FBX server unavailable several times a week

At this very moment I can’t ping the Pioneer anymore (after trying to get syncthing to work).

Will search for other power supply and/or another USB solution, and install FBX on another device (Dell Wyse).

No,I’m not using Cockpit at the moment. Will look into this other time, first the power supply to take care of.

Had a lot of trouble to get the Pioneer up-and-running again! At some moment I thought it was completely dead, only the red power LED, nothing to be seen on a monitor. After two times creating a fresh SD, it started running again. Take it as reminder to get the back-up procedure in order when only using the SD I guess!

Log files looks normal again, with the percentages and the illegal snapshot, no package snapper problem mentioned anymore.

So I can image that somewhere the system got unstable during the updating because a lack of power. I’ve chosen another alternative to reduce the power need, I replaced the USB-SSD with a USB-stick. Now let’s experience if this is stable.

(Thread is all about the Pioneer? Maybe someone move it to Hardware Owners Support?)

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After I uninstalled all unused apps, the problem has stopped. I will mark this as solved.

I currently only have 4 apps installed on my Olimex SBC, but these are all I need. I had installed many other apps to try them out, and then disabled them when I decided not to use the apps regularly, but uninstalling them may have been necessary.

Well, I think I tackled one thing that was causing a problem, but it still hasn’t run for longer than two days in a row :frowning:

At some point, the Pioneer was only reachable for less than an hour. I’ve run a script to force the network card to 100 Mbps. Now the Pioneer runs for a longer time (although it seems to be running at 100 Mbps, while both the router and Plinth show a 1 Gbps connection?).

I apologize in advance if I’m mixing things up because there were two users with similar issues in this thread.

In our case, you had the external SSD and we spoke about power supply being a possible issue. It seems that it has been ruled out, if I recall correctly.

What exactly is happening the rest of the time?
Is Plinth not available but you get a “Service Unavailable” page from the Apache web server as the other user?
Is it unreachable from both the internet and from the local network?
Is it not reachable at all as not being able to even ping it?

Not reachable from local network, not being able to ping, but all LED’s are burning/blinking, so it’s not dead.

By using an USB-stick I hopefully ruled out the power shortage. Several times checked CPU- and RAM-usage. CPU-usage get’s sometimes high, as expected, and RAM is about 50%, that’s ok.

Automatic update is off.

This morning I found it stalled, last seen by router at 06.26 (at 06.00 a reboot?). Trying to make sense of log-files, but I’m bit confused by Plinth- and Cockpit-info, and don’t know what the effect of the battery is on the boot-process. But that deserves an individual topic I think, is general knowledge, and chances are it has nothing to do with the unavailability.

Now I’m waiting until it will get unreachable again, hopefully the log-files will learn me more, I’m now getting a bit more familiar with Plinth/Cockpit.

My details:
(Which will hopefully help rather than confuse!)

Pioneer box which was previously unused
Fresh install on two different SD cards (one of them brand new)
Better power supply than the default
No hard disc attached
No battery attached
Only two apps installed (one of them unused)
Automatic updates and backups turned off
Every few days (seemingly randomly) it loses connection
No access via web, SSH or ping
Power LED solid and network LED blinking
Pulling the plug to reboot fixes the issue (until next time)

I’ve just set the option to save log files now.

I’ve seen this pattern a few times now:

A last record before a boot (I now notice the Jul 05, actually I didn’t expect that. I expected Jul 16 or none (because of boot should empty complete log, now empties between the 5th and 17th?):

Jul 05 19:18:02 freedombox sudo[2935]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root(uid=0) by (uid=105)

– Boot 010396d6567c4ce98df0c0b3ed15511d –

How to figure out at what time the boot started (I guess 02:00)? I don’t do the automatic update, why boot? Can I prevent booting?

Jul 17 02:00:41 freedombox systemd[1]: Starting plinth.service - FreedomBox Service (Plinth)…
Jul 17 02:01:08 freedombox /usr/bin/plinth[727]: FreedomBox Service (Plinth) version - 26.9.1
Jul 17 02:01:08 freedombox /usr/bin/plinth[727]: Script prefix - /freedombox

At 02.06 the router lost connection to freedombox. Last record was always about Plinth. Not sure if last message is always this one.

When finding FBX unavailable, I unplug/plug power. Looks to me something was stalled (waiting for an awnser?), and power break triggers continuing the boot-process?

