Both Steam Links took a nose dive today

[Arno]

I have two Steam Links and both are refusing to boot from the second room where it's a wifi connection; they go into an infinite boot loop that only gets as far as the "blue puddle" logo screen.

When I connect either one in the other location (with wired Ethernet), it starts up and does a full "nuke from orbit" factory reset (without asking me, it just boots straight into it). Once that's done if I go connect it back up in the other room (with wifi) it's immediately back to the boot loop.

These devices have both historically worked fine in both locations; neither is on the beta build (pretty sure they weren't before, but they definitely aren't now after the factory resets).

Anybody got any ideas? I tried doing the USB thumb drive thing a while back to set up SSH but it never worked...maybe I got the FAT filesystem attributes wrong or something. Does Valve provide a disk image file that I could just raw-write to a thumb drive (e.g., with dd or something equivalent) so I know all the specs are the way the Steam Link expects them?

[Arno]

Looks like it's not the WiFi part...I got an Ethernet cable and physically ran it into the other room, and now in that room -- and only in that room -- it's now still looping, but now it gets to an update screen where it downloads and installs an update, but then it reboots afterward the update and goes back into the "blue puddle logo screen" loop for a couple of iterations, then eventually shows what looks like the same update being downloaded/applied again...

Could the TV that the HDMI is connected to somehow make a difference (although it is working, 'cause I'm seeing this stuff on it)? I'd normally assume that would be irrelevant, but it's getting absurd that these devices are behaving differently in different physical rooms when they're both connected, via wired Ethernet, to the same net device and I've disconnected everything except Ethernet, HDMI, and power to the one that's not working (no use for a keyboard/mouse at the stage(s) that it's at, since no user input is being asked for).

I'm out of ideas, unless there's a way to get the Steam Link to produce some kind of error/logging/diagnostics...right now all I can do is watch it cycle and the only meaningful way I have to interact with it is pulling the power cable.

[_I_]

you can enable ssh, then log into it and see the log files on the link

using a usb stick, formatted fat32
create a blank file with the path and exact name
usb:\steamlink\config\system\enable_ssh.txt

plug it into the link, unplug hdmi+power for a few seconds, and plug them back in

on host pc on the same network
log into the link with ftp browser (filezilla or similar)
link ip address (192.168.x.y)
port = 22
username = root
password = steamlink123

its local log files should be
/tmp/streaming_client.log
/tmp/streaming_client.log.last

might have some clues

[Arno]

Originally posted by _I_:

you can enable ssh, then log into it and see the log files on the link

using a usb stick, formatted fat32
create a blank file with the path and exact name
usb:\steamlink\config\system\enable_ssh.txt

I've heard about that...I tried setting it up a long time ago to troubleshoot a different issue (where the Steam Link was crashing every time you tried to put it to sleep, IIRC) but I could never get it to work.

I'm guessing it was something like FAT16 vs FAT32, or maybe the thumb drive had a GPT partition table and the Steam Link was expecting MBR...I dunno. That's why it'd be nice to just have a disk image file to DD, so there's no confusion. I guess Valve probably creates their thumb drives on MS Windows and it doesn't ask questions like that. :)

It's a good idea though; if I can't make any other progress and the problem doesn't "solve itself" (e.g., another update comes out that resolves things) then I'll give it another go. If I get something that works I'll make an image of it and post it online somewhere.

[_I_]

most thumb drives under 32g are fat32 by default
you can do xfat or gpt, but some drives do not like it, and it wont work on the link hardware

try again and double check the file location, it can be a blank file or with anything in it
once you can ftp to the link, you can also put the file in its drive so ssh/ftp is always enabled on it

as for why its boot looping, no idea
it should boot with or without internet/lan/wifi connection

did you try factory reset, from its menu, or with power plug?