[Pxtl]

The Pi 5 looks neat and I hear it's finally got a power button built-in, which was always the sorest point of the rpi series for me - the fact that it had no good story for safely idling was always absurd. The default configuration was "if you lose power there's a good chance the filesystem will be corrupt".

Still, does the new one do better beyond having an off-button? Like does it wake via USB properly? Does it have some way to safely recover the filesystem after power-loss?

Because that has always been the gigantic asterisk on the otherwise-cool RPI. "It's a ticking time-bomb until its memory gets corrupted, and if it crashes you have to roll the dice by power-cycling it" was never a good story. That and its unbearable prima-donna pickyness about voltage.

[kennethrc]

> The default configuration was "if you lose power there's a good chance the filesystem will be corrupt".

"Good chance"? We used to do kernel module development directly on Pi3/4s at this one client of mine, and I would OOPS the kernel from time-to-time (couple of times a day on average in the beginning stages) and never had a loss that ext4 couldn't recover from (and as the Pis lacked a "reset" button, resets were done via power-cycling).

We used standard PNY/Samsung Micro-SDs, too (i.e., not industrial-grade varieties), but we did pick the faster-IO variants when possible.

[suprjami]

Having used Raspberry Pi since their very first release, your experience is the exception.

Corrupt filesystems are definitely a lot rarer these days but they still do happen.

I've also had decent sdcards (genuine SanDisk from brick-and-mortar chain store) just completely die on power cycle or reflash.

[Scramblejams]

FWIW once I started deploying my Pis with automotive-grade SD cards bought from Arrow and Canakit 5.1v PSUs, all the stability & integrity issues completely disappeared. Costs a bit more, bringing the price of a setup closer to a used SFF HP or whatever, but it’s super stable.

Whether we should feel bound to go to such lengths is another topic…

[Pxtl]

Yeah, that's what kills me with rpis. Yes they're cheap... until you add a chassis, a safe SD card, a 1st party power supply that won't give you the dreaded voltage warning icon, etc.

I don't regret owning some since they basically taught me to do Linux adminning, but the shopping experience is a bit like buying an airline ticket.

[Scramblejams]

Yep, I often wonder how the story would've gone if they'd put a little cap and some circuitry on to make sure the SD card would come down gracefully, and configured the power circuitry so the Pi is comfortable running on a little less than 5v.

[ilyt]

Power button was just a pair of wires to a switch and some settings in old rpi IIRC

> Does it have some way to safely recover the filesystem after power-loss?

that is not a hardware feature

[Pxtl]

When they have a recommended OS with their brand name on it (Raspbian/Raspberry Pi OS), it's a platform feature. Either I'd expect the hardware to provide some minimal battery or something for safe shutdown, or I'd expect the software to handle sudden power-loss gracefully. They provide both the hardware and the software, there's no way for blame to leave their ecosystem.

Raspberry Pi can't redirect blame for filesystem problems if the user is using an OS that's called "Raspberry Pi Operating System".

[suprjami]

I applaud your user-first attitude to responsible branding, but we all know open source software and economics of mass production cheap boards don't work that way.