There is an update job that runs every day on a systemd timer. After it finishes, if anything it updated needs to be restarted it will automatically do a reboot. It is likely that is what it is happening–not a system crash, or any other expression of instability.
If the update/reboot frequency is problematic for you, you can change the systemd timer. I changed mine to run only once a week, because every time it reboots it kicks everyone off of the Tor bridge. The longer uptimes should make the bridge a more reliable resource for whoever is using it.
I don’t know how your hardware is but you mentioned Pioneer with HDD. My Olinuxino lime 2 with an HDD (the thing sold by Olimex pre-assembled) was changing /dev/sdX letters for HDD and microSD while trying to write a lot to the HDD until I replaced the 2A power supply provided for it by OIimex with a 5A power supply (perhaps don’t need that much, this is what was easily available). I had tried the “add a second power supply via micro USB” idea, that did not help.
I can’t say how that would be visible on Freedombox, at the time I was trying to use it as a desktop computer and noticed write failure when running on the microSD and trying to install a system to the HDD. That makes me think this might not be your problem because you managed to put your root fs there but I prefer to mention this in case.
I understand that, but there was nothing in the journalcrl -f output on the terminal screen that indicated a reboot had been initiated. There were not the usual shutdown messages I would expect from systemd shutting down the services. It was just abruptly stopped with no messages whatsoever. This leads to the post by @Avron below.
I’ve given the power supply some thought as well so it is still on the list of potential culprits. I probably did not mention that the crashes started well before I moved the root FS to the SATA HDD a few weeks ago when the system was running from a 128 GB micro-SD card. I have not seen the crashes when I’ve been actively using the Box. It seems to happen at the oddest of times when the Box is otherwise idle.
Up thread @doliver10 mentioned a fix by Olimex for the random crashes he was experiencing which mine mirror exactly and have for quite some time. I’m not sure if the fix was supposed to be in the mainline kernel or patched in by the Debian/FreedomBox maintainers. If it is supposed to be downloaded from Olimex then my Box never got the memo as all the lines in my sources.list have debian.org as the base of the URL. I know there have been several kernel updates. Perhaps I should try a 6.x kernel from backports.
Logs are not preserved beyond boot because they are set to volatile to save SD cards from too many writes. You can change this behavior in System → Configuration. After that you should see logs for previous boots as well.
Hello all,
Sorry for being quite so long. A couple of months ago I decided to install a new image from scratch on my box. I downloaded the latest freedombox package, based on bullseye and installed it on a SD-card, then I moved the os to the ssd, just as with my old installation. Now my system runs without drop outs at all. I wanted to share that a bit earlier but here you go…
So I believe the crashes may have something to do with the update from buster to bullseye.
Had the same type issue and traced it to the power usage of the FreedomBox plus the SSD was just about at the maximum that the provided power supply could give. I increased the power supply to a 5 A version and the problem of crashes stopped. Good luck.