What's your SheevaPlug's lifetime?

[nab]

Hi,

I have an eSata SheevaPlug running as a server for a month and a half now from a debian squeeze installation. Its running from an external eSata harddrive with its own powersupply. I read that some people had dead sheevaplug here.

I was wondering if people had SheevaPlugs running 24/7 here and for how long. I have an old machine that I can use as an emergency server, but was wondering what the likeliness of it happening was.

Thanks for your info,

nab

[peter a]

If you have the old version of the PSU I would say about 8 - 10 month of 24/7  use.
I`m hoping the new version will last more than that !!!!

If you are running from the sd card I would say that will die at some time too .

But from the hard-drive with the new PSU I would say you should be o.k !!!

[restamp]

I've had a SheevaPlug in continuous operation since May, 2009, thus far without failure.  Root partition is on a MicroCenter generic SDcard, still on the original card which is running fine.  Several USB components are hung off of a powered hub.  I keep waiting for something to fail, and I'm sure it eventually will.  Sometimes I wonder if I should open it up and replace the PS caps on general prinicple, but so far I have not done so.

YMMV.

[peter a]

Lucky !!! But don`t crow , My PSU went 10 month in which is about average for the old ones.
I`ve killed one Sd-card , which I think was mostly my fault , not limiting writes and having a swap partition.

I guess it`s all luck of the draw !!!

[nab]

I ordered my SheevaPlug mid-november 2010 from NewIT, so from what I read on the NewIT forum, it should have the new PSU. Haven't found an easy way to check that, thought...

So, with my external HD, I shouldn't expect it to die anytimes... No big need to order a replacement PSU or replacement sheeva just in case.

Thanks for your answer!

nab

[peter a]

I have a spare Esata sheevaplug !!!
The main one is running 24/7 , while I use the other plug for testing new application etc .

Now my testing plug is playing the role of a router , learning iptables and installing packages I just don`t want to install on the main plug.

[NewIT]

We have been asked by Globalscale to compile a list of MAC addresses and serial numbers for the SheevaPlugs that have had the PSU fail on them.

We would really appreciate it if you could supply us the following information:

 

MAC address              -

Serial Number           -

Date of Purchase        -

Purchased from          -

Date of failure            -

 

If you can email psu@newit.co.uk with these details it will allow us to gain a better picture of this issue

[koltrast]

Hi guys!

I bought my sheevaplug in january 2010. It has been working great keeping FS on SDCard leaving the NAND untouched. Of course like anything else it will break sometime but so far so good.

A small sidenote: Are there any swedish people running plugs in sweden here? Looking at the statistics my plug shouldn't be running which got me thinking. Either am I lucky or may it have to do something with a specifically stable electricity network? Does anyone one if the plug might be sensitive to fluctuations in voltage?

[whosmatt]

I have a dev model which I received in June 2009.  It ran 24x7 (with the exception of one week during which it was moved to a new location 2,500 miles away) until today.

The PSU died.  I wired up a 5V 2.4A  power supply from a USB hub I had lying around, it's working fine again. I've been tarring (with bzip2) 30GB of data on it for the last 8 hours or so; it's about as loaded as it will get and is going strong. The wall wart is only slightly warm to the touch.


I guess, from reading other posts, that my PSU lasted about a year longer than it should have

-Matt

PS:  The silver box next to the drobo is a Neoware thin client (800MHz Via) running pfsense, the best OSS firewall ever.

[restamp]

I've had a SheevaPlug in continuous operation since May, 2009, thus far without failure.  Root partition is on a MicroCenter generic SDcard, still on the original card which is running fine.  Several USB components are hung off of a powered hub.  I keep waiting for something to fail, and I'm sure it eventually will.  Sometimes I wonder if I should open it up and replace the PS caps on general prinicple, but so far I have not done so.

Yep.  Shouldn't have crowed.  I came home tonight to discover my main desktop PC wouldn't boot.  Just hung in the BIOS "initializing USB".  After some experimentation, I found that the underlying culprit was the USB connection to my SheevaPlug's Console/JTAG.
But, the Sheeva was running fine.

