Pi uptime/availability?

[omega1]

Hi all,

I was wondering what kind of availability/uptime people are getting with their Pi's?

I need to use one in a remote locations and was wondering what I can expect of it, it will be running an audio stream permanently (to give you an idea of the load). It will be a formatted SD card with the basics installed to achieve what I need to do.

What results have other people achieved with regards to uptime?

I am trying to decide whether to put in some cron reboots overnight but can't gauge whether:
A) Whether it will cause more harm than good
B) How often to do it

I'd appreciate other users comments.

Thanks!

P.S. I'd also be interested in knowing what log files get out of control so that I can cron a delete every x days so the SD card doesn't fill up.

[tonyhughes]

I get uptimes of many weeks, no crashes, only reboot for other reasons (want to image SD card, or OS reports reboot required for particular updates etc).

If your Pi is idle at known times, then there is nothing wrong with a pre-emptive reboot, but I would tend to leave it running and only reboot if you have issues.

[omega1]

If your Pi is idle at known times, then there is nothing wrong with a pre-emptive reboot

Hi Tony, thanks for your reply. It would probably be OK to do one over night, but how often?

but I would tend to leave it running and only reboot if you have issues.

This is my dilemma, don't do one soon enough and I could lose it, do one too often and I could cause more more harm than good...

I currently have one running and intend to leave it put to see how it performs.

[tonyhughes]

Scheduled reboots are not harmful at all, as long as it's graceful, and your app responds well to the shutdown (i.e. is not ungracefully interrupted while doing anything important, like writing to the filesystem).

It is my opinion, based on my experience and anecdotal evidence, that a Pi could probably attain years of uptime if left to it's own devices, running stable applications and on a decent power supply.

The concept of scheduled reboots will be a matter of utter disgust for some purists, who would say you should just get your system running correctly, rather than relying on reboots, but in the end, do whatever works.

[SN]

Hi all,

I was wondering what kind of availability/uptime people are getting with their Pi's?

Being slightly anal about this I'm trying to track posts by various forum members about how long their Pi's have been running for - assuming those that have reported decent uptime's have NOT rebooted their Pi's since the report then here's the uptime leaderboard (as of 24/03/13 00:00 GMT) according to my bodged together spreadsheet:-

Code: Select all

Forum Member  Uptime
------------  ------
elem          209 days
MrBunsy       177 days
adream        158 days
Jim Manley    146 days
pluggy        140 days
SN (me)       137 days

If you have a better uptime and your name is missing - post on this thread
Also if you're on the list and your Pi has died - post on this thread too and let us know what uptime it pegged out on

[omega1]

This is exactly what I was looking for, great work!

Will the people on the list let you know when they die, also it would be interesting to know what tasks they are performing to know what kind of stress the CPU is under?

Thanks!

[MaxK1]

I would be far more worried about the SD card. I have used flash memory in other Linux systems and
they will not last forever! Most un-intended reboots I have are due to cats and/or the power co....
With the Pi, I keep current with kernel+rpi-update so never more than a week.

[malakai]

I believe if you are worried about the longevity of the SD Card the less reboots the better increasing the boot would increase the read/write to the card and ultimately would shorten it's life span which at this time looks to be more than 209 days so quite a while.

My personal thoughts are with a guaranteed clean power source the Pi would go for 2 or more years without a problem. SD Card failure depending on application of heavy read writes would maybe come in to play and size of card.

And since updating is fine. However, you must keep in mind. If it's not a security update or an update that would specifically improve performance for you application, lower power consumption, or make it more stable you didn't need or benefit from the update to begin with. So why continually do it.

[MaxK1]

Personally, I run off Pi's with attached HDD's, so the sd card isn't even an issue. But for those whouse only the SD card, I have read about more than 1 (Windows)user who has had flash memory of some kind crap out within 3-6 months. Something to be aware of and plan for. My own experience suggests about a year, but that of course depends what the system is being used for. I'm not currently involved with anything that demands 24/7 up-time (on the pi's) so upgrading to stay on the bleeding edge is a "Good Thing" (ie More Fun) - I do have an application in mind that will need to be up 24/7 at a remote location, but for now, finding/fixing problems/shortcomings is more important. And I would prefer to use Rpi's, rather than one of the other ARM based systems ( which seem to have some issues of their own ) for that project.

[1pi2much]

SD card is the biggest worry IMO for frequent reboots.
I usually backup image the sd card every 2 weeks or so if I am
installing stuff, thats the only reboot I need.
You can lessen some risk of SD card problems by using tmpfs for /tmp and /var/log.
And you can control your log rotation and log storage.( /etc/logrotate.d/rsyslog)

--

[M_P]

My Pi camera dump server is running 3.2.27+ #250 (Thu Oct 18 2012) and has been up for 78 days, 22 hours so far.

I wouldn't worry _too_ much about SD cards, but a bit of caution never hurts. I have three SheevaPlugs and set them to run off SD cards instead of the internal flash... they all ran 24x7 for over three years (they were set up as security cameras). One decided it didn't want to work with any USB devices anymore due to a cheap hub, and one of the others was replaced with an RPi about three months ago. I re-used the SD cards out of both of them and have had no problems so far.

The last SheevaPlug will be replaced once the camera module comes out.

[jimmyand]

My RPi: 10:54:24 up 151 days, 19:25, 1 user, load average: 0.18, 0.10, 0.07
It's hosted at DCO2 in Belgium. (http://www.smaug.be/smaug2.jpg , the one on the right).

No problems so far.