Re: Sheevaplug - not working correctly

[aford]

I have had mixed results with SheevaPlug.  I bought two plugs.  The first plug I bought last August from Globalscale and right from the start it would reboot spontaneously after about 15 to 90 minutes, never staying up for more than a couple of hours.  That plug was replaced (GS got New IT to supply the new one).  The second plug (not the replacement, which is sitting in a drawer as a spare) I bought at the end of last year from New IT and it started playing up yesterday.  It runs debian from an external USB disk and has been stable for about 3 months running exim, dovecot, nfsd and samba.  However since yesterday it has rebooted 8 times leaving no trace of any problem in any of the logs (/var/log/{syslog,messages,kern}).  The plug sits behind an APC SmartUPS so dirty power should not be an issue.

[KeithS]

I have had mixed results with SheevaPlug.  I bought two plugs.  The first plug I bought last August from Globalscale and right from the start it would reboot spontaneously after about 15 to 90 minutes, never staying up for more than a couple of hours.  That plug was replaced (GS got New IT to supply the new one).  The second plug (not the replacement, which is sitting in a drawer as a spare) I bought at the end of last year from New IT and it started playing up yesterday.  It runs debian from an external USB disk and has been stable for about 3 months running exim, dovecot, nfsd and samba.  However since yesterday it has rebooted 8 times leaving no trace of any problem in any of the logs (/var/log/{syslog,messages,kern}).  The plug sits behind an APC SmartUPS so dirty power should not be an issue.
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I am surprised to hear that 2 plugs have played up, as I have found them stable. Just thinking out of the box here, is the plug faulty. or is this a result of attacks. If the plugs are visible to the internet rather than hiding behind a local network, then I can think of 2 reasons for problems. You could either be having DOS attacks, or exim could be being flooded with spam.

[aford]

Just saw this post: http://plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php?topic=1347.0 (SheevaPlug USB Power Supply problems. Can it Drive a USB Ext Disk?)

I have a Maxtor USB disk attached and powered from the plug.  Sounds like I might have blown (or almost blown) a capacitor in the plug.  The disk has a separate USB power cable, which I can plug into a powered hub to take the power load off the Sheeva plug.  I have now done that and will see whether that makes the plug more stable.  If not I shall get out the spare, update the bios and run the system on that one and see how it goes.

To reply to KeithS: I think that the first plug was faulty as it was spontaneously rebooting from the moment it was first powered up.  The second one was stable for 4 months and suddenly started playing up yesterday.  It is behind a firewall (an Alix board running Monowall) and my mail is filtered by MessageLabs so it doesn't get flooded with spam or viruses.

[NewIT_Marcus]

A rebooting issue does seem to suggest that the root cause may be power related.

We noticed the plugcomputer forum thread about power issues, we find it plausible, and we have brought that discussion to the attention of Globalscale. FWIW, we have been using an external WD Mypassport drive (which takes its power from the Sheevaplug) for the past few months (for copying SD images) without incident.

Please keep us informed how the plug performs with your new power arrangement.

[aford]

A rebooting issue does seem to suggest that the root cause may be power related.

We noticed the plugcomputer forum thread about power issues, we find it plausible, and we have brought that discussion to the attention of Globalscale. FWIW, we have been using an external WD Mypassport drive (which takes its power from the Sheevaplug) for the past few months (for copying SD images) without incident.

Please keep us informed how the plug performs with your new power arrangement.

Well earlier today the plug was rebooting about every hour or so, but having plugged the USB power cable of the external disk into a powered hub it has been stable for over eight hours.  I suspect that if the thread on the plugcomputer forum is correct then the capacitors may be damaged and may fail eventually.  If that happens I will move the disk to my spare plug and take this one apart to look at the state of the components.

[aford]

Hopefully a final update - it is now 3 days since I plugged the USB power cable of the external USB disk into a powered hub, and the SheevaPlug has not rebooted itself at all (in contrast to reboots every couple of hours previously).  It does seem that if you rely on the SheevaPlug to power an external USB disk that you may be risking the health of the 'Plug.

I think I will be upgrading to the eSata SheevaPlug sometime soon.  It will be interesting to see how the load average compares.

[NewIT_Marcus]

Thank you very much for the updates. We've already pointed out the plugcomputer forum thread to the manufacturer, and we'll make sure they see this thread too.

[peter a]

The Esata version is much faster than using usb hard drives .
I`m able to get 35 megs /per sec over gigabit network without it maxing out the cpu.

[aford]

Well six days after the initial stability problems, with the USB disk now powered from a hub, the SheevaPlug seems to have died.  I am not even able to connect via the USB serial port.  I will investigate more thoroughly this evening.  Fortunately I have a spare SheevaPlug, which just needs U-Boot setting up and I should be able to swap out the dead 'Plug.  I have also ordered an eSata version and intend to migrate to that when it (and an eSata disk) arrives.