Make Pogoplug power loss proof

The little ARM device on Debian is great. I mainly use a Pogoplug E02 as NAS server for home sharing needs. However, when I was out of town last week, my wife complained that it was not working.

After I came back, I found that there was a power loss happened and the Pogoplug stuck on boot up every time. After I took the USB drive out and ran fsck on PC, it started to work again. I used to have power loss before, but this didn't happen every time. I guess it could depend on luck about which file got corrupt during the power loss event.

I'm wondering how to prevent this happening again. I found this one: http://askubuntu.com/questions/211797/how-do-i-make-ubuntu-power-loss-proof

For now, I just take the second option to enable auto-fix for FSCK. But I think the best way is first one to make the OS read-only, not sure if it's possible?

debian7 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The little ARM device on Debian is great. I mainly
> use a Pogoplug E02 as NAS server for home sharing
> needs. However, when I was out of town last week,
> my wife complained that it was not working.
>
> After I came back, I found that there was a power
> loss happened and the Pogoplug stuck on boot up
> every time. After I took the USB drive out and ran
> fsck on PC, it started to work again. I used to
> have power loss before, but this didn't happen
> every time. I guess it could depend on luck about
> which file got corrupt during the power loss
> event.
>
> I'm wondering how to prevent this happening again.
> I found this one:
> http://askubuntu.com/questions/211797/how-do-i-mak
> e-ubuntu-power-loss-proof
>
> For now, I just take the second option to enable
> auto-fix for FSCK. But I think the best way is
> first one to make the OS read-only, not sure if
> it's possible?

No need to make it read-only.

1. Make sure you backup the USB rootfs first.
2. Check your u-boot env settings to ensure that can boot with Ext3 rootfs. And then convert rootfs to Ext3 (you need to take it off-line to do this).

Ext3 filesystem for rootfs will be resilient to power outage (it will boot right back after checking and recovering journal). If you're not sure about the steps (set u-boot envs ,...), please post back.

-bodhi
===========================
Forum Wiki
bodhi's corner (buy bodhi a beer)

bodhi Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> No need to make it read-only.
>
> 1. Make sure you backup the USB rootfs first.
> 2. Check your u-boot env settings to ensure that
> can boot with Ext3 rootfs. And then convert rootfs
> to Ext3 (you need to take it off-line to do this).
>
>
> Ext3 filesystem for rootfs will be resilient to
> power outage (it will boot right back after
> checking and recovering journal). If you're not
> sure about the steps (set u-boot envs ,...),
> please post back.

Thanks for the input, not sure if Ext3 will cause some wear to USB drive over time? I'll have a try and see.

debian7,

>
> Thanks for the input, not sure if Ext3 will cause
> some wear to USB drive over time? I'll have a try
> and see.

See this post for how to alleviate that:
http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,13702,13704#msg-13704

-bodhi
===========================
Forum Wiki
bodhi's corner (buy bodhi a beer)

Perfect, thanks!