Monday, October 14, 2024

Re: Unexpected reboots after upgrading APU2 to 7.6

On 10/14/24 07:14, Ian Chilton wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've got a few PCEngines APU2 boxes I use as routers at home.
>
> I updated 3x of them from 7.5 to 7.6 a few days ago.
>
> Since then, one of them has randomly spotted responding 3x times in just over 48 hours when it was stable for months previously.
>
> On opening the serial console, I see it sat at a 'dbb{0}>' prompt. Thankfully I am able to type reboot there and it comes back up fine.
>
> It's not logging anything the logs go from standard routine jobs like syslogd restarting to booting up.
>
> It's also sat doing very little - it has a PPPoE connection to a VDSL provider, a PF ruleset and is just doing standard firewalling and routing.
>
> The other 'identical' apu2 boxes I upgraded seem fine so far.
>
> Are there any known problems? - or anything I can do to troubleshoot further?

Three identical machines, two behaving, one misbehaving.
Looking at the OS is probably the wrong path here. Sounds like a clear hardware
problem to me.

My bet: power pack.

I had something like that happen recently myself -- stable machine, I believe the
problems started when I did an upgrade on it, it just wouldn't stay running after
that. I was about to chuck it in the trash and replace it (I have plenty of others
of these systems, and they were all fine), and I looked at the power pack I had on
it...and realized how anemic it was. I think it was one I did a "let's see what I
can get away with on these things". Replaced the power pack, it's been solid ever
since.

SPECULATION: The power draw during an upgrade is a lot more than the normal day-to-
day power draw, due to the install kernel not having all the power management code
of the production kernel. So...a borderline and already stressed power pack may
just decide that's a good time to finish getting flakey.

Nick.

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