Hi,
for some month now I experience random system crashes on my Vero 4K. At first it happened every few weeks, but the frequency of these crashes is increasing rapidly. Following happens:
- The HDMI signal “freezes” with a uni-color screen
- no SSH-connection possible
- the Vero 4K is getting hotter and hotter (I mean, really hot) until I unplug the power
- the likelihood for running into another crash right after plugging the power again doesn’t seem to correlate with letting the device cool down for some minutes or not
Yesterday (2019-08-20) I ran into three crashes in a row until I gave up: ~19:57, ~21:16 and then right after the reboot (Kodi wasn’t completely ready again when the system crashed again, then I gave up and let the device cool down). Logs can be found under http://paste.osmc.tv/oziyogixuh. As I suspected a temperature issue especially during the hot summer, I started logging the system temperatures via cronjob some weeks ago (last week: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1esHqzmqoBXu75jpVEZ9j2opQhNvSvwbO). The pauses in the log are all because of these crashes, normally Vero runs 24/7. For example the temperature at [2019-08-20 21:07:07] was 100 degrees, which was the first temperature log after restarting Vero after it was crashed obviously about one hour before at ~19:57 - so you see what I mean with getting really hot after crashing.
By reading the logs I didn’t really get a clue, but I have a suspect, but to be honest I don’t know enough about it at all. In /var/log/lircd I found entries in the file only and every time right before a crash. The entry (Aug 20 21:17:02 osmc lircd: lircd(default) ready, using /var/run/lirc/lircd-lirc0) is not really pointing to an error, but I don’t really believe in such a coincidence.
Could you please help me? As I said, the crashes come more and more frequent, so it really starts to get annoying. Could it be a hardware issue? I can imagine that heating up to >100 degrees, sometimes even for a couple of days, is not really that healthy for the hardware.
The device is certified up to 120C but should not be getting that hot with regular use.
Can you show me a photo of how it’s positioned in your home setup?
Sam
I wall-mounted the device behind my oled tv, behind the top-most edge, so there should be enough air around the device.
Can you take it off the wall for a bit? I’m wondering if the TV is kicking out heat on the device
Sam
There are appr. 9cm between TV and Vero, the heat from the TV panel doesn’t reach the Vero. But sure, I’ll take it down. So this means that the ~60 degrees I have most of the time are already untypical? And do you have an explanation for the crashes itself? Or do you think the heat is the cause for the crashes? If so, is there no graceful auto-shutdown if the device becomes too hot?
60C isn’t too bad and won’t incur any throttling.
Do you have a screensaver active?
If the device overheats you will see a res light on the front of the device
Sam
Yes, screensaver is active (Bing Pictures Screensaver), but as I said, I don’t suspect a Kodi issue. I forgot to mention that after having those crashes a couple of times, when OSMC Leia was released I completely built up a new system from scratch, so the system isn’t that old yet.
A red light is not shown, neither before nor after the crash (as mentioned the heat-increase starts normally after the crashes, not before).
I hope you find a solution or at least a theory. Thank you for your support so far.
If I just leave my Vero4k+ at the home screen on a node where only a static picture is displayed the temperature is about 62°C.
When I watch a movie the temperature goes up to around 75°C.
However whenever I do something that can not be decoded by hardware, like browsing around in different menus or if I enable debug logging or if an addon does something cpu intensive the temperature will go up to 85-90°C.
My point is that there is probably something in your system that uses a lot of cpu and that’s why your temperature is so high, I’d start with disabling the screensaver.
Please test with the screensaver disabled.
Okay, I will disable the screensaver and take it down from the wall-mount. Let’s see if that helps.
Surely doesn’t harm to give it a try, but I actually have my Vero directly mounted on the back of my TV and it idle at 70c so I doubt that would be the issue
If the steps above won’t help, please, try to temporary switch to OSMC skin instead of this “horizon”.
What active addons you see at settings->system->addons-> active addons ?
