ssh not responding

[tedm]

I have arch arm on the Pogo dockstar, reinstalled fresh about a month ago, with a few moves, always with sync and then poweroff, waiting a minute then pulling the plug.

Had a few times when the unit wouldn't respond when powered on, initially, but somehow would later, so I watched the traffic with an analyzer and the dhpc process with the server was ok, and currently the unit upon poweron will broadcast, and get an IP from the dhcp server.

However, there's something running very slow on the unit, in that usually pinging it will not respond, but on occasion a few pings have replied in the 1-3 second range. Also, nginx once brought up the default web page.

ssh will either immediately reply that there is no connection, but has sometimes waited about a minute before sending back the error.

The stick has been pretty reliable (16GB sandisk cruzer fit).

Any ideas before reinstalling? I'd love to see the log files in the current state. I did a pacman -Syu a week or two ago, and saw that the systemd-journaling was using much less memory than initial (from 10% down to a few %).

[tedm]

re-installed everything, including uboot, and followed the instructions to a T, after /sbin/reboot there is no dhcp registration with the router, but led goes solid green, but no dhcp with the router.

The process goes quickly, and sync goes fast, like instantaneously fast, after deleting the tarball. I will try again when I get a different SD card.

[tedm]

while new thumb drive comes, am thinking of changing this:

> Set the U-Boot variable to tell the kernel to use ext3:
> /usr/sbin/fw_setenv usb_rootfstype ext3

to ext2 as I think it used to be (and would be consistent with ext2 comments below in installation for dockstar).

I did once use mk2efs -j and that worked, for a while, but I think the uboot loader likes to boot ext2 ...

Also, with all the new changes to arch, not sure /sbin/reboot should be the last command.

Perhaps /sbin/halt or /sbin/poweroff wait a few minutes, then restart ?

[tedm]

things are getting stranger. last reinstall I used -j on the mke2fs command and at /sbin I typed poweroff and waited a few minutes, then powered on. Again, sync took no time at all.

It got an ip from the dhcp server on the router, but only once responded to an ssh, otherwise, "no route to host" errors from clients on the subnet. Once it took the root login, and about a minute later prompted for password. I accidentally typed the wrong one. Waited several minutes for another prompt, which didn't come.

I haven't analyzed the data on the cable yet, but it appears that the pogo is broadcasting to the switch it is in, even though it has an ip from the router.

Subsequent ssh's aren't working, even after clearing known hosts.

I think I just need a new usb stick, although I did format this one in another system before the last install, and no errors. Either that or the Pogo is dying.

[tedm]

Tried new usb stick, still doesn't work.

[moonman]

Netconsole time? (Or serial)

[tedm]

Thanks moonman, yes it's netconsole time, and time to order or make a serial cable.

From what I can tell, and what the developers would know, is that something has changed in either Jeff's u-boot code, and/or the rolling releases of the latest archlinuxarm for kirkwood that is affecting at least the dockstar, if not other v5 devices.

For example, alarm doesn't show as the hostname when DHCP gets it's lease from DHCP server, it's still the root pogoplug$ prompt as mentioned in another v5 product issue thread here.

Also made the image from a desktop linux machine, then inserted it into the dockstar, with same issues, leading me to think something has changed in the u-boot code, perhaps something to do with the usb dir instead of alarm or rootfs that I think was in the instructions or code 6 months ago or so ...

will try to get netconsole running. thanks.

tl;dr one can ssh into u-boot just like always with the seagate dockstar in instructions posted for the device, but once you install arch on a usb stick per the instructions, one can't ssh into the dockstar anymore.

[WarheadsSE]

One can not ssh into u-boot. Possible stock, but not u-boot.

Sounds almost like your USB stick is not initializing fast enough.

[tedm]

OK, stock, not u-boot. What I meant is that u-boot always seems to load correctly per the instructions. But the only way I can ssh to the pogo after completing the archlinux arm install to the usb stick is to remove the usb stick, whether arch was extracted on pogo, or on desktop linux then inserted into pogo dockstar.

I'll hunt around for a 3rd usb stick. I also have a new stock dockstar, but I gave it to my son, and he's thinking something changed too, wrt to that lack of alarm prompt, and the whole /tmp/usb vs /tmp/alarm or /tmp/rootfs. I wish there were a snapshot of the instructions and wget files from say 6 months ago.

[tedm]

Does anyone think this might be worth testing:

A few weeks back or so, I did a pacman -Syu when the dockstar was running. It did a lot of upgrades, and one cool thing that I remember was systemd-journaling was using much less memory than previous, like 3% vs 10%.

But around that point I couldn't ssh if the unit were powered off.

Is it possible to try a new install, but instead of using the archlinuxarmv5latest the one from a month ago?

Also, does it matter that some instructions mention /tmp/usb while others /tmp/alarm or /tmp/rootfs for different v5 hardware? Seems like it should be consistent, since we're loading the same u-boot code, where we type "ok" for the above devices, so if the different instructions are valid for the different v5 devices, then I'm guessing the u-boot code has some auto-detect mount logic?