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My Raspi after 6 days of uptime just crashed. I wasn't able to see nothing on the screen, if I plugged a USB device, no action from it. And all the LEDs were steady and not a blink at all.

I have the debian distro.

I am trying to detect what could be the cause of the crash. I wanted to check the logs but for example I have zero sized messages:

-rw-r----- 1 root adm 0 Oct 14 06:25 /var/log/messages

dmesg shows just current startup screen, and it doesn't provide any notice of some errors.

Where shall I look forward?

Update

I restarted yesterday too, and checking in the morning and it's crashed again.

Update

The raspi frezzes multiple times a day, problem got worst. I updated firmware and still happens, I tried ran memtester and it reported no memory issues.

Jivings
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Pentium10
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    Are you perhaps mounting /var in RAM? If so the error messages wont persist after a reboot :( – Jivings Oct 17 '12 at 20:54
  • I have there some error messages from apache, from several days ago. – Pentium10 Oct 18 '12 at 06:13
  • I think you'll have to go the UART route as gnibbler says then. – Jivings Oct 18 '12 at 06:37
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    Are there any files like /var/log/messages.1 or 1.gz? That would mean the logs got rotated and the old messages are moved to these files. – XTL Oct 19 '12 at 08:58
  • If the file is unexpectedly truncated, check to make sure the volume (card/partition) isn't full! Full storage is a common cause of worry, grief, and potential strange failures on all systems. – XTL Oct 19 '12 at 08:58
  • And yes, dmesg prints the ring buffer from the running kernel and so can't print anything older than when the kernel was started (boot). It also starts to discard the oldest messages when the ring is full so you may only have the most recent ones in a long-running system. – XTL Oct 19 '12 at 09:01
  • Disk is used 55%. – Pentium10 Oct 19 '12 at 12:02
  • Sounds like your SD card is malfunctioning. Have you tried a different card? – Jivings Oct 22 '12 at 21:28
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    @Jivings I am just doing that, so far after a couple of hours everything looks OK. – Pentium10 Oct 23 '12 at 06:24

1 Answers1

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If your PC is nearby, you can leave the serial port connected like this in case it crashes again. Mine crashed once like this and I could see the kernel panic etc. in putty.

If plugging in the USB device is what caused it to crash, you may be able to replicate it. Also suspect the power supply - the power supply to the USB is not very well engineered in the revision 1 boards.

Community
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John La Rooy
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  • As the update tells the situation got worst, I have multiple frezzes on the same day. I have no chance momentarily to try out the system you are recommending. Is there somehow I could leave SSH open, and see the kernel panic. Also how to check if it's from the power supply. I have a 5v/1000mA adaptor. After crash the LEDs stay in lit mode. – Pentium10 Oct 22 '12 at 19:55
  • Oh, power supply on rev1, really? Which models? – mlhDev Apr 04 '16 at 02:20