Noob question: Solving crash problems

[JumbledGrass]

Software
XBian version: 1.0RC2
XBMC version: 13 newest (auto updates are on)
Overclock settings: 900

Hardware
Power supply rating: 5V
RPi model (model A/B 256mb/512mb): B 512
SD card size and make/type: Integral 16GB Class 10
Network (wireless or LAN): LAN
Connected devices (TV, USB, network storage, etc.): Samsung CEC-capable TV, USB HDD

I sometimes come home to find my Pi has stopped responding to network, isn't showing as a source on my TV and the hard drive is silent, although the lights (all of them) are steadily lit on the board. I pull the power and it's back up and running. It's a mystery as to what process has caused the death.

Question is, where does one usually go to begin investigating the cause of these sorts of problems? Is there a log somewhere that would give me a clue?

I don't necessarily want help walking through this specific issue with anyone here (unless there's a known and glaringly obvious solution) but to try and solve it myself. I might also look on the main RPi forum.

[Skywatch]

First thing to do is to remove the overclocking and see if that helps.

Check the 5V psu and tell us its current rating. It may not be enough for the USB HDD as well (is the HDD powered with its own supply?)

Try adding a powered USB hub and connect that to the pi and all the usb devices to the hub.

It really sounds like it might be a power issue, but you could run a test on the SD card as well in case there are any errors on it.

Skywatch

[JumbledGrass]

(4th Jun, 2014 11:50 PM)Skywatch Wrote:  First thing to do is to remove the overclocking and see if that helps.

Check the 5V psu and tell us its current rating. It may not be enough for the USB HDD as well (is the HDD powered with its own supply?)

Try adding a powered USB hub and connect that to the pi and all the usb devices to the hub.

It really sounds like it might be a power issue, but you could run a test on the SD card as well in case there are any errors on it.

Skywatch

It's this 1500mA PSU. The HDD has its own power. I therefore don't suspect a power issue related to the power supplies I'm using.

As suggested, I will try a fsck as well as turning the overclock down and see how things go. In the long run I'd rather use some OC because I have a fairly busy media grabber setup running on the same Pi, all the time and I like the performance increase overclocking seems to give to XBMC.

Thanks.

[IriDium]

I agree with @skywatch. Remove the OC until the system is stable, then ramp it up a bit.

... and what prey is this "Media Grabber"? Might that be at fault?????

Post the output of xbmc.log and dmesg and I'm sure the answer is there.

[JumbledGrass]

(5th Jun, 2014 04:29 AM)IriDium Wrote:  I agree with @skywatch. Remove the OC until the system is stable, then ramp it up a bit.

Doing it tomorrow when I have physical access. I don't want to be remotely switching the TV channel on my housemates when the Pi reboots.

Quote:... and what prey is this "Media Grabber"? Might that be at fault?????

SickRage, by modifying init.d from the xbian sickbeard package so that it loads from /home/xbian into which it's been manually git cloned. Also nzbget, and an OpenVPN server so I can access said services out of the house.

Quote:Post the output of xbmc.log and dmesg and I'm sure the answer is there.

xbmc.log
http://pastebin.com/ySEEsk4C

dmesg
http://pastebin.com/wi2T5nPG

[JumbledGrass]

I've set Overclock in xbian-config to "XBian".

For the SD card check, I've tried

Code:

sudo touch /forcefsck
sudo shutdown -r now

and

Code:

sudo shutdown -Fr now

but neither seems to be executing a file system check as both /var/log/checkfs and /var/log/checkroot are empty.

[IriDium]

The issue seems to be:
init: xbian-xbmc-bridge main process (1350) terminated with status 1
init: xbian-xbmc-bridge main process ended, respawning

as there are multiple entries in dmesg.
There's nothing to suggest a filesystem problem.

I would remove "comment out" your Media Server "additions", reboot and check dmesg every 30 minutes to see if the bridge is respawning. Once is OK.

Another option is to disable your addons and see if that improves things.

I'm running exactly the same Xbian version (unmodified) and I'm not seeing this issue at all - so it must be something specific to your machine.

[JumbledGrass]

(6th Jun, 2014 04:34 AM)IriDium Wrote:  I would remove "comment out" your Media Server "additions", reboot and check dmesg every 30 minutes to see if the bridge is respawning. Once is OK.

Used update-rc.d to disable sickbeard and nzbget.

I don't need to wait 30 minutes--those messages are repeating around every minute.