I pulled the USB connection to the Sheeva, booted the PC, did some work, and then turned my attention to the SheevaPlug.  Hoping it was a glitch, I reset it.  It came back up fine, but its USB was continuing to drive my PC fits.  Here is a sample of what was spewing in the /var/log/kern.log on the PC over and over:

Code:

Mar  2 22:26:35 pandora kernel: [   10.571285] usb 7-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 17
Mar  2 22:26:35 pandora kernel: [   10.738333] usb 7-1: unable to read config index 0 descriptor/start: -71
Mar  2 22:26:35 pandora kernel: [   10.738506] usb 7-1: chopping to 0 config(s)
Mar  2 22:26:35 pandora kernel: [   10.746332] usb 7-1: string descriptor 0 read error: -71
Mar  2 22:26:35 pandora kernel: [   10.746573] usb 7-1: no configuration chosen from 0 choices
Mar  2 22:26:35 pandora kernel: [   11.021342] usb 7-1: USB disconnect, address 17
Mar  2 22:26:35 pandora kernel: [   11.361308] usb 7-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 18
Mar  2 22:26:35 pandora kernel: [   11.514281] usb 7-1: device descriptor read/all, error -71
Mar  2 22:26:35 pandora kernel: [   11.570095] hub 7-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 1
Mar  2 22:26:35 pandora kernel: [   12.131316] usb 7-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 20
Mar  2 22:26:35 pandora kernel: [   12.282226] usb 7-1: device descriptor read/all, error -71
Mar  2 22:26:35 pandora kernel: [   12.340067] hub 7-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 1

From the logs, I saw that the PC was having trouble with this USB device since yesterday, although it must have been sane enough then not to interfere with the boot sequence.

Next, I power cycled the Sheeva.  This time, ssh and nfs did not come up, although the device was pingable.  Since I had no console to see what was going on, I took the SDcard over to the PC to fsck, backing it up in the process.  This took some time.  Then, I reinstalled it and powered up the Sheeva.  This time, no-go.  The Sheeva just sat there blinking at me in a manner I've grown accustomed to seeing when a switching PS isn't quite able to jump-start itself.

Examination of the PS revealed no obvious failures.  One cap is bulged, but indeed, mine looked pretty good compared to the pics others have posted here.

Bottom line, I spent the past hour soldering together a wiring harness to power the Plug via an external wall-wart.  Luckily, I had several 5V 2+A wall-warts lying around  This one was a retread from my HDHomeRun box, which I repaired after it failed last summer.  The Sheeva seems happy, and frankly is running a *lot* cooler now.  Was hoping to get two years out of its PS, but 22 months is not bad from what I've seen here.

Oh, BTW, was curious if my Dlink USB hub would back-feed power to the Plug, as some have indicated some powered hubs will do.  (I was also half wondering if perhaps back-fed power might account for my Plug's PS's longevity.  But, alas, the Plug died as soon as I unplugged it from the power strip, even still connected to the powered hub.

Chalk up another one.

[feffer]

Not crowing...just saying my sheevaplug has been running pretty much 24/7 for around 10 mo. Uptime currently shows 49 days. I only bring it down to back up my SD card. Have debian squeeze running. Since I am running one of the suspect psu, I got an external ps a few mo ago intending to connect it instead of the existing internal one. Never got around to it, maybe I should before it fails. My only other mod has been drilling holes all over the case. It runs "warmer" than any other device I have now, but not nearly as hot as it did before the hole drilling.

I have a powered usb hub attached and a powered WD external 1 TB "Elements" drive which I think is their 5400 rpm "green" one. No really heavy lifting: nightly backups which vary from a few MB to 8 GB, music server, print server, wired media server via TwonkyMedia to a PS3, and a few other minor things. The hdd powers down nicely and the whole setup seems well behaved. Guess I better get that external ps attached 

feffer

[hanker]

Mine has been running pretty much 24/7 since last June. Last week I finally got around to removing the original power supply and putting in a plug for an external 5V 3A power supply. It runs cooler now. BTW, the power supply that I took out looked fine - no bulging capacitors or anything like that.

Mine is used only as a streaming music server with Subsonic. It runs Debian squeeze from an SD card.