I have a Nitrokey Pro 2 that I bought in early 2019 and that I use all the time.
It’s been doing the job all this time, there are some occasional hiccups where I try to perform an operation, the red LED stays on all the time and I need to reinsert the key in order to make it work, but other than that I haven’t had any issues.
Recently however I noticed that when I plug it, after using it for a while the red LED stays on again but then when I reinsert the key it’s not detected at all: lsusb shows nothing and there are no kernel messages. I retry a few times without luck, then I give up. However when I try again the next day it works again for a little while.
I guess this is a sign that the key is dying, is it normal after a bit more than 5 years? Time to buy a new one I guess?
Hard to tell from these observations, but this might also just be some mechanical issue (non-optimal contact which might get loose on increased temperature due to it being plugge in). The expectation is more than 5years - the smartcard inside is has 20years so far I remember - although this is a electronics device so it can break earlier - please backup whatever you have on it to safe you from a catastrophic data loss …
As a last resort, the Pro uses a smartcard in a reader. If you would need to access it, there is a little chance that the defect is in the reader part and you could swap the smartcard.
