Troubleshooting in-flight? - iFly GPS for Android

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Troubleshooting in-flight?

10/10/2017 1:13 PM

Walter

Joined: 7/8/2009

Posts: 2778

Re: Troubleshooting in-flight?

SkyPuppy,

I have presumed that if logging is disabled, access the SD card is a pure read-only exercise. It's not easy for everyone to do a graceful shutoff of the Stratux (and impossible for some), so I'd really like to understand the cause & scope of this issue. Do you know the Stratux firmware is writing to the SD card that would make corruption possible?

Thanks,
Walter

Walter Boyd
President, Adventure Pilot

10/10/2017 1:18 PM

Joined: 1/1/0001

Posts: 0

Re: Troubleshooting in-flight? Modified By on 10/10/2017 7:40:54 PM

SkyPuppy wrote:

Walter, you guys have been lucky so far, because it WILL happen. I probably do way more stratux testing than you guys and have been involved with UNIX/Linux (and other variants) since 1977. Without proper shutdown, you are going to have corrupt filesystems. It may only be the very last file the system was writing to (which still allows boot), or in worst case the OS innards / filesystem become corrupt and then the SD card is useless.

I don't understand why so many are so adamant about being lackadiasical regarding file system integrity. Yes, ext4 can fix a lot of errors upon next boot with fsck, but it can't fix everything. That's when the SD card is useless, and of course, it will happen when you're on a long, cross-country, in territory you're unfamiliar with, and you have no backup SD card with you.

It's a simple thing to do, the graceful shutdown and takes maybe 5 seconds.

It's your plane, your life, your equipment. Just don't blame US when you screw up and the disc is unrecoverable and you have no backups, even in the office. Winblows is the same way about not flushing cache immediately, but even if all OS's flushed right away, when power is removed during filesystem header writes, it's gonna go blooey.

If you've never been mugged, does that mean you are safe to walk anywhere in any city without regard?

It will happen to you, and usually at the very worst possible time and location.

I think "it could happen to you" would be more correct. And again, loss of your Stratux is no big deal. You look out the window for traffic and weather is available via radio. Let's not "over-sell" the value of ADS-B in.

EDIT: On my iPad, I have all my aviation related icons on one page. I included a link to the Stratux shut-down routine. So, it's a simple matter of exiting out of iFly and clicking one button, Even so, I just unplug the Stratux. I have no idea if it would be that simple if using an iFly device.

10/10/2017 3:39 PM

Cobra

Joined: 4/20/2011

Posts: 2602

Re: Troubleshooting in-flight?

Walter wrote:

SkyPuppy,

I have presumed that if logging is disabled, access the SD card is a pure read-only exercise. It's not easy for everyone to do a graceful shutoff of the Stratux (and impossible for some), so I'd really like to understand the cause & scope of this issue. Do you know the Stratux firmware is writing to the SD card that would make corruption possible?

Thanks,
Walter

I'm interested in this, too--I did not know there was any risk until now.

I have to weigh the "cost" of performing a graceful shutdown every time, vs. the "cost" of having a scrambled SD card once in a blue moon. Since I have not yet had a scrambled SD card (in over a year of testing and flying with my Stratux), and I personally consdier the temporary loss of Stratux only a minor annoyance, I will probably choose to continue playing Russian roulette with my SD card rather than go through the every-single-time hassle of gracefully shutting down. Others may choose differently.

But if I can minimize or eliminate the risk by configuring the system to never or rarely write to the card, then I would certainly like to do that.

10/10/2017 4:53 PM

Michael Marra

Joined: 3/26/2014

Posts: 706

Re: Troubleshooting in-flight? Modified By Michael Marra on 10/10/2017 4:55:17 PM

My apologies for opening up a can of worms here!

Very good discussion and advice from all sides...

I think in the future I am going to start CARRYING an extra sd card in my flight bag, in addition to learning the correct shut-down procedure until a long-term "cure" is found.

An extra card will cost me around $15-25, right? On a long X-C, that is worth the price and it is so small it is really no big deal to carry an extra or two.

Once I learn the proper shut-down, it will just be another step in my checklist I can do after shutting the engine down. I will just leave the master switch on for another minute to do this. Those with battery power can do this anytime and will not be reliant on ship's power.

While on a flight, losing ADSB-in would be a hassle, but since I never had it before two months ago, I am confident I would be able to handle "degraded ops" just as I did last weekend or the last 5,000 flying hours. I do like it very much and am just now getting used to building it into my instrument cross-check - it is a very powerful tool when coupled with the amazing IFly App. Thank you again, designers of IFly and STRATUX for making my flights more enjoyable and much safer!

Great work fellas! Thanks for all the expert advice and I will stand-by for more findings on this topic. BTW, I asked if I could send the chip BACK and see what happened to it through a "post mortum" autopsy and what we can learn from it (if anything).

Warm Regards, Mike Marra, N714AJ

10/10/2017 4:58 PM

SkyPuppy

Joined: 3/21/2017

Posts: 282

Re: Troubleshooting in-flight?

repeat:

SkyPuppy wrote:

Before you remove power from the stratux, close iFlyGPS and open a window to stratux from your tablet and go to this web address: 192.168.10.1 (or alternate if you've changed yours.) Then, choose the "settings" page. On the bottom right, you'll see the option to "shutdown." Choose that, wait 3 or 4 seconds, then you can remove power to it without harm. Takes all of 5 or 10 seconds. Not difficult at all.

For advanced Linux users:

Alternatively, you can create two different partitions on the SD card and set the first as read only. Then, store all your logs and such on the writeable partition. If a power-off occurs without graceful shutdown, you only lose your logs and not the stratux functionality.

Note:

It appears that the default is to enable stratux logs (a setting on that same page as the shutdown command.) Unless you know you need those logs, turn that off before shutting down, as your SD card will fill up with data you don't need.

Note 2:

These webpages come directly from the stratux unit and cannot be modified (at present) from the iFlyGPS application. The settings on these web pages affect what is transmitted TO iFlyGPS and that communications is unidirectional only at this time.

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