I have never posted here before so please forgive me if I am in the wrong section.

I have a media server (built on Core OS Linux) that I have tried running on the 6th gen NUC with a Celeron processor, sometimes it just stops working. There is nothing in the logs, it just stops. I have tried different SSDs, different RAM chips and there is no reproducible behavior.

It will run on 10 or 20 devices just fine and then just stop on 3 to 5 of them.

So I am looking for advice on which NUC or NUC style devices work best with Linux.

I am trying to keep the overall cost of each device under $400 (including a 250 GB SSD and 8 GB RAM)

Plugging in a Monitor for some reason prevents the NUC from shutting down, but that is not feasible because the whole purpose of this is a headless system that I can send to someone and they just plug it in and it works with no further interaction.

Hello and welcome to LQ.

"sometimes it just stops working." Do you mean that the entire system halts of do you mean that some clients no longer have access or can use resources?

I'm sure others have plenty of ideas. I'd consider Intel brand. Intel has offered linux support for decades. There may of course be some configuration issues that you'd need to do. Be sure to use newest distro and fully update to help with any bugs.

Now, can you get a modern Intel for that? Maybe just barely.

In any case I'd think the chances of success would increase based on the more popular devices. Sure you can get some really cheapo's out there.

When I say it just stops working I mean that the NUC is still powered on but no clients can connect to it. I cannot SSH into it and when I reboot it so that I can connect to it there are no logs to indicate any problem that caused it to shut down.

I apologize for not being more clear.

The Celeron is an Intel processor and this particular NUC is supposed to work with Linux.

From the reply I can't tell if it is locked up or some issue with network or what.

To be more clear I meant an Intel brand NUC as opposed to processor base.

Supposed to work with linux and fully tested on your distro, version and level and software maybe not.
Maybe some of the enterprise level hardware would have been factory tested on some distro. Doubt that any factory tested a nuc on linux but might search.

The devious bit of me says to reboot, start sshd, open an ssh session at once, and check what's going on when it goes awol. It sounds like server or connections stuff to me, but it could be anything.

These are actual Intel Brand NUCs.
NUC6CAYH with Celeron J3455 @ 1.5 GHz

Thank you for the suggestion regarding reboot and starting an SSH session right away.
The issue I have is that when I do that, the problem does not occur.
It is like when I connect a monitor so that I can watch what is happening, the problem does not reproduce if a monitor is attached. If I am connected through SSH and watching, the problem does not occur.
For some reason these actions seem to keep the NUCs "alive" which has me pulling out my hair trying to test this. I can only reproduce it when I am unable to monitor what is happening.

I agree that it sounds like a connection issue and I have suspicions that the network port might be involved but I have no clue why connecting a monitor (I have tried both HDMI and USB monitors) would affect the network port and prevent the problem.

If the ssh session keeps it alive, you have a workaround. I'll bet the network or something on it is timing out. Otherwise the ssh wouldn't sort it. Go figure.

Thank you to everyone for your help and suggestions.

Yes using SSH would be a workaround but it is not feasible. I send out hundreds of these devices to customers and for security reasons (These devices are connected to their internal networks) as well as practicality it would not be reasonable to try to get an SSH session with each device and keep it alive 24/7 indefinitely.
That is the reason that I cannot use the "plug in an external monitor" workaround either, practicality.

OK, better plug in a local terminal and go after the rest of the last post.

It sounds like the NUC may be going into suspend, or sleep mode. ( Just a guess on my part ).

Have a look at this URL, it may help.

-->https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.co...pend-mode/4518

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