My rPi server crashed after 30 days

[JF002]

Hello!

30 days ago, I set up a Rpi (new 512 mb RAM) as a little personnal server : Nginx, Php.
I installed dotclear (just for testing) with SQLite, Owncloud and a little status page.
I plugged a 32GB usb flash key as storage for nginx, owncloud.
I did not do any overclocking nothing that would stress the cpu (torrent,...)

Most of the time, the Rpi did nothing... most of the time, I would refresh the status page to check the uptime.
I was just testing, imagining what I could do that would be useful (auto backup, local dns, git repo,...)...

Then, today, the server would not answer to my requests... When I connected a screen on the composite output, I saw a lot of errors... the kind of error I saw when the FS was corrupted.

The only thing I could do is remove the power plug and connect the SD card on my computer... which doesn't seem to be able to read the card any more...

Now... what can I do? Do you think I could be able to restore the files?
Do you have any ideas why it crashed?

I could find more than one uses for the rPi as server but it needs to be as reliable as possible !

Any information is welcome

[JF002]

Good news: The USB flash key is not corrupted, and I can recover all the files!
But I lost all the configuration files, settings, parameters,... for the services and soft I installed.
... Yeah, i should have made a total backup of the file system after installation!

Anyway, I can reinstall the whole thing, but it I don't know what to do to prevent it from corrupting the root FS.

[JF002]

I tried to recover, format,... the SD card with no luck, I think it is totally dead!

As I didn't do anything to prevent the system from writing on the SD card, do you think that the number of erase/write cycles has been reached?

I don't know if nowadays SDcards do or not wear leveling... And this SD card was a very low-cost one (less than 10€ for 8gb, the brand is "Kangourou").

[tonyhughes]

Possibly your cheapie SD card at fault.

http://elinux.org/RPi_SD_cards

[JF002]

I could be that...
But... With a less cheapy SD card, do you think it will last longer enough? I don't know... 2 months? 3 months?
Or, will a better SD card perform so much better that it could last more than a year?

I would like to know if the SD card burnt because it was a bad SD card and because it was going to die anyway or, it died because of too much erase/write cycles.
If it is the last case, I could expect that a better SD card would last longer, but not so much.

[SN]

I could be that...
But... With a less cheapy SD card, do you think it will last longer enough? I don't know... 2 months? 3 months?
Or, will a better SD card perform so much better that it could last more than a year?

Yes it will ---->>> http://sn.ickl.in/cgi-bin/about

[tonyhughes]

I have a Sandisk 16GB class 10 that has seen a couple of months of constant use, and is currently my production webserver (with MySQL and a Drupal website), mailserver, ftp server, and a few other things. It hasn't skipped a beat.

I have a good backup script currently running every 24 hours, so not worried if the card goes titsup.

[JF002]

Oh... I was proud of my 30 days but you beat me!

Did you do anything to prevent the system from writing constantly on the rootFS (log, for examples)?
Or is it the bare distribution, with no special settings or tunning?

Yeah, I know about backups, that's why I use an external usb flash key to store the data, and I did back-up (manually, up to now) regularly.

And thanks for all your information!

[SN]

No special tuning or config whatsover

As the about page says its the standard Rasbin build from september 17th

All I did was install apache2 and imagemagick

Default logging is on so its spewing apache logs amongst others

I have to log onto it every 14 days to lift off the archived webcam snapshots (which are generated at a rate of 1440 a day) to regain some space

A couple of times I left it too late and the root partition got to 100% full for over 24 hours but still it kept going without crashing

[JF002]

I've just bought a new Sandisk Extreme Class 10 8GB SD card.
I'm reinstalling the system. First impression : Wow! It runs much better than before. I didn't know that the difference between a "no-name" SD card and a good one was so huge!

I'm wondering... Should I just install the system and forget about it, or should I try to prevent the system to write continuously on the file system (logs, for examples).

[SN]

I wouldn't bother - mines passed 131 days without hiccup

[Lob0426]

My problem with "up time" has nothing to do with my SD card, any little power brown out takes it down. My power company has way too many brownouts. But a simple reboot puts the server right back up! I generally can just ssh in for the reboot.

The solution for me would be to have it on a battery backup.