Running 24/7 and managing power outages

[Juggler]

I'd like to use a Joggler for a home security system recording images and video from cameras, IP and/or USB webcams, using motion and one of BuZz's Ubuntu distros. Some trials with XUbuntu and Ubuntu base have gone well. But there are a few issues I'm not sure what solutions may be possible.

I'd have the Joggler running all the time and consequently there may well be drop outs in power where the Joggler will lose it's power supply. In this case I'd like to minimise the chance of corruption and have the Joggler start up again an carry on when power is returned. What suggestions would you make to enable this and is there anything to be careful of ?

I have tried doing a power off manually and have found that that the Joggler won't boot again as it doesn't like having a USB webcam and the Flash disk in the only usb hub attached to the Joggler. It just hangs at boot. I'm wondering if there is a way of specifying which usb hub socket to boot from (kind of in the way Joggler Win XP will only boot from port 4, as it this appears to be specified in the boot code).

Of course there are other solutions like using a UPS, or I could make some sort of battery based power supply, but in the event that cuts out, I'd be in the same position.

I've read somewhere here before, I think, that corruption can be quite bad if the Joggler isn't powered down correctly. So I wonder if there is a way this can be minimised. And if it is relatively straight forward to have an application and/or several applications start up when the Joggler is powered up.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[pete]

I've been putting my Jogglers on a POE switch and was going to move the switch over to a UPS.

That said you could try an externally powered hub where the power doesn't go back to the Joggler.

I've also been playing a bit with a Seabios BIOS (not ready yet for prime time) on the Joggler and using it via a PATA connected ZIF drive and XP.

Connected to this "test" Joggler is a cheapo 10 port USB hub with a keyboard, mouse and USB network device.

It seems OK on the boot up where as the NIC comes up each time. I am pushing it a bit though.

I can add more devices and see what happens.

I also have a Digi 7 port externally powered hub that I could try to test with in the next few days.

I am waiting for some SSD ZIF drives as I am using a slower 1.8" Ipod style drive for the time being.

[Juggler]

I've been putting my Jogglers on a POE switch and was going to move the switch over to a UPS.

That said you could try an externally powered hub where the power doesn't go back to the Joggler.

I've also been playing a bit with a Seabios BIOS (not ready yet for prime time) on the Joggler and using it via a PATA connected ZIF drive and XP.

Connected to this "test" Joggler is a cheapo 10 port USB hub with a keyboard, mouse and USB network device.

It seems OK on the boot up where as the NIC comes up each time. I am pushing it a bit though.

I can add more devices and see what happens.

I also have a Digi 7 port externally powered hub that I could try to test with in the next few days.

I am waiting for some SSD ZIF drives as I am using a slower 1.8" Ipod style drive for the time being.

Thanks for your reply Pete !

I'll try out an externally powered hub and see what happens.

To be honest, I've been using a super cheap 3 port hub, which has one port for the USB flash drive, a second port for a wireless keyboard and mouse dongle and the third port for a USB webcam. I'd like to find out if I can run more than one USB webcam on a Joggler without too much degradation on image capture.

The main issue I have is that if the USB webcam is plugged into the hub when there is a power off, on reboot the Joggler just hangs. I assume that the Joggler may see the webcam as a device it can boot from or something along those lines. I could try changing the ports the devices are in to see if that changes anything.

I could try some different hubs.

I wonder if it is possible to specify, in say GRUB, which USB port the joggler should boot from ?

I'd also be interested to hear what has happened to Jogglers when a Linux distro on a USB flash drive has been used and there has been a power outage ? How serious has it been ? Has the file system been so corrupted that the joggler would not boot ? Does your Joggler reboot ok or does it freeze on reboot ?

Does anyone have suggestion on how I could minimise corruption of the file system and in most cases get the joggler to reboot when power is returned and not hang ?

I'm wondering if an SD card with the read only physical switch on for the main file system may be a way to prevent unrecoverable corruption.

Thanks in advance for any comments/suggestions...

[Juggler]

Not nice questions to ask (maybe)...

what happened to your Joggler when there was a power outage ?

what did you do to recover ?

any advice you have to avoid bad stuff happening in the event of power outage, from your experience ?

were you running your Joggler from a USB flash drive of from the internal flash ?

TIA...

[pete]

Here the server rack (servers), switches, ISP modem, firewall et al are on UPS. That said using POE switches the Joggler too is on UPS. This provides an uptime an no disconnects for short power failures.

IE: my home office PC with two LCD monitors is on a UPS and does give me about 20-30 minutes of run time should the power fail.

My Jogglers today mostly use an internal SSD USB stick. That said I removed the wireless USB devices and substituted the SSD USB sticks. I had to remove the casing for the USB SSD stick as the SSD stick boards are larger than regular USB memory sticks.

The issues though that I have seen and mostly related to just running XP is that a reboot will not 100% of the time boot using the internal NIC card and sometimes the USB SSD stick will get corrupted (IE: unplugging the power while in XP).