141

Here’s a quote me and my wife just saw on facebook…

Dear Destiny,
When I said things couldn’t get worse,
that was not a challenge.
Thanks.

142

I had the same thing happen, an old computer was in use everyday, then i moved and didn’t hook it up for a month. The BIOS chip was fried and it would not start up. Being 8 years old at the time it was not really worth spending money to repair.

143

Hmm when there is some action on the mobo I would not look at the PSU but the mobo, the PSU is relaying power and the mobo has much more parts that can be damaged from uneven power input
Did the disks spun up? yes, another indication it is the mobo
BIOS reset done, check cell on mobo for power
Tried disconnecting/removing all but 1 ram bank and CPU?
Again till you tried all the banks you got?
Still problems, highly likely you need a new mobo

144

Well darn, this is a heck of a note. :frowning:

If you want to be 100% guaranteed “it is time for something new” TK…… allow me to help you “fix” it. I guarantee after that…… you would most assuredly need something new! :wink:

Seriously, sorry for your trouble and hope you get it sorted out. :slight_smile:

145

The PSU has multiple “outputs” and if some are still functional, but others aren’t, you can get exactly the situation TK is seeing. But, we don’t know. It still could be the mobo. :innocent:

If shipping weren’t an issue, I have lots of computer parts I could send. I even have a couple fully functional tower computers (minus the hard drives - security, you know). Nothing newer than mid-2000’s but they’re new enough for Linux. :wink:

146

You run linux, right? My Ubuntu machine says * System restart required* like every month. How wise is it to ignore those for years?

147

Depends on what you’re doing, what environment the system is in, whether you have kernel live-patching, etc.

148

Oh sh*t. I came here and posted that when I saw my system was requesting a restart… Everything was working perfect, then I ran updates and rebooted, now it is dead.
It totally bricked itself last year after a reboot too, so I don’t use a cron to update anymore because I feared unattended updating might have screwed it. I thought running updates with me attending would prevent this again. It didn’t. At least this time the box is alive enough to boot into emergency mode… But it won’t accept my only USB keyboard! No idea why. I have never tried this keyboard on it before. Always ran it headless as a server in my office.

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Suggestions welcome. Here’s a video of the failed boot-up. Details in the youtube video description. Suggestions on compatible USB keyboards especially welcome.

150

That’s always fun. It looks like maybe the initrd build part of a kernel update failed? Can you boot into an older kernel? If not, can you force it to boot from SD and use that to access the onboard filesystem? You may be able to fix it that way, by chrooting into it and debugging the update. Or at least to get a complete backup in case you need to reinstall.

Where were the updates coming from? Maybe there’s an apt source from somewhere which doesn’t test (or maybe even know about) this particular hardware? Dave and Max used to do a lot of the release/upgrade smoke testing on extra/other/unsupported platforms, but they both got canned too, so I doubt there’s any upstream attention at all given to things like this.

Anyway, I’d also suggest doing updates manually in small-ish batches so you can make sure everything worked, especially on systems with a history of problems. And, if possible, get updates from the vendor instead of upstream, since hopefully the vendor actually tests it.

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There were only like 8 updates to install, and nothing caught my eye as a serious update. I had updated it just last week. The extent of my Ubuntu education is basically a few years spent running this. So I don’t know how to boot into an older kernel or anything.
I posted on the HardKernel forum, but I don’t have high hopes for that. Basically, if you have an issue everyone says “mine still works for me” and “just re-flash the newest factory image”.

The main drive is an emmc, I could connect that to a windows machine (with an sd adapter) and they have a small partition with a file called boot.ini that I could replace with boot.ini.old. But I don’t think it affects the kernel used, just “meson timer” and display settings, etc. I don’t have a second Linux machine, and if I managed to boot from an image on the SD, I don’t think I have the linux knowledge to fix anything this serious.

There’s really nothing on the file system that is not already backed up elsewhere, except all the time and hard work it takes to set it up.

The good news is I don’t run my company from this server.

152

Oh, the eMMC is removable? That makes things easier. I kinda figured it was built-in like on a dragonboard. But if you don’t have much experience, maybe the “just re-flash” advice is best. Diving in for a more surgical fix won’t be easy if you aren’t comfortable with a scalpel.

153

Any suggestions on a similar product that can run Ubuntu 16.4? I don’t like my primary file system screwing me annually.

154

One of the moderators replied…

:weary:

Maybe I have a bad emmc and that explains last year’s bricking too. It can be unplugged and replaced, they have the emmc on a tiny board with a connector.

155

Yeah, a broken filesystem could do that too… or even just allowing /boot to fill up so there’s no room to install a new kernel or modules after an update.

As for similar devices, let’s see… have you considered a raspberry pi 3? It doesn’t have the eMMC and it’s not quite as fast, but it has a much much bigger community with better testing and more solid support.

156

idk. I ruled it out back when I was shopping because it lacks the eMMC (or any hard drive at all really). I imagined the SD card system to be painfully slow to sync my videos, to do maintenance like system updates, and to do reboots.

157

Is there a reason you dont go with a regular ol PC build? I didnt read the whole thread BTW, just now butting in :stuck_out_tongue:

If you dont want top of the line, and do a little budget shopping, you can probably build a budget PC for $100 or so

Edit: I could probably hook you up with good trades on PC components for flashlight components :wink:

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I don’t go with a regular PC because it is headless. It just runs OwnCloud. It sits between my router and a noctua cooling fan to share in the breeze. And enjoys the benefits of the network’s backup power supply. It’s my dream setup really. If only it didn’t die for no reason.

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If speed is a big concern, a cheap IoT device might not be a great choice. They sure are nice if you just need cheap and half-decent though.

It looks like a SD class U3 probably runs around half the speed of good eMMC, but for booting it’s only a difference of like 20% or a few seconds. I can’t say I really care about a few seconds difference, especially on a server which doesn’t reboot often. For large file transfers, that’s typically more limited by network speed than by storage speed. Neither one would be ideal for disk-intensive applications, but that’s not just about speed… they both have a limited amount of write cycles. Probably doesn’t matter though; it sounded like you’re just running it as a web server, no?

It all depends on what you’re doing with it. For me, my bottleneck is usually RAM.

Anyway, I hope you can get it sorted out.

Edit: Ah, a small owncloud server. I generally just use a NAS instead; Synology makes some nice ones with the ability to expand over time with bigger disks. But a little IoT device with a USB disk attached would probably make a pretty decent NAS too, and would cost less.