IP clash stiffs Pi

My Pi is hardwired to static IP 192.168.1.10. This has been done because after a power cut, the Pi boots massively quicker (~15 sec) than the Livebox (~150 sec).

When sorting out my older Pi to use outside (off battery), I booted it up and noticed my main machine crashed. The mouse pointer could move, but no input worked and MiniTime had frozen.
I rebooted the main machine and noticed the older machines crash in the same manner.

I realised that it was possibly a clash with the IP address, so I changed the older machine to .11 and everything began working.

After using ShareFS to copy across some files I wanted, I set the address back to .10 to confirm.
And, yes, with two machines having the same IP address, rebooting one causes the other to freeze.

It would probably be better to pop up an error about clashing addresses than stiffing! ;-)

For completeness: Pi2, recent ROM of about a month ago. Pi1, 5.23 from Spring 2016.

It would probably be better to pop up an error about clashing addresses than stiffing!

It surely would, and at least the various devices (two Macs, a Pi and various visiting iPads) in this house don’t freeze when there’s an address clash. But they don’t pop up any error: they just refuse to admit to the existence of the LAN. N.B. Even the Pi doesn’t crash…

N.B. Even the Pi doesn’t crash…

RISC OS?

Hmm, I wonder if it’s ShareFS that is choking?

RISC OS?

Yup. Never used anything else on the Pi.

More precisely, the Pi doesn’t crash simply because there’s an address clash. It’ll crash if it’s already been using a server elsewhere before the clash happened, but not until you try to access that server again.

Happens with various devices. I can list various examples of IP clash screwing the operation of one or both of the devices.
The most recent I know of¹ was three weeks ago and involved a Windows PC and a Comark temperature monitor² that the suppliers set up as a manually fixed IP after finding a spare one supplied by DHCP.³

Apple devices are high on the list for diving in with spiked boots though.

¹ I’ve been off taking extended post-op and not really followed the comings and goings down the road until doing an email / Teams catch-up this weekend.

One of my power line devices recently required a reset, as it had lost its connection to the internet; RISC OS froze, and I had to power off my Pi 4.

One of my power line devices recently required a reset, as it had lost its connection to the internet; RISC OS froze, and I had to power off my Pi 4.

Interesting. I think it must depend what’s running on your Pi, unless there’s a relevant difference between Pi3b & Pi4, or between RISCOS 5.23 and whatever you’re running. I’ve had a BASIC program running continuously for the last three days – it finished this morning. During that time my local LAN has been up and down like a yoyo (thank you, useless Virgin router), but whenever the LAN has been up I’ve been able to access the Pi’s hard drive, no bother (including, incidentally, files that BASIC program has been producing at intervals all this time). And now the BASIC program has finished, the desktop is back and functioning just fine.

Thank you, Clive. On reflection, I now recall that I only discovered that the powerline device had stopped working and needed a reset after restarting RISC OS numerous times; each time, it froze. After working out what the problem was, I’d forgotten about the RISC OS freeze. Only after this thread popped up that I wondered if what I’d experienced could be related or a coincidence.

(I was using a late June, early July development build)