Hi everyone,
I’m experiencing frequent system corruption issues on my uConsole and could use some advice or insights. Thanks in advance.
My Setup:
Hardware:
- Raspberry Pi CM5 Lite CM5116000 (16GB RAM)
- SanDisk Extreme PRO microSDXC UHS-I 512GB
- Samsung INR18650-35E Li-Ion 3.6V 3450mAh
- Anker Prime Power Bank 12000mAh 130W (Output: 5V⎓3A / 9V⎓3A / 10V⎓2.25A / 10V⎓6.5A / 20V⎓3.25A)
- UGREEN 240W USB-C to USB-C PD 3.1 Cable
- UGREEN 100W USB-C to USB-C PD 3.0 Cable
Software:
- OS: ClockworkPi-Bookworm-lite-6.12.34 by Rex
- DE: XFCE
My Problem:
I’ve encountered more than 3 times of boot failures already.
The first few seem likely caused by low battery during system write operations (e.g., installing packages or writing some configuration changes), which damaged the filesystem beyond recovery.
The last one, however, was confusing. I was running XFCE, just casually using Chromium, and had installed some fonts. The system was idle and everything appeared stable. This time, I made sure it was connected to a solid Anker power bank, and the battery level was always at 100%, charging throughout. I shut down the system using sudo shutdown -h now from a SSH session, and afterwards, the device never booted again. The power LED turns green, but the screen remains blank. I had to open the back lid and disconnect the battery.
My other tweaks:
To improve resilience, I even added commit=30 to the root ext4 mount:
# Backup original fstab
sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak
# Add `commit=30` to the root (/) ext4 mount options if not already present
sudo sed -i '/^[^#].*\s\/\s\+ext4/ {
/commit=30/! s/\<defaults\>\([^,]*\)\(,[^ ]*\)*/defaults\1\2,commit=30/
}' /etc/fstab
# Reboot to apply changes
sudo reboot
# Verify that the parameter has taken effect
mount | grep " on / "
Even with this precaution, and a stable power source, and no heavy I/O going on, the issue happened again.
I honestly don’t understand what went wrong.
Question:
Is the CM5 Lite + microSD setup inherently this fragile? The microSD from SanDisk Extreme PRO is already a high-end product from the market, and I never had any problem using it with my Steam Deck or ASUS ROG Ally X, how come it’s so problematic here?
Would switching to a CM5 with eMMC significantly reduce the risk of corruption, because of better hardware-level write caching and power-loss tolerance?
Seriously, I’m exhausted from reflashing and reconfiguring everything over and over again. I really just want to enjoy using my uConsole, not constantly recovering it.
I’d appreciate any help, suggestions, or shared experiences! 
