Improving Robustness: wifi reconnect and read only SD card

[asprunt]

Hello,

Apologies for the long post. I’ve learned some things today 😉

I think I’ve resolved (at least some) of my OSPi’s reliability issues. My OSPi is networked via WiFi (Edimax EW-7811Un). About every two weeks, it would drop off my network and not return. It would keep watering things, however, so being off-network was not a problem until I needed to do service, etc. At that point, I would cycle the power supply and the OSPi would reboot and return to the network. I know I’m supposed to do a proper shutdown, but w/o connectivity, I thought power cycling was my only choice. Things would go on like this until the OSPi would not reboot because I’d cycled the power supply at a particularly awkward moment, at which point I’d restore the SD card from a backup image and the whole cycle would begin again.

Today, I learned that I can remove the Edimax, re-insert it, and the OSPi will re-connect. But the even better news (because physically removing the Edimax is inconvenient) is that the wifi configuration can be modified to re-connect automatically:

1. Go to /etc/ifplugd/action.d/ and rename the ifupdown file to ifupdown.original
2. Then do: cp /etc/wpa_supplicant/ifupdown.sh ./ifupdown
3. Finally: sudo reboot

I’ve tested this by cycling the power on my router, and it does seem to work. Perhaps this is part of the pre-configured image? I built mine from the RPi foundation’s Raspbian image.

As a belt for my suspenders, however, I’m tempted to make my SD card read only using these instructions. If I used a link (hard or soft?) to “move” OSPi/data/ to my NAS via NFS, would OSPi (the software) be happy? A read only SD card would seem to make my setup much more robust against power outages and any “need” I have to reboot it the hard way.

Thanks,
Alex

 

[Samer]

Hi Alex,

The tip about replacing the ifupdown script is a great suggestion, thanks!

In regard to the NFS for data folder, I think this would work fine so long the folder is mounted in the data directory.

[PollieXmas]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for this. I also had an issue with my wi-fi dropping.

I’ve made the change you recommended and will see if the Pi stays up.

Regards

Paul

Ps. Have you made any progress on making your sd card read only? I’m also keen on this as it’s a real pain rebuilding the SD Card.

[PollieXmas]

Just to report back, that this seemed to have done the trick for me as it’s been more than a month since I’ve had issues with connecting to it.

[asprunt]

I started a new topic to document my experiences trying to run read-only.

[Martin]

Hello to everybody,
regarding the robustness of the SD card using this option:
on the SD card is stored only boot starter:http://www.berryterminal.com/doku.php/berryboot#berryboot_v20_-_bootloaderuniversal_operating_system_installer
SD card then shut the switch. All traffic data and run only on a USB flash drive. It is quite robust and not prone to mistakes as when it runs only on an SD card.
Sincerely MAPI
Photo: https://pihrt.com/elektronika/248-moje-rapsberry-pi-zavlazovani-zahrady

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