Problem with RASPBMC (solved)

[Starkey]

I've had my Pi for a couple of weeks now and it's working ok for the first few days, albeit with the occasional reboot required.

The last couple of days it's been unusable however.

When started I can see the Raspberry PI logo and then, well nothing.

The PI is pingable, but I cannot SSH to it.

I don't have a keyboard attached.

My thoughts are that it could be a corruption on the SD card or power supply problem. Power supply is from a Desire HD, but I've also tried powering from the TV and get the same problem. I don't have a multimeter (I can probably borrow one at the weekend if absolutely necessary) or another sufficiently rated power supply to test. I've also not get any internet access at present, so I can't download any updates (it was last updated around 5 days ago).

Any clues? What is the best way to troubleshoot this issue?

Many thanks in advance.

Edit: the only USB device I have connected is a powered external USB drive.

[RaTTuS]

probably the USB lead powering the device is too thin....

[Starkey]

Have tried two, as the initial one seemed a bit 'skinny'.

Will try another tonight, cheers.

[Starkey]

Booted it up tonight using another cable and the pi boots into raspbmc.
It's still playing a program now, but I can't ssh to it.
I'll try and borrow a multimeter over the weekend

[Starkey]

It crashed out after half an hour

Just tried my 4th cable, and so far so good.

Desire hd charger and good (old) Nokia cable

Fingers crossed...

[efflandt]

You say that you have a hard drive attached. Does it have its own separate power supply or are you trying to power it from the Pi's USB port that it is connected to? And what is the milliamp or amp rating of the power supply to the Pi's mini USB?

Sometimes drawing too much power from USB can interrupt networking which also uses USB internally on the board.

It may help to have Linux on another computer (or a live Linux system booted from CD) to look over /var/log/syslog in the second partition of the SD.

[Starkey]

I already answered most of that

Looks like the cable was definitely the issue.

uptime of over 12 hours now, so hopefully teething troubles are over