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I am about to reprogram my Raspberry Pi for its new purpose which is being the glue between all of my devices for my university work and other data.

Basically, my Raspberry Pi will share drives to Macs and PCs over the network and via FTP. It will also manage backups between my devices (backing itself up too) and help to make sure my data is never lost, no matter what happens.

I want to leave it running in my university shared house while I return home to visit family, so that I can still access my fixed drives over the Internet via my MacBook.

My question however is: What happens if the power goes out or my Raspberry Pi crashes? Is there something I can do to be notified or have the Raspberry Pi reboot itself? I'd hate to be back visiting family and needing to access my files remotely when my Raspberry Pi decides to die.

Any ideas on this one? I'd ideally like email notifications (or SMS if that's easier) and/or the Raspberry Pi rebooting itself so that it comes back online.

Peter Mortensen
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Jamesking56
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3 Answers3

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If the power goes off (blackout) the Raspberry Pi should boot up again when the power is there again (it's like pulling and plugging the power adapter).

If you didn't do it already, enable remote SSH access for the time you are away, this way you can connect and configure the device. If you have a dynamic IP address, then you'll need a dynamic DNS to be able to reach the device.

If you have two Raspberry Pi's you could run both and wire some pins so that one Pi can (re)boot the other if one of them fails. This works actually with just a wire on a single Raspberry Pi, but if you need to touch pins while away from home, you need a working second device to control the voltages, of course. ;) Here's a Youtube video showing the correct pins and places that need to be connected: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkY2fWBhAAo

And when you are leaving to your family: Make a copy of the essential files to a USB drive that you take with you. This way you can at least work locally if the Pi connection fails completly.

Foo Bar
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I am using 2 different service to get notifications from my Pi.

1) pushingbox.com - A notification service that works with URL Get mechanism. You can send any notification from your Pi with email or growl messages.

2) pushbullet.com - A notification service that supported by Android and iOS. You can send any notification from your Pi to your mobile phone.

You can write a script that works within /etc/rc.local startup script and get notifications at boot.

gurcanozturk
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Here's a good one (if you have an Android phone). It 'monitors' your server and will report back to you if it cannot connect (that is, power has gone out, or the Internet connection has dropped).

http://monyt.emoticode.net/

But yeah, as @lenik said, use the built-in watchdog to reboot your Raspberry Pi if something terrible happens.

Peter Mortensen
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mrwhale
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