· 259 words · 2 minute read

FIXED! NUC5pcyb hanging with Ubuntu Linux

I bought an old Intel NUC, to have it run as a small server in-house. But even with the latest Ubuntu I had a problem: the machine would run great for about a day, and then would “hang”. The solution? Turn off all Intel power management options in BIOS!

I’m writing this post mainly for other people with the same problem, as I couldn’t find the solution anywhere else online. Hopefully this helps someone some day!

The problem #

My Intel NUC with Ubuntu would run fine, and then suddenly I would found it in a catatonic/zombie state. The blue light is on, external hard drives spinning, but no network connection and no screen output. Newly plugged in keyboards wouldn’t get their lights turned on.

It ran fine otherwise, this hanging only happened sporadically. One hint for the root-problem was that the NUC could run for a couple of days when running long n8n-workflows.

The solution #

I couldn’t find the correct solution online. There were mentions of kernel upgrades and BIOS-upgrades, but I was ahead on all the versions mentioned.

Then, I put the puzzle pieces together myself:

  1. the server worked fine when I used it
  2. there were no weird log entries: logging just “stopped” at a seemingly random point in time
  3. the server didn’t really turn off but went in a half-slumber

That sounds like an energy saving mode triggered in hardware, something Ubuntu couldn’t recover from.

Fixed! #

I turned off all power management in the BIOS - and the NUC has been working for over a week now.