2

Help needed with this, I've run out of ideas. My RPi3 crashes randomly. - Power supply 2.0A - nothing connected to GPIOs - HDMI, USB mouse, USB-keyboard and LAN are connected - SD card is Sandisk Ultra 64GB

I know, the charger could be 2.5A... I use heat sink and a fan. CPU temp is about 35C. CPU load was max 30% Kernel: Linux raspberrypi 4.9.77-rt61-v7+ #10 SMP PREEMPT RT Fri Feb 9 22:22:43 EET 2018 armv7l GNU/Linux

I see nothing special in syslog before the crashing. SW runs normally and suddenly USBs stop working, UI freezes and ssh jams as well. Up time after last boot before this crashing was about 3 hours. Otherwise it is running nicely, but this unreliability makes working with it impossible.

I managed to get this one minute before last crash:

cat /proc/meminfo && lsof | wc -l

MemTotal:         944984 kB
MemFree:          383532 kB
MemAvailable:     649800 kB
Buffers:           50316 kB
Cached:           314180 kB
SwapCached:            0 kB
Active:           250228 kB
Inactive:         206160 kB
Active(anon):     106512 kB
Inactive(anon):    47972 kB
Active(file):     143716 kB
Inactive(file):   158188 kB
Unevictable:       62732 kB
Mlocked:           62732 kB
SwapTotal:        626680 kB
SwapFree:         626680 kB
Dirty:                64 kB
Writeback:             0 kB
AnonPages:        154480 kB
Mapped:            84196 kB
Shmem:             52292 kB
Slab:              28700 kB
SReclaimable:      18836 kB
SUnreclaim:         9864 kB
KernelStack:        1752 kB
PageTables:         2740 kB
NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
Bounce:                0 kB
WritebackTmp:          0 kB
CommitLimit:     1099172 kB
Committed_AS:     630036 kB
VmallocTotal:    1114112 kB
VmallocUsed:           0 kB
VmallocChunk:          0 kB
CmaTotal:           8192 kB
CmaFree:            6796 kB

3194

/var/log/syslog

This is after the crash, extracted right after where the problem started:

^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@$
Apr  8 21:22:57 raspberrypi systemd-fsck[136]: root: clean, 204470/3792896 files, 1907189/15153664 blocks
Apr  8 21:22:57 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started File System Check on Root Device.
Apr  8 21:22:57 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started Apply Kernel Variables.
Apr  8 21:22:57 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started Create Static Device Nodes in /dev.
Apr  8 21:22:57 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Starting udev Kernel Device Manager...
Apr  8 21:22:57 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Starting Remount Root and Kernel File Systems...
Apr  8 21:22:57 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started Remount Root and Kernel File Systems.
Apr  8 21:22:57 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Starting Flush Journal to Persistent Storage...
Apr  8 21:22:57 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Starting Load/Save Random Seed...
Apr  8 21:22:57 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Starting udev Coldplug all Devices...
Apr  8 21:22:57 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started Flush Journal to Persistent Storage.
Apr  8 21:22:57 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started Load/Save Random Seed.
Apr  8 21:22:57 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started udev Kernel Device Manager.
Apr  8 21:22:57 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started Set the console keyboard layout.
Apr  8 21:22:57 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Reached target Local File Systems (Pre).
Apr  8 21:22:57 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started udev Coldplug all Devices.

Any ideas?

3
  • 1
    Seems that I got solution to the random crash/freezing problem. The reason was not charger with too low current output... I added into the /boot/cmdline.txt following parameter setting: smsc95xx.turbo_mode=N
    – RPi3_user
    Apr 13, 2018 at 16:32
  • Another possible fix for the problem was to add ram by adding following line into file: /etc/sysctl.conf vm.min_free_kbytes = 32768
    – RPi3_user
    Apr 13, 2018 at 16:43
  • I still have the 2.0A USB charger and so far works well!
    – RPi3_user
    Apr 13, 2018 at 16:43

5 Answers 5

1

@CoderMike's suggestion is a good one, but if it's a recently-purchased unit, I'd return it and try another one.

0

Buy the official 5.1 Volt 2.5 Amp 18AWG cable power supply:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-universal-power-supply/

2
  • That does not explain the root cause, but meanwhile I'm looking for the solution, I'll update the PSU.
    – RPi3_user
    Apr 9, 2018 at 7:49
  • No but you need to eliminate the basics first.
    – CoderMike
    Apr 9, 2018 at 8:09
0

There was a similar issue I was facing with Kali (debian) system once. You can check by installing a different image of the operating system you are using. Maybe lowering OS version will help!

Also, if you are using VNC server then the problem can also be with the networking.

0

I had a similar issue recently with Raspberry Pi model 3 Bs, the UI freezing entirely and randomly, irrespective of what was running, USB connections, the R.Pi mother board, SD card, GPIO connections, power supply (tried various from 2 to 6 A), etc.

Finally traced it back to the wifi network (eduroam) I was on. Turned wifi off as I don't need it and hasn't frozen since. Might be work turning off network connections or trying in a different location with a different network to eliminate it as a possibility.

This might be worth reading. R.Pi forum post about wifi freezing and driver updating/downgrading to solve problem

-1

Maybe you have to much connected to your GPIO's, so it gets overloaded and the Raspi runs out of voltage.

Here is a question about this

1
  • Well, you didn't even read the question!
    – RPi3_user
    Apr 9, 2018 at 19:10

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