[RPI3] Random freezes, power cycle is the only fix

dirkr · January 3, 2019 at 1:42 PM

i'm trying to figure out what is going on with my RPI3 and my Libreelec installation.

For the most part is runs fine (lets say 98%) but from time to time it just randomly hangs up (mostly when it's not doing anything) and the only way to fix it is to do a power cycle.

My power supply is fine (plenty of Amperage), i've swapped SD cards a few times already but without any result and the box is being fed it's content through a NFS share.

As I'd like to get to the bottom of why this is happening I'd like some pointers on what I can do (logs to extract or things to enable/disable) to gather information.

I would prefer not to just get "install it again from scratch"..

**blueribb** · January 3, 2019 at 1:51 PM

Has it done this ever since you first installed Libreelec ?

It sounds like a hardware issue to me.

sy278 · January 3, 2019 at 10:40 PM

Had this on mine too, was the SD card beginning to fail. I suggest you create a full back up of your system and copy it off of the backup share. Flash a new sd card with a clean image and then restore the backup to it. If you still have issues try running it on a clean image also check psu is powerful enough and not failing.

**Da Flex** · January 4, 2019 at 8:35 PM Official Post

Activate log level 1. When it crashes, power off, remove the MicroSD card, read the log file and post it (use a link to PasteBin). If you use a Windows PC, there are tools to read the card anyway.

dirkr · January 16, 2019 at 11:14 AM

Quote from blueribb

Has it done this ever since you first installed Libreelec ?

It sounds like a hardware issue to me.

Has been doing it on both a Raspberry PI2 and 3 and yes since I installed it.

Also switched power supplies during the road so that's why I'm puzzled.

Quote from sy278

Had this on mine too, was the SD card beginning to fail. I suggest you create a full back up of your system and copy it off of the backup share. Flash a new sd card with a clean image and then restore the backup to it. If you still have issues try running it on a clean image also check psu is powerful enough and not failing.

I'll make a sd card backup just to be sure but nothing on there I cant just recover.

Might look in to switching from a PI3 to something else more stable.. suggestions?

Quote from Da Flex

Activate log level 1. When it crashes, power off, remove the MicroSD card, read the log file and post it (use a link to PasteBin). If you use a Windows PC, there are tools to read the card anyway.

I'll enable that and get the logs asap next time it happens!

**HiassofT** · January 16, 2019 at 12:17 PM

A faulty SD card might cause those issues but most of the time it's the power supply. Amp rating on USB chargers usually doesn't mean much and/or the USB cable might not be up to the job and cause a voltage drop. The RPis, especially 3B and 3B+ are very picky about that.

You can easily check that, use the RPi running LibreELEC for a while then ssh in and run

Code

vcgencmd get_throttled

If you get anything else than throttled=0x0 you have a problem.

so long,

Hias

dirkr · January 21, 2019 at 8:55 AM

I did the command now and seems the power is ok..

Havent seen anything but throttled=0x0 yet..

dirkr · February 5, 2019 at 8:42 AM

Just upgraded to 9.0.0.. since that includes Kodi 18 which focusses on stabitlity I'll wait for a bit.

I did notice it might be because of a NFS share that I use to load my content from. I also use Watchdog to update the library and it seems that the moment I add a bunch of files in quick succesion the system just locks up.

**Klojum** · February 5, 2019 at 8:57 AM Official Post

AFAIK, in the past Watchdog caused different problems. Perhaps it's up to its old tricks again.

kuilbop · January 28, 2020 at 8:43 AM

Have this problem too on 2 machines and has NOTHING to do with SD cards.

It's a libreelec problem and guys of libreelec... stop pointing fingers to hardware, adapters etc etc etc. That's bullshit and you know it!!!!

NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER had this problem with OSMC and even openelec a long time ago. NOT on my rpi2, rpi3 and rpi3b+

Just thought I give libreelec a (new) try in the new year and same f*cking problem on both machines.

So I'm going back to OSMC. And probably forever.

**Da Flex** · January 28, 2020 at 8:53 AM Official Post

Quote from kuilbop

Just thought I give libreelec a (new) try in the new year and same f*cking problem on both machines.

My RPi 3B+ runs fine with LE. Maybe an add-on problem on your side.

Start to be more practical in 2020, and read your log files.

robmcc83 · January 28, 2020 at 9:26 AM

kuilbop

Strange that, you've come on here to rant about libreelec but I've had the same experience as you but the opposite way around.

I have a rpi2 and 2 rpi3 and a computer running generic version of libreelec.

Admittedly the generic version wasn't perfect in the beginning but with the hardware being new it took a while for Linux kernel updates to get my computer stable. But this is beside the point osmc don't even do a generic version.

But in regards to all my pi's I have tried osmc a couple of times and all 3 of them randomly used to crash with the sad face image at least once a week (usually more than that)

So I settled with libreelec because of this.

jtsepp · February 1, 2020 at 11:21 AM

I had Pi3 freezing when it was doing postprocessing for advertising with comskip. The process of comskipping HD stream seemed to be too heavy for the little device. After disabling the comskip addon I haven’t had any issues and libreelec has loooong uptime without issues. Of course I don’t have any logs to prove it but I’m happy now when everything is running smoothly. Perhaps other cpu intensive addons can cause these hangs to Pi?