Raspberry Pi 3

Raspberry down and out for the count

My Raspberry Pi based hosting came to an abrupt end earlier this week as the RPi3 suddenly became unresponsive. Powering off and on the device resulted in an infinitive loop of I/O error messages. I’ve tried to recover the filesystem, but unfortunately my attempts proved to be unsuccessful.

Downtime due to Apache AH00060

To start the weekend off with a bang my Apache webserver failed to revive after the log rotation service had issued a restart. I’m hosting this website on a Raspberry Pi 3 so my first concern is always memory card corruption and data loss. Thankfully those fears turned out to be unfounded, but what actually went down?
From the httpd error_log:

This Raspberry Pi 3 server is now running kernel 4.4.38

Just because Greg KH said that all users of the 4.4 kernel series must upgrade ;-) I’m happy to report that everything seems to be working as expected and have yet to notice any regressions.

Slackware Arm RPi3 boot

Linux kernel patches, it’s been a race.

In other “exciting” news: I’ve now been running this website on the RPi3 for 8 months without having a single “what just happened?” moment. Actually, the only reason why I’m still having a WordPress blog can be attributed to my amazement with the RPi3 actually being able to run this crap.

A quick update regarding my Slackware ARM on the Raspberry Pi 3 project

After four months of hosting this WordPress blog on a RPi3 I have yet to experience a single issue. No filesystem errors, no kernel oops’s and no hard freezes. Definitely an enjoyable change of pace from the preceding twelve months of hosting this site on a Raspberry Pi 2.

I’ve not been doing any overclocking whatsoever on this device and I believe that to be the decisive factor when it comes to improved stability. My old RPi2 is pretty much useless at this point and I’m guessing it simply got burned out before its time. As for storage, I’m still using a SanDisk MicroSDHC Ultra UHS-I 32GB card.

This website is now hosted on a Raspberry Pi 3

This WordPress blog is now hosted on a Raspberry Pi 3 after a year of running on a Raspberry Pi 2. Unlike with the RPi2, I’ve not done any overclocking on this device. I’m hoping that decision will decrease the number of file system related issues and obscure kernel oopses I’ve experienced lately, but I guess time will tell.

Slackware ARM on RPi3

Slackware 14.2 on a RPi3

The RPi3 is still running Slackware ARM 14.2 and the Linux kernel is at version 4.4.7 at time of writing.

Raspberry Pi 2 VS Raspberry Pi 3 on Slackware ARM

Let’s get ready to rumble: a battle of two Slackware ARM powered webservers.

Hosting your WordPress installation on a RPi2 can be a challenge on multiple levels. Apart from stability issues, my biggest concern is always subpar PHP performance and additional overhead with TLS connections. To determine the potential gain of upgrading my hosting platform to a RPi3, I’ve done a few tests with a MicroSD card I recently retired due to data corruption.