Pi 4b 2GB unreachable after Jellyfin identify (or many other things)

Troubleshooting
1

Creating a bug report/issue

Required Information

  • DietPi version | G_DIETPI_VERSION_CORE=8
    G_DIETPI_VERSION_SUB=11
    G_DIETPI_VERSION_RC=2
    G_GITBRANCH=‘master’
    G_GITOWNER=‘MichaIng’
    G_LIVE_PATCH_STATUS[0]=‘not applicable’
  • Distro version | bullseye 0
  • Kernel version | Linux DietPi 5.15.76-v8+ #1597 SMP PREEMPT Fri Nov 4 12:16:41 GMT 2022 aarch64 GNU/Linux
  • SBC model | RPi 4 Model b (aarch64)
  • Power supply used | 5.1V Official PSU (KSA-15E-051300HU)
  • SD card used | Kingston 64GB

Additional Information (if applicable)

  • Was the software title installed freshly or updated/migrated? fresh
  • Can this issue be replicated on a fresh installation of DietPi? This is effectively a fresh install (just installed a few days ago), but I have not tried to reinstall from scratch.

Steps to reproduce

  1. Click the ellipse menu and “Identify” on any piece of media
  2. Search and select the desired metadata
  3. Click “OK”

Expected behaviour

  • The old metadata would be replaced
  • The device would continue to be reachable via SSH and app web interfaces

Actual behaviour

  • Device is no longer reachable via SSH or any app’s web interface

Extra details

  • Identify may work a time or two, but then it fails in the way described. Same for other operation.
  • The device will sometimes come back online after several hours in this state. Other times, it has to be restarted.
  • This happens when performing many different operations. “Identify” is just the one I attempt most often and have trouble with. It also happens if I get my password wrong a few times trying to SSH to the Pi.
  • I sometimes cycle power on the Pi rather than waiting for it to be reachable again. When I do this, I notice that the connected USB hard drive is spun up.
  • Hard drive is a 12TB Western Digital USB drive
2

you could open a SSH session first and run htop to see resource consumption. In parallel open Jellyfin and force the freeze. Does htop showing something special? How does resource consumption is going? Maybe some heavy IO is going on where other operation going to stuck.

3

Looks like memory is already at 1.6GB of 1.8GB before I do anything. When it freezes, that increases to 1.7, and the swap gets utilized at 135/149MB from 0 before. Disk IO jumps up to 100+%.

4

Ok your system is going to swap causing slowness. Another point, your swap area might be to small. Use drive manager to increase it to 2GB.

Way better would be to reduce memory consumption or to invest into a SBC offering more physical memory. But this might be quite challenging these days

5

Thank you for your help. I’ll increase the swap for now and look for a new SBC.

6

As last for Raspberry Pi, availability should become better in Q2 2023. I know it’s not that close but might be better to wait instead of paying a hell of money.

7

Yeah, prices are pretty wild right now. I might look into one of the alternative SBCs. Is there one that you would recommend for DietPi? Any one in particular that works really well with DietPi?

8

All SBC we are supporting would fit. Try to get one with at least 4GB memory and if possible, one having an onboard eMMC or at least the possibility to attach an eMMC module.

9

Good to know. Thank you!

Is the idea to configure that eMMC module to act as the swap?

10

nope, it should host the operating system. A system swapping is something you should avoid.

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