B2 failure

[JanLarsen]

Hi,
At some time this afternoon my B2 became unavailable and started blinking at 1 Hz. I have made no changes to it lately and was not using it in any way at the time. There were no power outs and my UPS seems to be working.

I downloaded an install image to a USB flash drive and set the install parameter in bubba.cfg to 0 (rescue disk)

PTEdit can read a partition table on the USB drive so I guess it is there.

When trying to boot from the USB flash drive with the power button held for 5 seconds after connecting power the following happens:

The LED blinks at 2 Hz and there is activity on and off on the USB drive for approx 20 seconds, LED blinks for approx 1 sec at 4 Hz (or maybe faster) then permanent activity on USB, LED at 1Hz forever. No ssh port open at the usual ip.

I have tried the above at least 5 times.

Any ideas about what to do?

[ryz]

Well the blinking does not sound right but you do know that when booting Bubba2 in the rescue mode it will not keep the configured IP. If i remember correctly you should connect to the WAN port and not the LAN port and you have to have some DHCP server running that gives the Bubba 2 an IP address.

[JanLarsen]

Thanks ryz, I had the network connected to the LAN port.
The blink pattern is the same though for the WAN with DHCP. Rapid blinks for about a second before settling on 1 Hz.
I now have an ssh connection. Shouldn't the harddrive be mounted?

Code: Select all

# df
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs                    6.4M      3.9M      2.5M  61% /
/dev/root.old             6.4M      3.9M      2.5M  61% /
tmpfs                   125.2M     40.0k    125.1M   0% /tmp
/dev/sdb1               956.0M    259.9M    696.1M  27% /mnt/usb
#

[ryz]

It was a long time ago since I used the rescue system but I do not belie that the hard drive was mounted and that I did have to do it myself. I think it would be a good idea to first check the drives with the fsck command before mounting.
My mount point on Bubba 2 is as follow

Code: Select all

/dev/mapper/bubba-storage	/home	ext3	
/dev/sda1	/	ext3	

[ryz]

To run a check on the file system you could use the following command

Code: Select all

fsck.ext3 -f /dev/sda1
fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/bubba-storage

[JanLarsen]

Thanks again.
The harddrive had lots of problems, but fixing them did not make it boot normally. I guess that a reinstall is my next move, but I would like to know what the rapid blinking might mean.

[Binkem]

The manual says this about blinking leds:

Front LED information

During rescue procedure the front LED has a different blink frequencies to give information about current status.
•If the installer is instructed to not install anything, i.e. just to be used as an rescue device, then the LED will blink at 1Hz.
•If the installer is instructed to install, but no payload is found, the LED will blink at 16Hz.
•If the installer is instructed to partition disc, but no disc found, the LED will blink at 16Hz.
•If the installer is instructed to install but not to reboot, the LED will blink at 2Hz when installation is done.

When no hard drive is found the LED will repeatedly blink in the following pattern: on 3s, off 1s, on 1s, off 0.2s.

This explains why your led blinks at 1 Hz when you boot your rescue disk. It doesn't explain why it did blink at 1 hz in the first place though. If you did encounter a lot of HDD problems you might consider exchanging your HDD for a new one, after you are sure that your problems were not caused by a faulty Bubba.
You may also want to try mailing the Excito crew about this. They may have a better idea about the led-flashrate, and they don't follow this forum a much as you might like.

Martijn