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RP would not boot

Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2020 5:27 pm
by kasaudio
A got into trouble a few times; RP would not boot. The solution was reinstalling the image onto sd card. It's a annoying since I make field measurements using RP and driving two hours away just to find out my device won't boot is a little frustrating.

In the Raspberry Pi case, user is prompted to perform regular shutdown procedure before cutting the power from the board.

I began to shutdown my RP using a putty console and the problem disappeared. It would be really nice to have a simple "shutdown knob" in a web interface to prevent boot-up problems on the regular basis.

Best regards, kas

Re: RP would not boot

Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2020 2:01 am
by kasaudio
Today I noticed a small top right button on a web interface that looks like a power button. By pressing it, user is prompted to restart RP. It seems it is doing the job quite well. Maybe a little to small...

Re: RP would not boot

Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2020 2:51 pm
by redpitaya
Please hit me up on support@redpitaya.com
I would like to see if I can help with that not booting issue.

Re: RP would not boot

Posted: Tue Feb 25, 2020 11:43 am
by kasaudio
Like mentioned above, a tiny power button in the top-right corner of the web interface solved the problem. Since then, no boot problems so far...

Maybe that button should be a little bigger to be clearly noticed, as proper shut-down is essential for trouble-free operation of the RP device.

BR, kasaudio

Re: RP would not boot

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2020 12:52 pm
by kasaudio
I'm planning to use RP in a commercial project. However there are some "issues" that need to be solved in order to create a durable and stable product.

Booting issue is one of them.

As mentioned above, tiny power button solved the problem - no boot problems with RP in my lab anymore.

But how to solve the problem in real world - on the field, with portable power supply for measurement device containig the RP as heart and brain? Implementation of smart power up/down is one way to go, but adds unnecessary complexity which I would like to avoid.

What about setting the "TMP_WRITE_PROTECTION" bit on the OS sd card?

according to this:

https://hackaday.io/project/26096-demen ... protection

Would this work with RP and provide a bullet-proof solution for "abrupt turn OFF/turn ON" scenario? In my case, once RP is set up and working, there is no need to write anything to it's SD card. RP would be completely hidden to the end user.

Best regards!

Re: RP would not boot

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2020 2:08 pm
by pavel
But how to slove the problem in real world - on the field, with portable power supply for measurement device containig the RP as heart and brain?
For my projects, I solved this problem by using a configuration where the SD card is mounted read-only and nothing is written to the SD card during its normal operation. So, the power can be switched off at any moment without damaging the file system on the SD card. The SD card image that I use can be found at this link.

Re: RP would not boot

Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2020 9:48 am
by kasaudio
Thank you Pavel for your reply.

Your work is awesome. Tried it and it works. It seems the way to go.

I also tried with making SD card "read-only" using sdtool and RPi 3b+ with latest Raspbian.

https://github.com/BertoldVdb/sdtool

I succedded making one of my sd cards with Raspbian read only, unfortunately none with RedPitaya OS. Beside RPi complaining regarding unsuccessful time synchronisation during boot-up, the read-only OS card worked ok. I was not able to restore the card back to writable state anymore (temporary readonly bit). Sdtool obviously needs some more effort to make it usable with latest sd stuff.

Re: RP would not boot

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2020 2:48 pm
by redpitaya
Sorry to interrupt. Black Friday 2020 is here!