Corrupt File System after Power Failure - Not Booting from USB

The place where I am using my dockstar, there are many power cuts and sometimes after a power failure the device fails to boot from the USB drive into debian. On running fsck on the drive from a different machine, I can see that there are many errors and they are fixed.

After connecting the flash drive back to the dockstar it boots into debian fine. Now nothing can be done about the frequent power cuts so is there any other alternative for this problem?

I notice that the Lenny install sets errors=remount-ro while the Squeeze install only sets noatime. If you are running Squeeze, you may want to switch to errors=remount-ro so you can run fsck manually on the DockStar. If that works, you can set up a script to fsck and reboot.

Also the Squeeze install does not set up swap space unlike Lenny, but I added it manually.

I'm also facing the same problem as mentioned by Varkey - any solution pls?

Given that the Dockstar runs on 12V, if I was faced with such a situation I would make a simple equiv of a UPS by using a Battery Tender and a Gel cell to run the unit off the battery to see if that would solve the problem.

These should do the job with some cables made up from the battery to the plug:
http://www.amazon.com/Humminbird-7700271-Portable-Gel-Cell-Battery/dp/B000N2Y87Q/ref=pd_cp_e_2

http://www.amazon.com/Battery-Tender-021-0144-Plus-Charger/dp/B000NCOKNI/ref=sr_1_2?s=automotive&ie=UTF8&qid=1283553306&sr=1-2

The battery will handle the plug for quite a while (hours?), and keep it from bouncing on & off when the power is sagging.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2010 05:36PM by BrianM.

hi,

i have the same problem, though with me its the kids pulling plugs out and me not wanting to leave things that gets as hot as the dockstar on 24/7 and the dockstar not having a power off button (and logging on to power down is a huge pain)

what i think may be a solution (as im a complete linux newbie) is:

1. load core debian to NAND (Read only)
2. include 10 second delay to allow usb HD to spin up
3. include script to automatically check and fix usb HD
4 rest of demons load rest of stuff installed on usb HD

what I'm trying to work out is if its possible to install automatically new debian apt apps to the usb rather than the default debian nand paths

so for me i would like to put the media streamer (squeezebox server) and the rest of the crap needed (getting on for 80 mb so prob no room in nand plus a lot of it is read/write) on the usb hd along with the media .... having the core debian in nand read only should mean it always boots clean , automatically scan/fix should cure most hard shutdown issues