Raspberry Pi Zero W freezing, unresponsive or Unhandled Fault or Segmentation Fault errors.

GeneraleRusso

Pi Model or other hardware: Zero W
Power Supply used: OEM Raspberry Pi PSU
RetroPie Version Used: 4.4 for 0/1 unmodified from the retropie homepage
USB Devices connected: just a standard logitech Keyboard
Controller used: none connected
Error messages received: Unhandled Fault or Segmentation Fault
Log found in /dev/shm/runcommand.log (if relevant): unable to recover it
How to replicate the problem: haven't been able as the system lock ups or gives an error before in a matter of minutes

long read ahead.

Hello guys, I've been thinkering about for a couple of years now with a Raspberry Pi 3B now, and I rarely had any kind of problem, the system and playing around with the board have been great so far.

Just this week I got my hands on a Rpi Zero W, the Melopero Starter Kit, as I wanted to build a portable gaming rig with Retropie or Recalbox. I did download their images, put them on a microSD card with BalenaEtcher, but after booting and going into any kind of setting, I get random freezing on the built in GUIs, or the keyboard stop suddenly working, but mostly i get "Unhandled Fault" or "Segmentation Fault" errors, which makes the system completely unresponsive, until I have to literally pull the plug and remove Power.

I have been using the OEM Raspberry Pi PSU, 5.1V, 2.5A (which works perfectly with the Rpi 3B). On the GPIO i did measure tho 5.25V

I tested two different micro SD cards, Samsung branded, one 16GB class 6 and one 64GB "Evo Plus" class 10 U3.

I tested them both with "badsector" on my main rig (with Linux Mint) but the program shows no errors on the cards themselves.

I tried using a different battery chargers/PSUs but to no avail.

I googled around about those last two Unhandled Faults or Segmentation Faults errors and even on non-Retropie/Recalbox images seems to be kind of a rare occurrence, and very little seems to be known to solve the issue. Most of the times people encounter it at specific commands given to the system via command line, but in my case it happens at random, mostly within the first 5-10 minutes of booting. Many of those issues seems to be common on the Zero board tho.

In the rare cases the system freezes on a graphical interface (like the main menù of Recalbox) i can still do a reboot via CTRL+ALT+DEL, but after rebooting, no dice, still random freezing or those two errors.

I haven't managed to take any kind of error log or system check on it as the problems happen so fast i can barely reach command line. Even if i manage to connect via wifi and try to access blindly via SSH the system will lock up in 1-2 minutes.

So, should I scavenge for another microSD card? May the RPi Zero board be a faulty one?

Any help/brainstorming could help, thank you!

mitu

Looks like a faulty PI. Do you have a screenshot with one of the errors ? Or could transcribe the error you get ?

GeneraleRusso

@mitu I haven't been able to take any kind of screenshot because these faults happen so fast. I guess i can transcribe the errors if i manage to catch them.

Another thing I noticed is that i mostly get total freezing, rarely exiting ES to go terminal console, and in such cases only ctrl+alt+del works to do a reboot.

GeneraleRusso

UPDATE: I have tried to put a powerful fan near the Zero board as i noticed that during boot and even at idling (at least i think is idling as the ACT led doesn't blink at all) the board seems to be very very hot. A cheap IR thermometer seems to show around 50°C.

It doesn't seem to work as the freezing happens anyway, but seems to be limited to when i try to go a settings menu, like raspiconfig, retroarch, etc in Retropie, or when adding wifi and exiting its setup when I'm using recalbox.

I also tried to use the original SD card i got when i bought the first RPi 3B which had NOOBS in it as i know it is a working card.

GeneraleRusso

UPDATE #2: I tried to do prepare the sd card on a win10 machine, just in case, but nothing really has changed. Mostly random freezing, but also any kind of command i try to input, via GUI or command line, is extremely laggy. Is it normal for the rpi zero with retropie to have such lag even when just moving around the main menu?

I was connected with an HDMI cable so the system defaults at 1080p, but i also tried a smaller screen but the issues are still happening.

edumj

Hi, this also happens to me. No problems with Pi 3B+, but I just got a new Pi Zero W, and freezes all the time with RetroPie.