Quote:Another option is to disable your addons and see if that improves things.

I'm running exactly the same Xbian version (unmodified) and I'm not seeing this issue at all - so it must be something specific to your machine.

I disabled my addons and I'm still seeing those messages. No crashes yet, though.

It'd be nice to solve this, just to sate my curiosity and help anyone who might see the same issues in future. I'm pretty close, however, to doing a re-image of XBian, moving all my media grabbing to my other Pi and just running a "clean" standalone XBMC box under the TV. It would save me some headaches. Thanks for all the help so far, though.

[belese]

aren't you out of space? or read/only (corrupt) filesystem.

it could be the cause for xbian-bridge respawning.

[JumbledGrass]

(7th Jun, 2014 01:15 AM)belese Wrote:  aren't you out of space?

Code:

$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs           15G  3.7G   11G  27% /
/dev/mmcblk0p2   15G  3.7G   11G  27% /
devtmpfs        187M  4.0K  187M   1% /dev
none             38M  276K   38M   1% /run
/dev/mmcblk0p1   34M   22M   13M  64% /boot
/dev/mmcblk0p2   15G  3.7G   11G  27% /home
/dev/mmcblk0p2   15G  3.7G   11G  27% /lib/modules
/dev/sda1       917G  821G   50G  95% /media/usbdrive
/dev/mmcblk0p2   15G  3.7G   11G  27% /xbmc-backup

Quote:
or read/only (corrupt) filesystem.

That contradicts what your colleague said regarding corruption. But as I said in a reply above, regarding file system checking, I can't get fsck to give me any output. I'd appreciate a clue if you really think it's that.

[menakite]

Could you please:

Terminal

sudo cat /var/log/xbian-xbmc-bridge.log || sudo zcat /var/log/xbian-xbmc-bridge.log.1.gz
cat /var/log/upstart-xbmc-bridge.log || zcat /var/log/upstart-xbmc-bridge.log.1.gz

when you see it failing in dmesg.

[JumbledGrass]

(7th Jun, 2014 04:03 AM)menakite Wrote:  Could you please:

Terminal

sudo cat /var/log/xbian-xbmc-bridge.log || sudo zcat /var/log/xbian-xbmc-bridge.log.1.gz
cat /var/log/upstart-xbmc-bridge.log || zcat /var/log/upstart-xbmc-bridge.log.1.gz

when you see it failing in dmesg.

First line doesn't work: those files don't exist. I've run the second line . I get this:

Code:

06/06/2014 19:08:22 Installing signal handler
06/06/2014 19:08:22 Closing
06/06/2014 19:08:24 upstart_xbmc_bridge started
06/06/2014 19:08:24 Cannot connect to XBMC (localhost:9090) : [Errno 97] Address family not supported by protocol

[menakite]

Mind posting your /etc/hosts and the output of "sudo ifconfig"?
"apt-get install netcat-openbsd && nc localhost 9090 -v" would also be useful.
Note that I'm only trying to solve your issue with xbian-xbmc-bridge, no idea about your Raspberry Pi crashing - the dmesg output doesn't say anything useful.

[JumbledGrass]

(7th Jun, 2014 04:36 AM)menakite Wrote:  Mind posting your /etc/hosts and the output of "sudo ifconfig"?

First can I suggest that the connection error is due to the fact that my XBMC isn't using port 9090?

Anyway, here's hosts: http://pastebin.com/beguQfDF

Here's ifconfig: http://pastebin.com/33WsAaiL

Quote:
Note that I'm only trying to solve your issue with xbian-xbmc-bridge, no idea about your Raspberry Pi crashing - the dmesg output doesn't say anything useful.

Don't worry, so far so good: since disabling SickRage I've had no crashes. I know where to point the finger now.

[menakite]

(7th Jun, 2014 04:44 AM)JumbledGrass Wrote:  First can I suggest that the connection error is due to the fact that my XBMC isn't using port 9090?

Did you change it manually? That's strange, you should be getting a connection refused.

Your hosts file and ifconfig seem to be ok.
Please try the netcat commands in my previous post, if that doesn't work also try the following:

Terminal

nc 127.0.0.1 9090 -v
sudo netstat -nlp | grep xbmc.bin

Also ensure JSON-RPC is enabled: http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=JSON-RPC_API#Enabling_JSON-RPC (TCP/localhost applies to you; you may need to increase the settings level to advanced or expert, not sure)