RPi green light and freezing

  • Hi all. I have a RPi 3 B running OMV 3.0.99 and a Minecraft spigot server. Before having the minecraft server, the OMV server worked perfectly. But after installing the minecraft one, sometimes the RPi freezes and keeps the green light On. I've read on reddit it could be a problem with many reads/writes to the swap file because it's on the SD card and it can't handle that much or it had to do with not enough power. I connect my 2 HDDs with a dock station powered with external source, it connects to the RPi with a USB 3.0 cable only, so I thought it might not have to do with power issues (by if it might still have, tell me). I've tried running the minecraft server from a pen drive connected to the RPi and it still freezes (and I didn't like doing so as I need to mount the pen drive on the same command of the server start and the location changes sometimes - /dev/sdc | /dev/sda1 | /dev/sdb1), so I went looking for a possible answer and I saw that one on reddit. Can someone tell me what might be the problem with the RPi? I've tried lowering the settings of the server, but it keeps freezing. I’ve tried too disabling the swap file and running the server from an HDD and not a pen drive (both SSD and a normal HDD), but it still freezes. Anyone know what this might be? Thanks in advance for any help! If you need more information, tell me and I'll provide it!

  • Can someone tell me what might be the problem with the RPi?

    The problem is called 'crappy hardware'. The RPi folks chose to implement the most unreliable powering method: 5V via MicroUSB which often results in brownouts with 'average' MicroUSB gear when consumption increases.


    Since this problem is so common and normal RPi users not aware of (and RPi folks tried to hide this problem for years) we do some logging: New approach for Raspberry Pi OMV images


    But this requires using our recent OMV images (from July 2017 or later).


    Talking about swap on SD card: since that's stupid we try to avoid it in OMV (by using zram). But again you need a recent OMV image. Since your installation might already be corrupted due to constantly doing unsafe shutdowns (freezes) you might want to consider starting from scratch with OMV4 anyway. And of course 1st step is to check the logs and/or call raspimon as explained in the linked thread.

  • The problem is called 'crappy hardware'. The RPi folks chose to implement the most unreliable powering method: 5V via MicroUSB which often results in brownouts with 'average' MicroUSB gear when consumption increases.
    Since this problem is so common and normal RPi users not aware of (and RPi folks tried to hide this problem for years) we do some logging: New approach for Raspberry Pi OMV images


    But this requires using our recent OMV images (from July 2017 or later).


    Talking about swap on SD card: since that's stupid we try to avoid it in OMV (by using zram). But again you need a recent OMV image. Since your installation might already be corrupted due to constantly doing unsafe shutdowns (freezes) you might want to consider starting from scratch with OMV4 anyway. And of course 1st step is to check the logs and/or call raspimon as explained in the linked thread.

    Thanks for the reply!
    So if I install OMV 4 it will not solve the problem, but it will at least log the reasons, right? What about changing the charger to one with more amps? (btw, mine is 5.1V with 2.5A). Anyways I'll install OMV 4, as you said this installation might already be corrupted.


    And if you think nothing can fix the problem with the minecraft server, then I'll not install it on that installation. I thought it could be saving many things, like players data and other things to SD card, so I put the server on an HDD. It didn't work. Then I saw the swap file on fstab and i commented the line and the swap file was disabled and put the server on an SSD to be faster, but it still didn't work. If changing the charger works, then i could change it and if it worked, I'd then install OMV 4 with the assurance that it would work. Do you know if changing it to another with more amps will do anything or will it remain freezing?

  • Do you know if changing it to another with more amps will do anything or will it remain freezing?


    More amps do not help at all. The DC-DC design of those Raspberries is too crippled to get any reasonable amount of current into those things without the voltage dropping too much.


    Usually the voltage drop is the problem and not 'insufficient amps'. You still need to monitor for undervoltage occurences. If you are somewhat familiar with a Linux commandline this can be done on any RPi Linux OS image this way:

    Code
    wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ThomasKaiser/OMV_for_Raspberries/master/usr/sbin/raspimon
    sudo /bin/bash ./raspimon
  • More amps do not help at all. The DC-DC design of those Raspberries is too crippled to get any reasonable amount of current into those things without the voltage dropping too much.


    Usually the voltage drop is the problem and not 'insufficient amps'. You still need to monitor for undervoltage occurences. If you are somewhat familiar with a Linux commandline this can be done on any RPi Linux OS image this way:

    Code
    wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ThomasKaiser/OMV_for_Raspberries/master/usr/sbin/raspimon
    sudo /bin/bash ./raspimon

    Thanks. Yes, I'm more or less familiar with the command line (basic knowledge). I've executed those commands and the RPi has been monitoring the voltage. I've been playing flying around with teamviewer On to put the RPi at the max (to be faster) and it finally froze again. I can't know what the problem is. It stopped logging after the RPi froze, it kept just one 1 with the RPi frozen (the "throttling has occurred since last reboot"), but it doesn't log anymore either. The raspihealth.log file doesn't any more than that. So if it really is a voltage drop, is there anything I can do to prevent it? Disabling the server I know that works, but without disabling it is there anything that can be done? Like stopping some processes or limiting anything?


    Btw, in which ways have the installation might have became corrupted after some freezings? (curiosity, as I'm much more familiar with windows and I've never noticed anything bad after some power cuts)

  • So if it really is a voltage drop, is there anything I can do to prevent it?

    If it is voltage drop then this is a HARDWARE problem. Then you need to improve powering of the board. Anyway without seeing logs this is all just a waste of time and the RPi hardware is too crappy to spend any time on this... literally any other ARM board is better suited for the job than a Raspberry Pi.

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