Hello everyone,
I've been troubleshooting issues with my headless Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, which crashes or lags immensely via SSH. Lag meaning it sometimes takes multiple minutes to connect via SSH, established connections sometimes work fine, sometimes hang for multiple minutes. Crash meaning, the connection is dropped and Pi would just reboot (checked using `uptime`).
This usually occurs within 10 minutes after boot, but sometimes the Pi run for more than 30 minutes and I can't reproduce this on purposefully. For example, the last uptime was 12 minutes, I'm currently staring at a session that's been up and running without issue for 50 minutes. This is very irritating to troubleshoot and I started questioning my sanity a while ago.
What I've tried so far, but the outcome was the same
I have five Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W (two from 2021, three from 2024), different MicroSD cards in varying capacities and brands (all class 10, U1 or better), different power supplies (Original Raspberry Pi Micro USB 2.5A, Anker 4-port, Baseus 65W USB-C, UGREEN 100W power bank) and different cables.
I've set up a separate WiFi using a GLi.Net travel router (GL-AR750), which is connected via Ethernet to my other WiFi Router (Fritz!Box 6490 Cable). I've then flashed three MicroSD cards again, to connect to the new WiFi. All three Pis were up and running for more than 12 hours, which could be a very odd coincidence, but this makes me assume, there culprit is my main WiFi.
All other devices on the main WiFi work without issue.
I've tried reading though the journalctl logs, but can't pinpoint anything specific. I've asked genAIs to help out, but it couldn't come up with anything either. I've attached the output of `journalctl`, which should show an uptime of about 12 minutes and then such a crash/reboot - the lagging didn't occur that time. I've anonymized the MAC addresses and the WiFi name.
I'm at my wits end as to what is causing this and how it can result in complete system crashes or "just" delays in the connection. Thanks to anyone who could contribute something to find the issue here.
I've been troubleshooting issues with my headless Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, which crashes or lags immensely via SSH. Lag meaning it sometimes takes multiple minutes to connect via SSH, established connections sometimes work fine, sometimes hang for multiple minutes. Crash meaning, the connection is dropped and Pi would just reboot (checked using `uptime`).
This usually occurs within 10 minutes after boot, but sometimes the Pi run for more than 30 minutes and I can't reproduce this on purposefully. For example, the last uptime was 12 minutes, I'm currently staring at a session that's been up and running without issue for 50 minutes. This is very irritating to troubleshoot and I started questioning my sanity a while ago.
What I've tried so far, but the outcome was the same
I have five Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W (two from 2021, three from 2024), different MicroSD cards in varying capacities and brands (all class 10, U1 or better), different power supplies (Original Raspberry Pi Micro USB 2.5A, Anker 4-port, Baseus 65W USB-C, UGREEN 100W power bank) and different cables.
- I've tried a variety of combinations of the above hardware. No additional peripherals are attached, only the MicroSD card to boot from and the power supply. I've even switched up the physical location of the Pi in my apartment.
- I've tried Raspberry Pi OS (Bookworm) Lite 32bit and 64bit. (Set hostname, set username/password, configure wireless LAN (country DE), locale settings timezone EU/Berlin, keyboard layout us, enable SSH with password authentication, disable telemetry)
- `useDNS no` in the sshd_config
- Disable WiFi adapter power save (`iw wlan0 set power_save off`)
- Change hostnames, to make so there are no duplicates on the network
- Monitor CPU and RAM usage to make sure it's not a resource exhaustion (CPU basically idles and RAM usage < 70MB)
- Monitor the SOC temperature to make sure it's not overheating (vcgencmd measure_temps, always below 50°C)
- Check journalctl for mentions of "volt" to make sure it's not related to the power supply.
- I could also not pinpoint the crashes, to only when another specific device was active on the network
- Use an alternative MicroSD flashing Method (dd if=RPiOS.img of=/dev/mmc..); I couldn't find a documented method to preconfigure the WiFi, only that wpa_supplicant.conf isn't used anymore (https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentati ... -network-2).
- Connect peripherals, to monitor the situation directly on the Pi, without SSH connection.
- Flash a different OS, apart from Raspberry Pi OS.
I've set up a separate WiFi using a GLi.Net travel router (GL-AR750), which is connected via Ethernet to my other WiFi Router (Fritz!Box 6490 Cable). I've then flashed three MicroSD cards again, to connect to the new WiFi. All three Pis were up and running for more than 12 hours, which could be a very odd coincidence, but this makes me assume, there culprit is my main WiFi.
All other devices on the main WiFi work without issue.
I've tried reading though the journalctl logs, but can't pinpoint anything specific. I've asked genAIs to help out, but it couldn't come up with anything either. I've attached the output of `journalctl`, which should show an uptime of about 12 minutes and then such a crash/reboot - the lagging didn't occur that time. I've anonymized the MAC addresses and the WiFi name.
I'm at my wits end as to what is causing this and how it can result in complete system crashes or "just" delays in the connection. Thanks to anyone who could contribute something to find the issue here.
Statistics: Posted by sysgar — Sat May 24, 2025 11:15 am — Replies 0 — Views 34