Raspberry Pi 3B+ lockups

General
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FYI - there seems to be an issue with Raspberry Pi 3B+ lockups

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You will need to supply additional information if you want us to help you. Start with a detailed step-by-step of everything you did to create the SD card that you used (including the host system type and tools used).

Then provide a detailed list of a few problems while getting it to boot.

You could also try the offical Raspberry Pi forums (they will want the same details).

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No issues with my B+, locking or in install problems, just followed the instructions and links here


Only issue was wifi was not the best and switched to wired..

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Don't reply to that "Rosie" account, it's a spammer.

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@b-morgan - I was not asking for help, just passing along a problem with the Pi 3B+ in the early days of its release. I don't think any of that is still an issue.

I would delete this thread, but I apparently do not have the authority to do so (probably because there have been responses to it).

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@John_Mc Sorry for the confusion, that's my fault I think - @b-morgan wasn't replying to you but to a spam post that I have since deleted, not to you :slight_smile:

I think it makes sense to keep the info on the lockups here and hence the topic, especially since I don't feel that this issue is really gone now - too many weird reports.

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Original post is short on details but I had similar issue twice, both on 24 hour+ prints. Woke up to find the printer stalled out and Octoprint unresponsive. It wasn’t until the second time I noticed the small thermometer icon on the touchscreen and, long story short, the Raspberry Pi was overheating causing the issue. Was running Octolapse and suspect it was just making the Pi work too hard for too long. I installed 2 heat sinks on the pi and have not had any issues since.

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I hadn't thought about this before—and certainly there are times when we suggest to users that a firmware upgrade on their printer is to be considered—but it just struck me that the Raspberry Pi 3B(+) itself also has a firmware and can also be updated.

Now certainly, one could simply "start over" with a new OctoPi image or a new Raspbian Stretch image and re-apply plugins and such.

Patch-in-place firmware:

Perhaps we should consider patching-in-place as an alternative? The Raspberry Pi 3B's firmware is essentially three files on the /boot partition: bootcode.bin, fixup.dat, start.elf. Of course, there are drivers which are also on the boot partition, too.

I've searched the Raspberry Pi github for issues which include the word "freeze". The support tactic I've taken so far with users is to have them tweak the settings on their 3B+ to slow it down, to cool it down, etc. Presumably though, the people there are working hard to address these embarrassing design problems on the plus version of the Raspi. There are 39 closed issues of this subset, suggesting that the latest firmware might be a fix. And the effort could be to patch those three files in place (minimally).

Suggested workflow for in-place OctoPi instance:

  1. Pull the microSD card
  2. Use ApplePi-Baker, for example, to clone the card to another (maybe thirty minutes of effort)
  3. On this new microSD—as mounted in your workstation—patch the three files from the latest master or next branch of the firmware repository (ten minutes at the most)
  4. Try it in the printer

It seems to have the following advantages:

  • Sure-fire rollback plan if things don't go well, just revert to the original microSD which wasn't changed
  • It allows an easy "what if?" troubleshooting session to see if a firmware upgrade would fix things in place
  • It doesn't require a start-over mentality and the labor involved
  • Has the potential of installing firmware newer than the master branch

Disadvantages:

  • Sometimes a clean slate is exactly what you want and starting over with a new OctoPi would do that
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Surprisingly, doing a sudo apt-get update + sudo apt-get upgrade actually updates the firmware on the Raspberry. The reason I say this is that this is a typical message I just got for the prompt:

The following packages will be upgraded:
  bluez-firmware ca-certificates curl dpkg dpkg-dev ffmpeg file firmware-atheros firmware-brcm80211
  firmware-libertas firmware-misc-nonfree firmware-realtek git git-man gnupg gnupg-agent gpgv
  imagemagick imagemagick-6-common imagemagick-6.q16 libav-tools libavcodec57 libavdevice57
  libavfilter6 libavformat57 libavresample3 libavutil55 libcurl3 libcurl3-gnutls libdpkg-perl
  libgcrypt20 libmagic-mgc libmagic1 libmagickcore-6.q16-3 libmagickwand-6.q16-3 libpam-systemd
  libperl5.24 libpostproc54 libprocps6 libraspberrypi-bin libraspberrypi-dev libraspberrypi-doc
  libraspberrypi0 libsvn1 libswresample2 libswscale4 libsystemd0 libudev1 libuv1 libwavpack1
  libwbclient0 openssh-client openssh-server openssh-sftp-server patch perl perl-base perl-modules-5.24
  pi-bluetooth procps raspberrypi-bootloader raspberrypi-kernel raspi-config samba-common
  shared-mime-info ssh subversion systemd systemd-sysv tzdata udev wget wiringpi

...doesn't include any mention of the related files by name at least.

I assumed that since I hadn't seen any of the overlays or three stages of bootloader in there, then it wouldn't be upgraded (unless you perhaps did a sudo apt-get dist-upgrade maybe). And yet, this appears to have rev'd things up to the latest on the master branch.

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A feature I would like to see... (To deal with the results of this issue on the PI) is to have the NOOBS recovery option added to the PI IMG build that Guy Sheffer builds for us so we can deal with "Kernel panic-not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block" issues without resorting to just starting over.

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...doesn't include any mention of the related files by name at least.

I think what you're looking for is the raspberrypi-bootloader and raspberrypi-kernel packages that are listed.

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True. That seems to expand out to update the respective platform's firmware.

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I am having lockup problems with octopi 0.15.1. I have read the documentation five (5 times) and followed it fully. I attempted the install and downloaded as many times with no luck. I used the recommended text editor and flasher (Notepad++ & Etcher) on an 8G SD card. I am using a new Raspberry Pi 3B+. My computer is Win10 Version 1809. I have tried two different SD cards with same results. After unzipping to card, I get a message that the card has another partition that needs formatting. The card has been formatted several times with the recommended format tool (SD Formatter). Does the .zip file need to be on the SD card too? Do the files need to be on same card as Raspberry Pi OS? My 3B+.Pi works fine when I previously put Pi OS on it. The error message at lockup says: [ end Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(179.2) . Please Help!

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Windows is being willfully unhelpful since Microsoft knows what an ext4 partition should look like. This is false advice, like an evil person who's talking to someone innocent.

Someone else fell for it

This is completely unnecessary since Etcher will do that for you.

No. Follow the instructions without getting overly creative.

Having used Etcher, your microSD should have two partitions on it. The first one Windows can see and it's where you would edit the octopi-wpa-supplicant.txt file. The second partition can't be seen by Windows because they chose not to support that format. You do not want to listen to Window's suggestion to format anything.

This means that you either didn't follow the instructions or that you allowed Windows to format that second partition. Start over.

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Thanks for the information.