Jul 17 10:40:49 freedombox /usr/bin/plinth[727]: Initialized apps - apache, api, names, avahi, storage, backups, cockpit, firewall, config, datetime, diagnostics, dynamicdns, first_boot, help, letsencrypt, networks, oidc, power, privacy, security, snapshot, ssh, upgrades, users, bepasty, bind, calibre, coturn, deluge, ejabberd, email, featherwiki, gitweb, gnome, homeassistant, ikiwiki, infinoted, janus, jsxc, kiwix, matrixsynapse, mediawiki, minetest, minidlna, miniflux, mumble, nextcloud, openvpn, pagekite, performance, privoxy, quassel, radicale, roundcube, rssbridge, samba, searx, shaarli, shadowsocks, shadowsocksserver, sharing, sogo, syncthing, tiddlywiki, tor, torproxy, transmission, wireguard, wordpress, zoph
Jul 17 10:40:49 freedombox /usr/bin/plinth[727]: Started new thread for glib main loop.
Jul 17 10:40:49 freedombox /usr/bin/plinth[727]: Setting up CherryPy server
Jul 17 10:40:49 freedombox /usr/bin/plinth[727]: Creating network manager client
Jul 17 10:40:49 freedombox /usr/bin/plinth[727]: D-Bus connection acquired: org.freedombox.Service

Examining the logs in Cockpit (Last 7 days, Info and above):

Records of the Jul 17th, and of Jul 5th and Jun 25th are visible.

Records around the boot-stop:

10:40 AM Starting apt-daily-upgrade.service - Daily apt upgrade and clean activities…
systemd

10:40 AM Initial clock synchronization to Fri 2026-07-17 10:40:48.962247 CEST.
systemd-timesyncd

10:40 AM Contacted time server 178.239.19.57:123 (0.debian.pool.ntp.org).
systemd-timesyncd

10:40 AM Clock change detected. Flushing caches.
systemd-resolved

2:01 AM systemd-hostnamed.service: Deactivated successfully.
systemd

2:01 AM Script prefix - /freedombox
/usr/bin/plinth

2:01 AM FreedomBox Service (Plinth) version - 26.9.1
/usr/bin/plinth

Block of errors which appears twice:

2:00 AM [ssl:error] [pid 824:tid 824] AH02604: Unable to configure certificate fe80::71d4:40d9:ed70:a663%end0:443:0 for stapling
apache-error

2:00 AM [ssl:error] [pid 824:tid 824] AH02217: ssl_stapling_init_cert: can’t retrieve issuer certificate! [subject: CN=freedombox / issuer: CN=freedombox / serial: 6BB4F878E09EF7C3A5466E0DFB783DC83F4C7833 / notbefore: Jul 5 17:09:05 2026 GMT / notafter: Jul 2 17:09:05 2036 GMT]
apache-error

2:00 AM [ssl:warn] [pid 824:tid 824] AH01909: fe80::71d4:40d9:ed70:a663%end0:443:0 server certificate does NOT include an ID which matches the server name
apache-error

2:00 AM [ssl:error] [pid 824:tid 824] AH02604: Unable to configure certificate freedombox:443:0 for stapling
apache-error

2:00 AM [ssl:error] [pid 824:tid 824] AH02217: ssl_stapling_init_cert: can’t retrieve issuer certificate! [subject: CN=freedombox / issuer: CN=freedombox / serial: 6BB4F878E09EF7C3A5466E0DFB783DC83F4C7833 / notbefore: Jul 5 17:09:05 2026 GMT / notafter: Jul 2 17:09:05 2036 GMT]
apache-error

2:00 AM [ssl:error] [pid 824:tid 824] AH02604: Unable to configure certificate freedombox.local:443:0 for stapling
apache-error

2:00 AM [ssl:error] [pid 824:tid 824] AH02217: ssl_stapling_init_cert: can’t retrieve issuer certificate! [subject: CN=freedombox / issuer: CN=freedombox / serial: 6BB4F878E09EF7C3A5466E0DFB783DC83F4C7833 / notbefore: Jul 5 17:09:05 2026 GMT / notafter: Jul 2 17:09:05 2036 GMT]
apache-error

2:00 AM [ssl:warn] [pid 824:tid 824] AH01909: freedombox.local:443:0 server certificate does NOT include an ID which matches the server name
apache-error

Yesterday I was installing FBX on a Debian installed Dell Wyse. Couldn’t start the webpage because of apache-certificate problems. When resolved, could reach the webpage. Maybe it’s the same sort of problem, but I notice two differences:

  • apparently the Pioneer is able to resolve the problem, after the power break;
  • the Dell Wyse stays available (ping, SSH).

Does your log show the same sort of breaking-point as my post (time, last message)?

Sorry I can’t reply properly right now (don’t have the logs from just before my last crash - will have to wait for the next one) but I’m also having the issue you wrote about here:

Well, depends on what to call the crash. To me right now it’s what happens after boot at 02:01, I can see my router lost contact with my Pioneer at 02:06. Then pulling/reconnect the plug at about 10:40, and it’s get available again. Pulling/reconnect the plug on my Pioneer is not a reboot according to the log, as far as I can see.

It runs for almost two days now, but there wasn’t a reboot last night.

So, just wondering if you see the same gap between boot and pulling the plug, or do you get a real reboot, and then runs nicely to availability?