Spraying a boot error up the bathroom wall

It is time for le Bork de Paris today as the curse of the cock-up fairy spreads beyond the shores of the UK to blight the Pis of France. The example comes from longtime bork-spotter Alastair Craft and was snapped in what we suspect is the gentleman's private room within a Parisian café. Raspberry Pi Bork Click to enlarge …

[karlkarl]

Generally for signage (actually many things involving a Pi), you want the entire OS to be read-only. No log files written, no cache, no disk maintenance. This way you can eliminate all wear on the SD and it can pretty much last forever and is 100% deterministic.

I do this for a few security systems and arcade-like public cabinets. I use OpenBSD mainly because I am more familiar with it. I blogged about it here if anyone is doing similar.

https://www.thamessoftware.co.uk/openbsd_readonly.html

[Aitor 1]

Read Only

Great idea. I have seen way noo many cards borked, and not only on Pis, but essentially any device of that type.

[James Hughes 1]

Yup, we recommend a RO FS for this sort of thing, and a ram disk for log files if you need them. We've also done lots of tests of SD cards, and Sandisk, as long as they are genuine, seem to be exceptionally robust when it comes to unexpected power downs i.e No failures after thousands of random shutdowns.

[gordonh]

If you use the Raspberry Pi OS, when you've finished setting up the SD card, open raspi-config and select Performance Options -> Overlay Filesystem

Enable that and the main partition will never be written to again (it'll be read only on next boot). All writes will be put into a ramdisk and discarded on reset / reboot.

[Chris Evans]

Translated

For non french speakers like me, google translate says:

"NE PAS JETER DE PAPIERS DANS L'URINOIR"

=

"DO NOT THROW PAPER IN THE URINAL"

[The_Man_In_The_Pub]

Re: Translated

"Please do not throw cigarette ends into the urinal".

"It makes them soggy and difficult to light".

[Warm Braw]

Re: Translated

I once spotted a handwritten sign on the emergency exit doors of a restaurant in Montpellier:

Sortie Cuisine: Prière de ne pas uriner.

I ate elsewhere.

[Flightmode]

Raspberry Pipi?

[Kangaroo]

Phuththththththththth

The sound of a Raspberry borking.

[WarwickHunt69]

In France when the toilets are out of action, they generally just use the door. As the old wine advert used to say, Le Francais adore le pee at the door.

[WolfFan]

You’re going to Hell for that one.

[WarwickHunt69]

That is a much worse review than I expected.

[Irony Deficient]

le Bork de Paris

Sûrement « le borking de Paris », comme « le shampooing » ?

[TRT]

Surely...

La Pi Framboise ?

[Swarthy]

I should have expexted these comments

Of course the commentariat would take the piss.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Usually it's a consequence of believing the claims from suppliers of suspiciously inexpensive SD cards"

BINGO!

That would be my first guess as well.

Otherwise, my Raspberry Pi's have been surprisingly stable.

Although, you'll want to wear a pair (or two) of rubber gloves replacing the SD card on that one.

Maybe boot it from a USB or SSD so you won't have to return in the future.