over SSH.
3. Make sure the Snapshot Interval hasn't been raised far above the default 900 seconds (Setup Wizard → Advanced).

There's a tiny ~6 MB clip at the end of my drive

Normal. The car writes a short partial segment when you switch the vehicle off mid-segment. It's archived like any other clip.

CIFS/SMB connection fails

Try:

1. Re-run the Setup Wizard → Archive step → fill in CIFS Version as 2.0 or 1.0 (some older NAS devices reject SMB3 negotiation).
2. Check your password — special characters sometimes need escaping; try a simpler password as a test.
3. From the Pi, try mounting manually:

   sudo mount -t cifs //<server>/<share> /mnt -o username=<user>

   If that errors, the error message tells you exactly what's wrong.

Still stuck?

• Discord — fastest help, real humans
• Open an issue — for reproducible bugs
• Include: Pi model, vehicle model/year, what step you're stuck on, exact error message, and the output of journalctl -u dashusb -n 100 if relevant.