Circuitpython: Leaving CIRCUITPY plugged into Mac when it sleeps crashes the Mac

[tannewt]

This was fixed on SAMD (I thought) in shared code. It relies on a flush that may make it fail on nRF.

https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/commit/561fdfb279c45f7a9ff69a2b2e71ac272cb6aaef#diff-880d63a1c107dd299a7ed80251505a9eR235

[tannewt]

Note, it's the Mac that crashes not the nRF52840.

[dhalbert]

The power of microcontrollers.

[iayanpahwa]

Interesting, how exactly it's happening? I'm curious and willing to reproduce .

[tannewt]

@iayanpahwa Plug in a nRF52840 running CircuitPython so that it shows up as CIRCUITPY and then sleep the computer, wait 5-10 minutes, open the computer and it should work. Sleep it again and wait another 5-10 minutes and try to wake the computer. It should start up and say that it crashed waiting for a SCSI time out.

[iayanpahwa]

@tannewt thanks for sharing, I'm thinking what's the exact reason for this crash?

[tannewt]

The mac is trying to repeatedly start the external mass storage device back up and then timing out. It shouldn't crash like it does.

[tannewt]

This is also happening with atmel-samd boards. I suspect something with TinyUSB broke this.

[iayanpahwa]

@tannewt if that comes out to be the case, do you think using an internal fork of TinyUSB makes more sense?

[tannewt]

@iayanpahwa I'll just fix TinyUSB. :-) I plan on looking at it later while I watch Ask An Engineer.

[tannewt]

I tried to reproduce this and only managed to do it once. Generally it looks ok. @hathach also tried to reproduce and was unable to.

I'll leave this open in case someone else sees it but move it to the Long Term milestone.

[tannewt]

This is still happening to me with nrf52840 boards and it's driving me bonkers. I'll look more into this. It may have something to do with the SD being on and periodically advertising. The zip is my full CIRCUITPY contents on a Feather nRF52840 with a battery plugged in along with usb attached.

20200222-simple-temp.zip

[tannewt]

Looks like an old-ish build: Adafruit CircuitPython 5.0.0-beta.4-111-g89829aea8 on 2020-01-30; Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Express with nRF52840

[tannewt]

Ok, I've replicated this twice with: Adafruit CircuitPython 5.0.0-beta.5-144-gbd9572c8a on 2020-02-22; Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Express with nRF52840

@hathach The missing piece was to eject the drive before sleeping the computer but leave the CIRCUITPY device connected. Wait a few minutes until the Mac stops talking to the device and then wake the Mac up. It'll keep requesting something that will eventually timeout and restart the computer. I have Beagle traces from each time I can share to those interested.