I have finally been able to get back to working on this again.
I have now seen the problem on 2 different BBBs (but not a third one yet) 
so maybe this isn't a hardware problem?

Here is an example of what I see. The GPIO will randomly appear and 
disappear on certain BBBs.
You can use the watch -n1 ls command to see it automatically update. This 
can happen even with nothing physically connected to the pin.

Has anybody else seen this problem before on any GPIO?

debian@beaglebone:~$ cd /sys/class/gpio/
debian@beaglebone:/sys/class/gpio$ ls
export  gpio13  gpiochip0   gpiochip64  unexport
gpio12  gpio50  gpiochip32  gpiochip96
debian@beaglebone:/sys/class/gpio$ ls
export  gpio13  gpiochip0   gpiochip64  unexport
gpio12  gpio50  gpiochip32  gpiochip96
debian@beaglebone:/sys/class/gpio$ ls
export  gpio13  gpiochip0   gpiochip64  unexport
gpio12  gpio50  gpiochip32  gpiochip96
debian@beaglebone:/sys/class/gpio$ ls
export  gpio13     gpiochip32  gpiochip96
gpio12  gpiochip0  gpiochip64  unexport
debian@beaglebone:/sys/class/gpio$ ls
export  gpio13     gpiochip32  gpiochip96
gpio12  gpiochip0  gpiochip64  unexport
debian@beaglebone:/sys/class/gpio$ ls
export  gpio13     gpiochip32  gpiochip96
gpio12  gpiochip0  gpiochip64  unexport
debian@beaglebone:/sys/class/gpio$ ls
export  gpio13     gpiochip32  gpiochip96
gpio12  gpiochip0  gpiochip64  unexport
debian@beaglebone:/sys/class/gpio$ ls
export  gpio13     gpiochip32  gpiochip96
gpio12  gpiochip0  gpiochip64  unexport
debian@beaglebone:/sys/class/gpio$ ls
export  gpio13     gpiochip32  gpiochip96
gpio12  gpiochip0  gpiochip64  unexport
debian@beaglebone:/sys/class/gpio$ ls
export  gpio13     gpiochip32  gpiochip96
gpio12  gpiochip0  gpiochip64  unexport
debian@beaglebone:/sys/class/gpio$ ls
export  gpio13  gpiochip0   gpiochip64  unexport
gpio12  gpio50  gpiochip32  gpiochip96


Bill


On Wednesday, July 18, 2018 at 6:46:23 PM UTC-5, Bill Fleming wrote:
>
> So we have been using GPIO 50 on the BBB with older releases such as 
> Debian 8.3 for a while now with no issues.
> We have updated to stretch Debian 9.4 in the past few days.
>
> I am setting the gpio export as follows: (in script on boot)
>
> sudo su
>> echo 50 > /sys/class/gpio/export
>
>
> Then I echo to these files to use the GPIO and it works as expected.
> /sys/class/gpio/gpio50/value
> /sys/class/gpio/gpio50/direction
>
> What I have noticed though is that on at least one of the boards the 
> entire "/sys/class/gpio/gpio50/" folder will randomly go missing, then 
> reappear a few seconds or minutes later.
> This either started after a few reboots or it was like this the whole time 
> on 9.4 but it took a while to notice the issue.
> For example I can be in /sys/class/gpio/ then call the ls command. If I 
> repeat this command over and over again sometimes the gpio50 will show up, 
> and sometimes it won't. Most of the time it won't show up.
> Sometimes I can navigate into the gpio50 folder, but then the various 
> files and sub folders will be missing.
>
> When this folder disappears the application we are using fails to control 
> the GPIO using fwrite, so it isn't just cosmetic.
>
> Does this mean the pin is fried and this is a hardware feature to disable 
> a fried pin, or could the system be doing something else in the background 
> where it tries to claim this pin for something else?
> I have tried searching and I couldn't find any other case of the 
> disappearing device tree folder like this.
>
> We had originally chosen this pin for PWM but never implemented it, so I 
> am open to suggestions if there is a better GPIO I should be using for 
> basic 3.3 level switching. (one that is guaranteed to work without having 
> to disable a bunch of features in the system)
>
> Thanks in advance for any help.
>
> Bill
>
>

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