Hey all, my HA yellow stopped working overnight, it seems. Both my voice previews show constant blue rings (occasionally red). My router shows it being connected, but I can’t connect to it via the web browser or companion iOS app. I’ve tried disconnecting power and reconnecting it. My only guess is that I installed the flicd add-on last night, which involved a manual change to configuration.yml, and I hand wrote an automation. I couldn’t get it to work, but home assistant was still working fine. Not sure what could have happened overnight. Any suggestions for troubleshooting? Is serial log debugging the best/ only option?
#HA Yellow stopped working
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weak roost
Either connecting via SSH (if an according add-on is running and configured) or via the serial console to revert the changes in the configuration.yaml, to check the config and/or to look for error messages.
fading vector
Okay, thanks. I’ll try serial/usbc
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I've managed to connect via usb-c serial, but it looks like it's failing to boot, which triggers an indefenite cycle of reboot attempts, so I can't seem to run a command to modify configuration.yml or check systemctl logs. Here's the boot log: https://gist.github.com/timwis/16747cb4a74751414d14028ed8030fa5
The two failures I see are:
[FAILED] Failed to start Raspberry Pi bluetooth helper.
See 'systemctl status bthelper@hci0.service' for details.
[ OK ] Finished Raspberry Pi bluetooth helper.
[ OK ] Started RAUC Update Service.
[ OK ] Started WPA supplicant.
[ 26.625345] Bluetooth: hci0: command 0xfc18 tx timeout
[ 26.630506] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: failed to write update baudrate (-110)
[ 26.637242] Bluetooth: hci0: Failed to set baudrate
and
Starting Docker Application Container Engine...
[FAILED] Failed to start Docker Application Container Engine.
See 'systemctl status docker.service' for details.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for HassOS supervisor.
Any suggestions?
weak roost
To me it looks like a corrupted filesystem. The easiest would likely be to wipe the system and re-install from scratch.
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Wow, really?! Any idea how that could happen? I’ve only had it for a couple of weeks
And by wiping it, would I use the hard reset button on the side of the device?
weak roost
It could happen by cutting the power without shutting down the system properly.
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Oh yes I did that when I couldn’t connect to it via the mobile app (when the problem started). Is there another way to shut it down?
weak roost
And by wiping it, would I use the hard reset button on the side of the device?
It might work, it depends on if the OS crashes before or after the wipe would happen.
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Oh, gosh.. how else would I wipe it otherwise?
weak roost
Are you using a CM4 or CM5?
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CM5
weak roost
In that case the red button cannot be used anyway. You would have to connect the Yellow via USB-C to a computer and use rpiboot to flash HAOS again.
https://yellow.home-assistant.io/guides/reinstall-os-cm5/
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Ah, okay. Well hopefully my cloud backup will let me restore (and hopefully it won’t restore whatever initiated this chain of events!)
but, so I know for the future, is there a safe way to shut down the yellow when I can’t connect to it via browser or companion app?
weak roost
And powering down a Yellow is done via the advanced options of the restart menu.
Or holding the blue button for 5 seconds.
You have to wait until the yellow and green LEDs are off and only the red one is on.
In that state it is safe to pull the power.
If it doesn't react to the blue button as well (even with pushing it a bit longer and waiting for the shutdown to be done), it would be pull-and-pray.
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Yikes, okay
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Is it the same with the green, in terms of corruption risk from power loss?
weak roost
Yes. Also with x86 systems.
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Just thinking it would be nice / more consumer friendly (assuming that’s the aim of the green) if there was a battery backup inside that could detect the loss of power and send a shutdown signal to the machine. Forgive my ignorance though if that’s more complicated or expensive than it sounds!
In the meantime, I’ll add an external battery backup to my shopping list in case the power goes out. Glad I learnt this lesson after only a couple weeks, and not a couple years! Thanks for your help 🙏🏻
weak roost
Even PCs have the same problem and no included battery for that.
It is a good idea to have a UPS for power outages - if it is NUT compatible (connected to HA via USB or Ethernet), it can shut down HA gracefully.
And it is important to have a recent off-device backup (downloaded or external storage) at hand.
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Oh wow, so it sounds like I just got really unlucky!
And good to know about NUT. Sounds perfect. Thanks again.