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Topic:

Series: Raspberry Pi Reliability

Notes on improving the reliability of long-running Raspberry Pis.

16 posts
Nov 2021 – Jun 2024

Moving fake-hwclock to a separate partition on a read-only Raspberry Pi

My guide to running a Raspberry Pi with a read-only root filesystem has one hacky caveat: it still allows fake-hwclock to write to the filesystem every hour. I don't love this solution, and this post presents a fix.

Pi Reliability: Reduce writes to your SD card

If you aren't using a read-only filesystem on your Pi, you can still reduce writes to the SD card to increase its lifespan.

Running a Raspberry Pi with a read-only root filesystem

While there are downsides, using a read-only root filesystem will dramatically increase your Pi SD card's lifetime.

Pi Reliability over WiFi: 'Temporary failure in name resolution'

Part of the Raspberry Pi Reliability series. One Pi I run here at home sits in an outbuilding with less-than-ideal WiFi signal strength. It runs PiAware [1] and BirdNET-Pi, and I specifically haven't run Ethernet to it to partially mitigate lightning-strike risks, given that it has two exposed …

Considerations for a long-running Raspberry Pi

Keeping a Raspberry Pi online and working with zero intervention for weeks, months, or years is somewhat of an art form. Several classes of things can go wrong, and you need to consider how your Pi will recover from each of them.

Stop using the Raspberry Pi's SD card for swap

Using your Pi's SD card for swap space will, in time, kill the SD card.

Remote logging for easier Raspberry Pi debugging

When something does go wrong, having collected logs somewhere other than your Raspberry Pi's SD card is very helpful.

Raspberry Pi SD cards: fsck them often

If your Raspberry Pi is not using a read-only filesystem, I recommend setting the Pi to run a filesystem check on its root filesystem at every boot.

Mitigating hardware/firmware/driver instability on the Raspberry Pi

Sometimes, through no fault of your own, something deep down will cause your Raspberry Pi to crash. Hard.

Maintaining a solid WiFi connection on Raspberry Pi

The first issue you're likely to hit with a long-running Pi, particularly with a Raspberry Pi Zero, is the Pi dropping off your WiFi network for no apparent reason after days or just hours of operation.

Keep your software up and running on the Raspberry Pi

This post reviews some of the options for keeping a systemd-managed service running persistently on a Raspberry Pi, or really any other Linux system.

Disable or remove unneeded services and software to help keep your Raspberry Pi online

On long-running, single-purpose Raspberry Pis, I like to disable and/or remove some scheduled tasks, services, and other software. This may help with a few different reliability concerns.

Consider the risks before making any dramatic changes to your Raspberry Pi setup

In my blog posts about making long-running Raspberry Pis more reliable, I've suggested a number of changes. Some of these are pretty large, dramatic changes; others are tiny and unremarkable. With any intervention, it's important to consider the risks involved and weigh them against your personal r…

Choosing the right SD card for your Pi

There are thousands of dirt-cheap, no-name microSD cards available. Don't use them.

Fixing excessive Pi-hole lighttpd access log size when Netdata is installed

Part of the Raspberry Pi Reliability series. Not running out of disk space is an important aspect of keeping tiny Linux machines with limited storage and RAM running reliably for extended time periods. On most Raspberry Pis and similar devices, I keep /var/log in RAM, either with a straightforward …