I've tried this versions:

Retropie 4.5.1 -> when it freezes I stil can do F5 in Web Manager and see the temperature, or sometines reboot with Putty if I already had one session opened. And one of those times, Putty threw this when it froze:

pi@retropie:~ $
Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 23 16:22:05 ...
 kernel:[ 1835.163849] Internal error: Oops: 837 [#1] ARM

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 23 16:22:05 ...
 kernel:[ 1835.167201] Process emulationstatio (pid: 681, stack limit = 0xcebb6188)

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 23 16:22:05 ...
 kernel:[ 1835.167355] Stack: (0xcebb7fa8 to 0xcebb8000)

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 23 16:22:05 ...
 kernel:[ 1835.167463] 7fa0:                   be82d520 00000001 be82d520 00000001 00000000 00000003

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 23 16:22:05 ...
 kernel:[ 1835.167653] 7fc0: be82d520 00000001 00000004 000000a8 00000000 00000000 00000005 00000000

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 23 16:22:05 ...
 kernel:[ 1835.167844] 7fe0: 00000000 be82d518 00000000 b66ea124 80000010 be82d520 00000000 00000000

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 23 16:22:05 ...
 kernel:[ 1835.168038] Code: f10c0080 e5992008 e35204bf 1b000de1 (e5991000)

RetroPie 4.5 -> Also freezes randomly.

RetroPie 4.4 -> Also freezes, but exits EmulationStation and shows "Segmentation Fault". I have and screenshot if you need it.
And Putty threw this:


pi@retropie:~ $
Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 24 00:24:08 ...
 kernel:[  812.770533] Internal error: Oops: 805 [#1] ARM

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 24 00:24:08 ...
 kernel:[  812.773455] Process emulationstatio (pid: 444, stack limit = 0xc0e68188)

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 24 00:24:08 ...
 kernel:[  812.773619] Stack: (0xc0e69e48 to 0xc0e6a000)

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 24 00:24:08 ...
 kernel:[  812.773741] 9e40:                   00000010 00000000 00000020 00000030 00000030 00000020

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 24 00:24:08 ...
 kernel:[  812.773942] 9e60: 00000200 c0e69e8c c0e69edc c0e69e78 bf078ba0 c015a1e4 cd592b60 c0e69ea0

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 24 00:24:08 ...
 kernel:[  812.774148] 9e80: c1eaec00 0000b00a 00000001 be9481d8 c0e69ea8 00000000 00000000 00000ff0

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 24 00:24:08 ...
 kernel:[  812.774353] 9ea0: 020a4371 00000ff0 c13b8de0 cd5dc660 c0e69eec c0e69ec0 c004c3a0 c0623aec

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 24 00:24:08 ...
 kernel:[  812.774556] 9ec0: c004c99c c0040a14 00000000 c13b8de0 00000001 cea06f00 c0e69f1c c0e69ee8

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 24 00:24:08 ...
 kernel:[  812.774755] 9ee0: c0046b2c be9481b4 cf2edd88 c9627320 00000004 00000004 c0e68000 00000000

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 24 00:24:08 ...
 kernel:[  812.774956] 9f00: c0e69f7c c0e69f10 c016c824 c05025c4 c0e69f74 c0e69f20 c063068c c0046adc

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 24 00:24:08 ...
 kernel:[  812.775156] 9f20: c0e69f44 c006fae0 c0e69f6c c0e69f38 3cbc4f68 c01773f8 cb6ef900 b5feb564

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 24 00:24:08 ...
 kernel:[  812.775358] 9f40: be9481b4 be9481d8 400cc404 00000004 c0e69f6c c9627321 be9481b4 c9627320

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 24 00:24:08 ...
 kernel:[  812.775562] 9f60: 400cc404 00000004 c0e68000 00000000 c0e69fa4 c0e69f80 c016cf20 c016c794

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 24 00:24:08 ...
 kernel:[  812.775762] 9f80: 0000b00a b5feb564 be9481b4 be9481d8 00000036 c000ffa4 00000000 c0e69fa8

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 24 00:24:08 ...
 kernel:[  812.775963] 9fa0: c000fe00 c016cee8 b5feb564 be9481b4 00000004 400cc404 be9481b4 0000b00a

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 24 00:24:08 ...
 kernel:[  812.776164] 9fc0: b5feb564 be9481b4 be9481d8 00000036 00000000 be948374 003be5cc 02164608

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 24 00:24:08 ...
 kernel:[  812.776365] 9fe0: b5feb240 be9481a4 b5fd8c08 b66ef80c 80000010 00000004 00000000 00000000

Message from syslogd@retropie at Aug 24 00:24:08 ...
 kernel:[  812.777184] Code: e51f1528 e24b207c ebffea8d e1a09000 (eafffc25)

RetroPie 4.3 -> Also freezes

NOOBS_v2_8_2 -> Raspbian Ok, update everything..., until I install RetroPie manually, then it freezes right away!

I have to try Recalbox...