This is the 3rd full ethernet failure on a rPi 4B and I’m not sure why it keeps happening. I upgraded HA yesterday and all my Z-Wave JS stuff was not working, and like I’ve had to do in the past I shut down HA, unplugged the Z-Wave stick and plugged it all back in, but when it restarted the ethernet was no longer getting any lights and could not be reached on the network. It happened on my first attempt for HA after a day or so, then again a couple months later and now it’s happened again. Literally, the only change is turning it off and back on again (IT Crowd reference anyone…?).
Fortunately I intentionally keep a spare fresh rPi 4B for just this situation (since it’s happened before and my home automation is pretty critical), so I was able to move my USB hub and SD card over to the backup unit and was back up and running.
I have several other 4B’s that have never had this issue, but on the HA Pi it seems it just keeps happening. I’m wondering if it’s something to do with the USB hub, the Insteon modem or the Z-Stick that might be causing some kind of spike. If it just died on its own that would clue me that it’s just faulty hardware, but it always happens after a full power-off restart, as if maybe something is causing some kind of spike that blows out the ethernet board on the Pi.