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I have a headless Pi running Raspbian with no other peripherals than an ethernet cable attached. It hosts a simple webpage using Apache with some simple PHP that interfaces with MariaDB. I connect over SSH and don't have a monitor at hand. I have port forwarding set up so that I can visit the page or SSH remotely too.

Now, here is the problem: Sometimes the RPi becomes unavailable. When this happens, SSH throws a "connection reset" error and Apache returns the 403: Forbidden page. The only option to make it accessible again is by power cycling the device. This unavailability usually occurs after a few days or a week of normal operation, making it hard to debug. When I unplug the ethernet cable, I get a timeout instead of the connection reset / 403 page, which means the Pi is still doing something, and the problem is not with the network probably. I don't see any records in Apache's access.log or error.log of those connection attempts unfortunately.

I don't know how to explain to my behaviour or how to debug it, nor could I find someone with a similar problem. One possible explanation that comes to my mind is a memory leak, but I'm not sure how to verify that.

Does anyone know what might cause this behaviour and how I could fix or debug it? I have tried reading the logs but know to little to start what is relevant or not. If there's any logs you think would be useful to post, please leave a comment so I can add them.

Update: Apache's error.log and access.log. Site stopped working somewhere between 09-10 February l. I tried to connect and got the 403 at 16:27, power cycle / reset occured at 16:29 09/02/19 UTC. After that it started working again and at 16:35 I could see the page.

Update 2: From what I see in /var/log/syslog, it seems like the Pi rebooted itself around 20:46 09/02/19. Could it be possible the supply glitched and the Pi somehow booted wrongly?

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  • How can Apache return an error when the connection is broken?
    – Ingo
    Commented Feb 10, 2019 at 17:55
  • I don't think the connection itself is broken; the Pi just seems to hang or something. I updated the question to make that more clear.
    – RvdV
    Commented Feb 10, 2019 at 18:18
  • What does the Apache log say when you try to connect but get the 403 error???
    – rohtua
    Commented Feb 10, 2019 at 18:53
  • Can't seem to find them :( I updated the question
    – RvdV
    Commented Feb 10, 2019 at 19:07
  • Hm.. SSH claims "connection reset". This could occur when the connection is only interrupted for a short time like a glitch. The TCP connection with authentication then is broken and SSH wants a new authentication. Do you use https to get pages from apache? Maybe it is the same issue? Connection OK but broken authentication?
    – Ingo
    Commented Feb 10, 2019 at 20:04

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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This could be a power supply problem.

Check by swapping with a high quality charger providing enough power.

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3
  • Thanks for your suggestion, that seems plausible. Would you happen to know if there is any logs or info I could check to verify the power was bad? I know some MCU's show a 'reset source'.
    – RvdV
    Commented Feb 11, 2019 at 6:45
  • No idea, but this is the typical problem with the pi.
    – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen
    Commented Feb 11, 2019 at 8:49
  • Good. Than I will just try that, hope for it not to crash again and accept the answer until the contrary is proven :) Thanks!
    – RvdV
    Commented Feb 12, 2019 at 18:19

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