Odd Problem

[gretske]

I am having an odd problem, and need some advice. I got my OpenSprinkler Pi board about 3 weeks ago. I downloaded the SD image and connected everything up. It was working well, until one day, it just stopped. So I logged in via SSH and started looking around. When I would do simple things, like cat a file, it would freeze up. I took it out of service and reloaded the SD and started over. Again, it worked for a few days and froze again. So, I tried a different SD card and a different RPi. It worked for about a week, and the same thing happened. I tried the switch program and got this:

pi@Sprinkler ~ $ sudo /home/pi/select_program
1) interval_program
2) sprinklers_pi
3) quit
Select the program: 1
Selected interval_progarm
[….] Stopping : sprinklers_piNo sprinklers_pi found running; none killed.
update-rc.d: using dependency based boot sequencing
insserv: fopen(.depend.stop): Read-only file system
update-rc.d: using dependency based boot sequencing
insserv: fopen(.depend.stop): Read-only file system
/etc/init.d/ospi: 141: /etc/init.d/ospi: Syntax error: end of file unexpected (expecting “)”)

(And, this takes about 3 minutes to run to completion.)

If I cat the ospi file the last few lines are:

#do_reload
#log_end_msg $?
#;;
restartcat: ospi: Input/output error

It appears that the RPi is running very, very slow. If I cat a file, it takes several seconds to respond, like 30 seconds or more. Also, I set the time via SSH, but the system time on the SPi web browser still shows 4:23 AM, the time that the system appears to have frozen. I have rebooted, but nothing changes.

Any idea what is going on here? I am baffled.

-gene

[gretske]

I went to the /root directory and it is completely empty! I think this may be the problem. Somehow all the dot files and config files got zilches. The question is, what caused this? Any ideas?

-gene

[scottsh]

Is there anything obvious going on in /var/log/syslog? If the filesystem has gone read-only, the last thing in there might be some clue.

Also, the internal kernel log is still active even if it can’t write to syslog. Check that out using dmesg.

I usually see a filesystem become read-only if there is a corruption of some kind. I’m not sure what would cause that though.

[gretske]

OK, I re-burned an SD card and re-initialized everything. As long as I shut it down in a proper manner (shutdown -h 0), it comes back up with no problem. However, if I pull the power too soon, it corrupts the SD disk. I understand the need to do this in a proper manner. HOWEVER, there are power glitches in the real world, especially in a crawl space where the OpenSprinkler Pi is located. Compounding this is the fact that the power connection to the Pi is 24 VAC. I suppose I could put a UPS on the 120 side, but that is not a good environment for it, and frankly a waste of a UPS.

Any suggestions? What have others done to avoid this problem?

Thanks for the assistance!

-gene

[scottsh]

Hmm, I’ve pulled the power and reset my OSPi many, many times with no issue like this.

Is there some write caching going on perhaps that should be turned off?

[gretske]

I don’t know. I am running the standard SD image that I downloaded. The only thing I did was to set up networking.

I have had problems in the past with SD cards. I used to have a 64GB half size card for my MacBook Pro, but kept getting corrupted, so I quit using.

Could it be my magnetic personality?

I’m going to keep digging around. Thanks for the input.

-gene

[Ray]

Did you try a few different SD card or just the 64GB card? You may want to try another one. Like scottsh said, I have also unplugged power from RPi many times and have not encountered any SD corruption issue. I do think some cards may be more prone to corruption.

[gretske]

Ray –

I am not using the 64GB SD card, I just mentioned it. I have two different Kingston 16 GB cards and am now trying the second one to see if I have the same problem. So far, it is working OK, but I have not tried disconnecting the power. I will do that today.

-gene

[gretske]

I bought a new 8GB card and burned it with the SPi image. I have unplugged it and moved it several times. I think I had a bad SD card.

-gene

[gretske]

Ray –

The program started this morning as scheduled. I have not hooked it back up to the actual valves, but it was running and switching as it should. There was one anomaly, however. When I tried logging onto the browser interface, I could not get it to respond. I finally logged on via SSH, and shortly after I logged in, the browser finally responded. Is this some setting that I am missing? I can’t find a “sleep” setting or anything that would cause the Apache server to pause.

Any thoughts?

-gene

[Ray]

Sorry, this is a bit beyond my knowledge. I will see if Dan or Samer has a comment here.

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