Admin Console Busy Box detail

[larryllix]

A few times in the past, I have had ISY get real busy and it stays busy slowing down all operations with HA. At times lights have taken 20-30 seconds to respond to MS signals. This has taken weeks to diagnose and correct, each time.

 

Usually this has been accompanied by the Busy Box on admin console. Inside the busy box I see variable writes and other hexadecimal codes flying by but no attempt to show the actual reason. Every case I have diagnosed by trial and error in the past has not been REST writes from other devices and yet the busy box only showed those REST events ISY is processing.

 

In the end my congestion was on the Insteon network bogging down. The last time from battery device caching of updates and programs attempting to do so but devices can't handle the "write after action" update method.

 

Device characteristic  pre-determination could  help so these problems cannot be created in the first place. Possibly even a reserved write  cache size / overflow warning for any  device may help, just for the case of a device not accepting the technique after the fact..

 

 

 

I am not sure if this is possible at all but....

 

It would be very  nice if the Busy Text Box could show a more diagnostic  reason for the slowdown of an  ISY. This could shortcut repair time of the problem immensely. Pointing the finger at Insteon congestion, Ethernet  congestion, or ISY program lag would help for the first stages of problem correction.

 

Thanks!!

 

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi larryllix,

 

Have you used Event Viewer on Level 3. This is the only way that you can see and save what's going on. Once you have a record of all these events, then we can sift through them and see if we can discern the cause.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[larryllix]

Hi larryllix,

 

Have you used Event Viewer on Level 3. This is the only way that you can see and save what's going on. Once you have a record of all these events, then we can sift through them and see if we can discern the cause.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

Nothing showed in the event viewer while the busy box was running. Just a few regular variable updates from NodeLink and my WC8 board every 20 seconds.

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi larryllix,

 

When you get the busy dialog, ISY is doing something and, especially, to the underlying INSTEON/Z-Wave devices. Is it possible that ISY is just retrying certain commands?

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[rccoleman]

Regardless of the problem in this case, it would be helpful if the "busy" dialog box indicated what it was trying to do rather than whatever just happened (the latest log entry).  I mentioned this many months ago (probably around the 5.0.10 release) and I often find myself wondering what it's doing when it's "busy".  Knowing what it's trying to do would help identify the root cause.

[larryllix]

Hi larryllix,

 

When you get the busy dialog, ISY is doing something and, especially, to the underlying INSTEON/Z-Wave devices. Is it possible that ISY is just retrying certain commands?

 

With kind regards,

Michel

AFAICT... ISY was trying to update my 12 Insteon MSes with updates, even though I did not make any. The "write to battery devices immediately" was disabled and crippling my ISY badly. I had programs to update each MS to accommodate this but apparently my MSes are not capable of this process.

 

I took each MS down and put in linking mode. When I selected "write updates" it wrote data  on and off  in bursts for almost ten minutes on many  of the MSes before clearing. After that process, an MS option change then took the usual 15-20 seconds.

 

After doing this to all 12 MSes my ISY runs programs quickly and no Busy Box is seen now in admin console.  My KPL 4 key sequence combination codes work again. While this was going on it would sometimes take 8-12 tries to make ISY accept a 4 key combination sequence.

 

This needs some flagging to the user and/or cache, self or manual, clearing process in ISY.

 

Having a busy box with more informative information may have helped my troubleshooting this. I never saw any events relating to this in the Event Viewer, Level 3. I only saw NodeLink and WC8 regular writes every 10-15 seconds.

 

Thanks

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi larryllix,

 

Thanks for the feedback.

 

Hi rccoleman,

 

Not sure what type of information we can give. In almost 99% of the cases, it's communication issues with INSTEON/Z-Wave devices. There's pretty much nothing else that would cause the busy box. If you are suggesting that we should take each and every INSTEON/Z-Wave device command and convert it to English (i.e. Now, I am writing at database address xx for device yy but I failed because I tried 3 times before) in addition to what you already see in the Event Viewer, then we'll be spending the next year or two just doing that.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[rccoleman]

Just what device you’re talking to would be nice and diagnostically helpful. The current display of whatever the last log line was doesn’t tell me anything about why it’s busy.

[larryllix]

Hi larryllix,

 

Thanks for the feedback.

 

Hi rccoleman,

 

Not sure what type of information we can give. In almost 99% of the cases, it's communication issues with INSTEON/Z-Wave devices. There's pretty much nothing else that would cause the busy box. If you are suggesting that we should take each and every INSTEON/Z-Wave device command and convert it to English (i.e. Now, I am writing at database address xx for device yy but I failed because I tried 3 times before) in addition to what you already see in the Event Viewer, then we'll be spending the next year or two just doing that.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

Maybe the indication  could be based on the Insteon send cache size?