PogoPlug Stability Issues

[naku]

I bought a PogoPlug v2 Pink, and was planning of using it as remote control unit running Arch Linux ARM. After pairing it up with a new Lexar ZE 16GB flash drive, and putting Arch Linux ARM on it, I am seeing some interesting issues.

When the device boots, it sometimes boots into Arch Linux ARM, and sometimes it boots into Pogo's Linux.

If it boots into Arch Linux ARM, and I run pacman then I starting getting input output errors. The flash drive mount disappears, but since the whole system is on it I can't get it back. A cold boot seems to generally fix it.

I run pacman twice, once for gphoto2 and the second time for openntp, and the input/output error happened both times.

Now I didn't try another flash drive, but I wanted to check that how reliable these PogoPlugs are because I am planning to leave it unattended for weeks if not months.

Thanks.

[pepedog]

Only once did I have trouble with a flash, for me on using fdisk made end sector smaller than what fdisk suggested.
As to the alt boot issue, someone just posted this
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1085#p6159

[naku]

Hmmm, that actually leads me to think I might be running into a timeout issue.

Is it possible that when I run pacman, a bunch of I/O operations occur which results in timeouts when the flash drive gets overwhelmed and system umounts the drive? I would think the transactions block, but maybe not with a usb drive.

[pepedog]

I don't think timeout is the case, the occasion I had the problem all the same symptoms as you were the, including drive unmounting/disappearing. This happened as I was untarring the OS image, but then setting end sector(in fdisk) to something less than offered things were fine. I only tried because I noticed end was not the same number as factory fat number.

[naku]

Thanks I will give that a try.

[naku]

Unfortunately shrinking the filesystem down did not resolve it (I shrunk it to 80%). It might just be flash drive, but now I realize that the pogoplug v2 does not appear to have a hardware clock, so that is probably the straw that killed the camel's back.

Thanks for your help.

[alperkal]

Hi, Which remote setup do you have in mind?
I was planning such a setup but I don't know where to start

[Socaltom]

I went through 3 flash drives before I found one that worked reliably. I'm now running an 80g USB drive and it boots fine. I believe it boots faster than the flash drive.
Tom