If anyone is having problems restarting SM OS 1.7.3, the short answer is to do an orderly shutdown using the Logout button on the SM main screen instead of just "pulling the plug."

History

SM got hung-up trying to do a s/w update, thought it was finished when it probably wasn't -- anyway, became a brick. No big deal. I downloaded the latest OS, burned the chip, did the usual setup like specifying the IP address, This was all done "on the bench." Loaded some packages that needed updating. Turned off the power, put the unit in the observatory, turned power on, etc. Went back to the control room -- nothing! Couldn't do a simple ping.

Brought the unit to the bench, connected, got a boot error. I thought maybe some part of the updated s/w packages caused the problem. Burned the chip again, did not add any packages, redid all the setup stuff, etc. Turned off, re-install in observatory, probably turned it on and off a few times as I'm connecting the wires, etc. Go back to the control room -- again, can't connect! Back on the bench. Boot error with last line "End of kernel panic." Never a good sign.

Burn the chip again, do all the setup stuff. Asking myself: what could possibly be the problem? With the previous OS, whatever that was, I never had a problem restarting SM although it was seldom that I cut the power. After completing the setup, this time I did a shutdown from the Logout icon. Did this 6 times. On 4 out of the 6 shutdowns, the SM seemed to close in an instant. On 2 occasions, however, the big SM icon came on the screen with the scrolling dots underneath and it took about 20 seconds to finally halt. In every case, the SM rebooted successfully when power was reapplied. Maybe sometimes doing an abrupt power-off left the SM in a bad state.

I went through the SM manual and I did not find any admonition that says something like "Always do an orderly shutdown -- do NOT just power-off." Regardless, for now, I'm always doing a s/w shutdown before pulling power from the SM.

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