OT:Ooops!

[Jethro_uk]

My personal i3 4Gb HP laptop running Mint has been running like a dog these past few weeks. I tend to NX into it from my work machine for the less worky things I get up to, so don't use it daily.

Finally, inspired by a day off, I ran an htop and discovered to my surprised that gparted from July 6th was taking 95% CPU.

Then I remembered I had my rPi fail then, and I tried to recover the SD card. Using ... gparted. Which failed.

A quick kill -9 and all of a sudden the machine runs like the proverbial again.

Turned out the rPi had just died. Since it was running pi-Hole and I couldn't justify (to myself) a replacment rPi, I dug out an old desktop and that's now setup with Ubuntu server (no gui) and the debian piHole.

[The Natural Philosopher]

ah. Yes. I have the system monitor running permanently in my Mint main notification panel. If things get turgid I look at it to see what's what

The system monitor allows you to kill a process from the GUI

Pi zero W is only 7 quid. It would do that job easy. I am playing with one right now

Mind you U block origin does exactly the same job on the browser. Costs nothing.

Surprised the pi was totally dead tho.

[Andy Burns]

Beware that it doesn't cst more to run per year than a replacement rPi

[AnthonyL]

As I barely understood a word of what you were saying I went to Bard and the response was:

<quote>

I see. It sounds like you were able to troubleshoot the issue with your laptop and get it running smoothly again.

It's interesting that gparted was still running in the background, even though you had already tried to recover the SD card. I'm not sure why that would happen, but it's good that you were able to kill the process and get your laptop back to normal.

I'm also glad that you were able to find a replacement for your Raspberry Pi. It's always a good idea to have a backup plan, especially when it comes to important devices like your home network's DNS server.

I hope you're enjoying your new setup! </quote>

[mm0fmf]

My Pi W web gateway is powered from a USB port on the router, 5v @500mA max so 2.5W at most. I sincerely doubt you'll get an "old desktop" to run and use less than 2.5W.

[Jethro_uk]

"How did you know it was the Microsoft building ?" "They gave an answer that was 100% accurate, correct and useless ..."

[Jethro_uk]

I could use Webmin, but 18 months of CLI driving Linux has bred that out of me :)

Well I wanted something that afternoon ...

pihole covers the entire network - including phones, IoT crap, and SWMBO iPad

Not dead as such. But refusing to boot from the SDCard. And I really wasn't in the mood to hook it up to a monitor etc etc.

I got it as a gift in 2014, so can't complain.

[Jethro_uk]

The trick is to get the desktop to do other things.

And if nothing else, Covid showed that shaving operations to the bone can leave businesses horribly exposed.

[Theo]

The Pi is probably fine, it's likely the SD card has died. They're the modern version of floppy discs - they aren't engineered to be reliable, so when one dies you throw it away and get another one.

Pull the card, write a new one (the Pi imager tool will allow you to set passwords, wifi settings etc), boot up the Pi. Put the old one in a USB reader in the Pi and you may find it's gone read only but that's enough to get the data off it.

Theo

[The Natural Philosopher]

let's say 20W, 8000 hrs that is 160 units of leccy. About £48 quid...well probably less in USA where energy is cheaper. Not sure what a PI uses. about a watt? £2,50 ir thereabouts

Mmm. Now how to get a pi to run a load of SATA drives...:-)

[The Natural Philosopher]

I agree that the SD card = especiallly if you took no precautions to limit log file writing - is the most likely candidat for sudden death.

[Brian Gaff]

can we have that in English? Brian

[mm0fmf]

The Pi W acts as an SSH gateway and replaced a small desktop that did the same and also was used as a Linux development machine and NFS/Samba disks for the other computers.

When that desktop was replaced with something much more powerful, I didn't want it running 24/7 as before costing money for no benefit. So the Pi W handles SSH access and if I need the Linux desktop active when I'm remote, I can wake it from the Pi W. If I need it when sat at the desk I can ping the power button. If any of the machines that used the NFS/Samba mounts need those mounts active, they can wake the Linux server via the Pi W also. The Pi's Linux was reconfigured so all the logging etc. gets written to RAM disk, the same SSD is still in use as when I started with it.

Result is fewer machines on 24/7 when there is no need, ability to locally or remotely wake up servers when required and a big saving in electricity costs. It's been running like this for over 2 years. The Pi W and SSD cost under £15. That cost was paid back in electricity savings many times over. Should the SSD fail, there's a backup SSD ready to swap in. Should the Pi fail then the Linux server can be left powered to provide remote access whilst a replacement Pi W is obtained.

So I have a cheaper to run solution that has some backup options ready.

Works for me, YMMV.