Raspberry Pi 3B crashes

[tamasnemeti]

Hello there,

It appears that my Pi is randomly crashing, but I cannot really figure out why.
At first, I thought it is losing network connection (as I could not reach the device), but I think its something else.

I'm using the official PSU, have one 2.5 drive connected and mostly running the following:

vsftpd, minidlna, home assistant daemon, flexget, deluge, motion

...and whatever additional package/service is needed to run them.

The most demanding is probably flexget & deluge and I believe those two are the main suspects. The automated downloads happen at every half an hour (and obviously it is not downloading something every time), but even if they are causing the crash, it is not consistent.

Here's the system info.
And here my syslog file.

The latest crash I observed was right after 11am - I've started a download manually, but before the crash I was able to access Deluge and even altered the contents of the download. I finally plugged the cord to restart...

[wildfire]

What type & how is your 2.5" connected & powered?

(sorry if those questions are answered in your links but I'm not partial to clicking indiscriminately)

[tamasnemeti]

Its a few years old WD notebook drive, connected with a SATA-to-USB cable via two USB ports. Those links are pointing to Pastebin.

[dlgoes]

I have the same issue. I like to use use my RPI 3B 24x7 to monitore devices I have at home with Domoticz but it frequently crashes (even if I put system files and boot as read only). And I also have the official power adapter (white official one - Stontronics switching adapter).

I am new with RPI and linux and because of that I installad Raspbian with Noobs. I have reinstalled RPI to many times and it always ends crashed.

Hello there,

It appears that my Pi is randomly crashing, but I cannot really figure out why.
At first, I thought it is losing network connection (as I could not reach the device), but I think its something else.

I'm using the official PSU, have one 2.5 drive connected and mostly running the following:

vsftpd, minidlna, home assistant daemon, flexget, deluge, motion

...and whatever additional package/service is needed to run them.

The most demanding is probably flexget & deluge and I believe those two are the main suspects. The automated downloads happen at every half an hour (and obviously it is not downloading something every time), but even if they are causing the crash, it is not consistent.

Here's the system info.
And here my syslog file.

The latest crash I observed was right after 11am - I've started a download manually, but before the crash I was able to access Deluge and even altered the contents of the download. I finally plugged the cord to restart...

[ejolson]

The Pi 3B had stability problems when it first came out. One story is at

viewtopic.php?f=63&t=139712

For me that thread tells a sad secondary story in which many of the people who contributed to solving the problem no longer post or are members of this forum.

From what I understood, in the end the errors and crashes weren't from overheating but because the built-in 1.2V power regulator didn't handle transients which can occur when the CPU switches from 600 MHz to 1200 Mhz. Apparently, the jump in power draw when all cores speed up at the same time was enough to cause a dip in the voltage and a resulting error or crash.

The most popular solution was to increase the CPU voltage from 1.2V to either 1.25 or 1.3V by setting over_voltage=2 or over_voltage=4 in the /boot/config.txt file. This gives a bigger range before the dip in voltage becomes critically low. Note that you have to reboot the computer for the new setting to take effect and any over_voltage greater than 6 voids the warranty.

I solved the stability problem with the 3B here by setting arm_freq=900 in the same file. Since the crashes were attributed to the power management on the 3B not being unable to keep up with large changes in power consumption, if I needed the 1200 MHz top performance, I'd try setting arm_freq_min=900 in hopes that the jump in power between 900 MHz and 1200 MHz would still be small enough to not trigger an error. The above mentioned over_voltage setting is another possibility.

In my opinion, one of the main reasons the Pi 3B+ came out so quickly after the 3B was the need for an improved power management circuit. Surprisingly, the PMIC in the 3B+ turned out to be so responsive that it was possible to let the CPU clock increase to a maximum frequency of 1400 MHz and still retain the power savings of having the minimum set to 600 MHz.

Are your 3B computers new stock with the silver flip chip SOC?

[tamasnemeti]

Thanks for the reply - I'll go with the increased minimum frequency and see how that goes. I've ordered my board back in August, 2016.