Dietpi won't boot after a reboot

[pizero1]

Hi,
I’m using the latest DietPi_RPi-ARMv6-Bullseye on a pi zero W. (I’m using bullseye cause I’m using the old camera module)
When I reboot (via command line or from the diet-config after changing a setting) the pi won’t boot again, it seems to start ok with the led flashing irregularly but short after it starts flashing on and off constantly (about one seconds on one second off). I think it started happening around v9.3 (been using bullseye on this pi for years w/o an issue).
If I connect the pi to hdmi monitor, it only shows the splash screen and nothing more.
It happened few times (Had to re-install dietpi), so for now I’ve renamed the /usr/sbin/reboot cmd to prevent this (hopefully) from happening.

If I use poweroff and then re-connect the power, the pi boots fine.

any ideas?
Thanks

Creating a bug report/issue

I have searched the existing open and closed issues

Required Information

• DietPi version | G_DIETPI_VERSION_CORE=9
  G_DIETPI_VERSION_SUB=4
  G_DIETPI_VERSION_RC=2
  G_GITBRANCH=‘master’
  G_GITOWNER=‘MichaIng’
  G_LIVE_PATCH_STATUS[0]=‘not applicable’

• Distro version | bullseye 1

• Kernel version | Linux pizeroa 6.1.21+ #1642 Mon Apr 3 17:19:14 BST 2023 armv6l GNU/Linux

• Architecture | armhf

• SBC model | RPi Zero W (armv6l)

• Power supply used | 5V 2.5A

• SD card used | SanDisk ultra and tried also a Transcend micro SD card

Additional Information (if applicable)

• Software title | OpenSSH Client, Vim, RPi Cam Web Interface, Lighttpd, PHP, DietPi-RAMlog, Dropbear, NFS Client
• Was the software title installed freshly or updated/migrated? all fresh installed
• Can this issue be replicated on a fresh installation of DietPi? yes

Steps to reproduce

1. install dietpi (either headless or with monitor)
2. use reboot command or change a setting (like camera led and reboot when asked by diet-config )

Expected behaviour

• reboot and start up ok

Actual behaviour

• reboot and nothing happens (not connected to wifi, nothing but splash screen)

Extra details

• Didn’t happen on earlier versions, but not sure when it started as I don’t reboot this pi much.

[Joulinar]

you could try to enable persistent system logs. Maybe this will give some more information why a soft reboot is not working.

dietpi-software uninstall 103 # uninstalls DIetPi-RAMlog
mkdir /var/log/journal # triggers systemd-journald logs to disk
reboot # required to finalise the RAMlog uninstall

Then you can check system logs via:

journalctl

which will then show as well logs from previous boot sessions. To limit the size, you can additionally e.g. apply the following:

mkdir -p /etc/systemd/journald.conf.d
cat << '_EOF_' > /etc/systemd/journald.conf.d/99-custom.conf
[Journal]
SystemMaxFiles=2
MaxFileSec=7day
_EOF_

This will limit logs to 14 days split across two journal files, so that with rotation you will always have between 7 and 14 days of logs available.

[pizero1]

Hi, thanks for replying.
I wasn’t able to try with the pi zero W but I’ve tried to re-create it with a spare pi zero 2 W, and I couldn’t re-create the issue.
I’ve created a fresh headless install with the same software only changed the ramlog to rsyslog as suggested.
The pi zero 2 W settings were identical only it’s uname --all is : Linux test2 6.1.21-v7+ #1642 SMP Mon Apr 3 17:20:52 BST 2023 armv7l GNU/Linux

reboot works fine.

However, everything seems to work much slower cause of the log writes I guess, which might cause the difference (?)

Could it be down to pi zero W vs pi zero 2 W?

Thanks

[Joulinar]

Usually the logging should not slow down the system that mutch. Theoretically you could switch back to ram log.