Boot issue on APSync Edison

APSync / Companion Computers
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1

My poor Edison has been cut from power many many times as I reboot the pixhawk and eventually it stops booting.

This is what I can see via the serial interface:

[FAILED] Failed to start WPA supplicant.
See 'systemctl status wpa_supplicant.service' for details.
[    **] A start job is running for /etc/rc.local Compatibili... 8s / no limit)

An apsync reinstall gets it working fine but if anyone knows a way to fix it in the field, that would be much better. I don’t want the Edison stopping or delaying an otherwise well-planned mission.

I would like to ssh and shutdown the edison nicely but that’s sometimes not possible.

Thanks

2

An apsync reinstall gets it working fine but if anyone knows a way to fix it
in the field, that would be much better. I don’t want the Edison stopping or
delaying an otherwise well-planned mission.

Make sure you’re not running short on “disk” space?

3

Thanks Peter. Do you know how to clear the disk when it does not boot? Maybe a way to start in a different run level from u-boot?

4

Thanks Peter. Do you know how to clear the disk when it does not boot? Maybe
a way to start in a different run level from u-boot?

Best I can think of off the top of my head is to use the same USB DFU mode
used to put stuff on there - which is a pretty big hammer!

5

:-/ Hummm big hammer, true.

I think I’ll have to change the way I upgrade and configure the p2 to include an Edison rebuild after all the calibrations, reboots, field tests have been done. I may also disable wpa_supplicant so that it’s not a risk in the field. I can still connect via serial console and start wifi if needed. Currently it’s only used for scp log downloads and the initial dronekit setup.

It’s unfortunate that I can’t get to see syslog to actually see what the issue is.

6

Update: I’ve implemented logrotate on /var/log/syslog|messages|kern.log because these were growing to >100M. Now they are compress and it removes older files. Some of my missions are more than 4 hours long so a single mission can fill the root filesystem.

I hope that helps someone else. :slight_smile: