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Troubleshooting information for Variscite VAR-SOM-MX6

Terminal Closes On Update

When you push updates, the terminal session is automatically closed. To restart the terminal session, simply close the terminal session and restart it once the update is complete.

Can't Login to the Dashboard

In some cases social logins can be disrupted or completely borked by Adblocker or browser extensions such as BrowserShark. Make sure to disable these extensions or whitelist the *.balena-cloud.com domains.

I get $'\r': command not found when my device tries to run scripts

Line endings differ between Windows and the Unix-y world (they used to be different again for Mac but not for many years), which can result in issues. E.g. a user seeing something like: /usr/src/app/run.sh: line 2: $'\r': command not found

To resolve this, you will need to configure git to automatically convert line endings. In order to configure this for Windows have a look here: https://help.github.com/articles/dealing-with-line-endings/#platform-windows.

Device keeps dropping off wifi

If your device keeps dropping offline, it may be worth switching to a 5GHz band wifi dongle, as we have seen cases where 2.4GHz gets badly affected by surrounding noise.

Unsupported Syscall: 384 from qemu on builder

The qemu: Unsupported syscall: 384 is a warning that the getrandom(2) system call is not implemented by our emulation layer, qemu. It can be safely ignored. Since it's a fairly new system call (introduced in kernel 3.17), apt and almost all programs automatically fall back to reading from /dev/urandom when this syscall fails.

Help! My device won't show up.

If your device still hasn't shown up on your dashboard after 10 minutes, something is definitely wrong. First check that you entered the WiFi credentials correctly (if you need help fixing your credentials, see WiFi Help) and ensure that your network meets these basic requirements. If the device has a LED indicator, it may also be worth checking it for any known error codes or signals.

If you have an HDMI screen attached, you should see balena logo on the screen when the device boots. If instead you see rainbow colors or a blank screen, it could mean that the SD card was not burned correctly or is corrupted.

Detailed provisioning instructions

Currently balenaOS on the Variscite VAR-SOM-MX6 is only capable of booting from SD card, but in the future eMMC booting will be supported. To provision the device, do the following:

  1. Verify Switch SW5 is OFF (downwards).
  2. Set Boot select switch (SW6) right to boot from microSD Card.
  3. Push microSD card into the microSD card slot (J102) of the VAR-SOLOCustomBoard.
  4. Ensure the device has a connection to the internet.
  5. Switch ON (upwards) the SW5 switch

While you wait, balenaOS is partitioning your SD card, installing a custom Linux environment, and establishing a secure connection with our servers.

If you have a class 10 SD card and a fast internet connection your device should appear on the dashboard in a minute or so.

If you still can't get your device online, come on over and talk to us on our support channel.

This is the wrong balena device.

If you see this error, there are several potential causes, including:

  • The config.json file is missing or corrupted
  • The UUID in the config.json file does not match the device's UUID
    • This could be caused by config.json corruption or storage corruption
  • You are attempting to SSH into a device using the wrong IP address

Please contact balena support if you encounter this issue so that we can investigate the root cause.