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Re: Raspberry Pi 4 unstable when run from USB stick



Benny Siegert <bsiegert%gmail.com@localhost> writes:

> My Raspberry Pi 4 has a broken SD card, so I installed the latest
> -current snapshot (9.99.106) onto a USB stick, only using the UEFI
> loader on the SD card. This works generally fine but after a few hours
> of load on the system (compiling stuff, for example), USB stick
> eventually becomes unresponsive. Any processes using it either hang or
> get an I/O error. The error messages on console 1 are an endless
> stream of
>
> umass0: BBB reset failed, TIMEOUT
> umass0: BBB bulk-in clear stall failed, TIMEOUT
> umass0: BBB bulk-out clear stall failed, TIMEOUT
>
> A few questions, if I may:
>
>  - Is this a problem with the stick, or with the Pi?
>  - Any ideas so that this no longer occurs?
>  - Do other folks have the same issue with USB-attached storage?

I have a RPI3 running netbsd-9 (and -8 before that) with / on uSD and a
500G USB SSD:

  umass0 at uhub1 port 4 configuration 1 interface 0
  umass0: Samsung (0x4e8) Portable SSD T5 (0x61f5), rev 2.10/1.00, addr 5
  umass0: using SCSI over Bulk-Only
  sd0 at scsibus0 target 0 lun 0: <Samsung, Portable SSD T5, 0> disk fixed
  sd0: 465 GB, 16383 cyl, 16 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 976773168 sectors

bits on the SSD are munged regularly.  This has been solid for several
years, with very occasional hangs, not yet diagnosed.  Maybe 2 per year,
maybe less.

I had another RPI3, with a 4T seagate spinning rust on USB.  Again not
system disk.  That was totally solid.  (But it did a lot less than the
other one; basically it watched a UPS and reported over MQTT, and let me
put backup bits on the hard drive, and that was about it.)


I would say your problems are likely due to one of:

  - USB stick is iffy
  - power supply is iffy
  - something else on USB bus is troubled

and less likely due to a kernel bug but I wouldn't rule it out.

> Lastly, is there a better way in general to have storage on an RPi? SD
> cards are not reliable in the long (or even medium) term. USB sticks
> are unreliable. Is spinning rust the answer? Or some sort of special
> storage attachment hat?

Yes.  A USB-attached "SSD", which appears to be a far more reliable
beast than a "stick".  Yes I know this is form factor, but they seem to
be different types of products.

I don't want to be a samsung fanboy, but the T5 has been good.  I have a
second one that I use as a root disk for installation/rescue/etc.

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