ISY 994i needing constant reboot

[dennisric]

I have to keep rebooting my ISY 994i to get to to continue working. Currently using version 5.3.3 of the firmware. Also had same issue with 5.0.16. All my programs will stop working or will suddenly flake out. I disconnect the power wait 10 sec then plug back in and good for about three days, then have to do same all over again. What could possibly be causing this, is my ISY failing and need replacement.

[MrBill]

What kind of programs are you running?   One possibility is that you have one or more programs that is a run away or endless loop.  You can probably find that looking at the program summary page.

How old is your ISY?  another possibility is that your SD card is dying, but actually i doubt this one myself.

It's definitely not normal to have to reboot your ISY... mine currently hasn't been rebooted in about 2.5 months.  If suggestions here in the forum don't lead you to a conclusion soon, you should open a ticket by emailing support@universal-devices.com they'll find the issue quickly I'm certain.  I read the forum daily in this isn't a common issue, you may need support, but after you find out the answer please update this thread so that we can use it to help the next guy with the same problem.

[DennisC]

Have you checked the error log to see if there are any errors shown?

[dennisric]

Never thought of looking in the error log. Here is what has been going on for a long time.

[dennisric]

This is most recent in log

 

[MrBill]

6 minutes ago, dennisric said:

This is most recent in log

 

The first entry "-5 Start" is a reboot.  there were two of those here in a row, one at 2:16 and one at 3:30... it's pretty normal to see the entries after the Start, as the system comes up and the network connection is established.

Regarding the first post of error log messages, that appears to have something to do with the mobilinc portal, but you probably already guessed that! ?

[DennisC]

Looks like you're also having dns issues. Have you verified your dns settings?

[bjs169]

I have had very similar issues since upgrading past 4.9. I am now on 5.3.4 I also use MobiLinc. After lots and lots of troubleshooting on my own and with UDI (at least 30 hours) I have concluded that it is some sort of networking issue between 5.x versions and MobiLinc. UDI says it is a MobiLinc issue with them leaving connections open. I think a solid Ethernet stack should be able to deal with that, so as a customer I am not really sure who to be mad at. I have not contacted MobiLinc as I am just worn out by this issue. During all of this I also lost my whole Z-Wave configuration since initial theory was the issue might be with the newly upgraded ZW dongle. At this point my Insteon stuff all runs reliably, but have no Z-Wave and anything over Ethernet (in or out) doesn't reliably work this includes Alexa and controlling Network Resources. Hopefully either UDI or MobiLinc get enough reports about this and figure it out. If I have the energy around the holidays I might try to switch from MobiLinc to the ISY Portal to see if that resolves the issue. Until this I am frustrated for the first time with my ISY.

[Javi]

Hi @dennisric and @bjs,

Can both of you try to using our Mobile App with only local connection (Second option here: https://wiki.universal-devices.com/index.php?title=UD_Mobile#Local_Connections_and_Local_VPN) by selecting Advanced -> Only Use Local Connection ?

During initial synchronization the App will check the ISY for missing files or a few other common issues such as network connections.  If all is well during initial synchronization please open our app when the issue is presented and it may show us a more detailed error.  Connections errors should pop or show as a notification, depending on user setting you may need to pull down your notification panel to see current error status.

[bjs169]

@Javi, not sure if you have access to the sales@universal-devices.com address, but all of my long communication via email has been there. Most recent email was sent by your team on 11/1/2021 at 10:40AM CDT. It was sent to the same email address that should be associated with my portal account that I am posting under now.

I have had the UDI mobile app configured using option #2 since I upgraded to the first supported ISY version. Prior to 11/1 the app was often not responsive showing the same network symptoms that as anything else trying to interact with the ISY over Ethernet. 

The suggestion in the last email I had from your team was:

Quote

What I suggest is to disable MobiLinc for a few days and see whether or not there are any improvements.

I did this step and I reenabled MobiLinc portal after several days. I acknowledge that after this step things are better but there are still intermittent issues with anything network related including the MobiLinc app, Alexa (via MobiLinc obviously), the UD Mobile App, and any outbound connections from the ISY to Network Resources.

I just rebooted the ISY. I have not been doing that on a regular basis like Dennis has been since I have just been living with the degraded functionality. I will see if that makes anything better and will keep an eye out for any errors that show up in the UD Mobile App. Like I said the issue is intermittent. As of right now, after the reboot things seem okay.

I have a CS background and though I know that the ISY is a real time OS which is different than the preemptive multitasking systems I am used to, the way I would describe the behavior is that the ISY appears to me to be in a spinlock or thread blocking situation when this is happening. I theorize that the MobiLinc portal is probably at root cause, leaving sockets open, but that the ISY TCP/IP stack is not dealing with this well. I could be totally wrong, but that is what it feels like to me based on my experience.

Attached is my most recent error log just collected now after reboot and trying some network stuff.

ISY Error Log.v5.3.4__Wed 2021.12.01 07.12.52 PM.txt

[Javi]

Hi @bjs,

Thank you.  We have have been able to replicate network issues after bombarding the ISY with network request (i.e. denial of service), most of the time ISY recovers within a few minutes after bombardment has ended. In rare situations some  issues continued until a reboot.  For context, a few years ago Google Chromecast was flooding  local networks with much less traffic causing issues with routers.  There is a large amount of data transferred during the initial subscription request and ISY can handle many sockets. However, if many subscriptions or portal sockets are started simultaneously, sockets are abandon or not closed gracefully while data is in queue, ISY is waiting for timeout from these clients, then the result could be similar to the stress tests above. 

[bjs169]

@Javi, do you guys collaborate with the MobiLinc guys to resolve issues? Has there been any communication with them about the possibility that something with the MobiLinc portal is causing issues?

[Javi]

7 minutes ago, bjs said:

@Javi, do you guys collaborate with the MobiLinc guys to resolve issues? Has there been any communication with them about the possibility that something with the MobiLinc portal is causing issues?

Most developers will report issues when found. My position involves front end and app development. Issues I encounter are with ISY Portal and local subscriptions, and not with third party portal providers. We run stress tests to balance app speed with request success rates, to avoid similar issues. Our alpha testers did see brief connectivity issues, usually lasting a few minutes, with early versions of our app. This was related to subscription loops or too many large file requests simultaneously exhausting available resources.

With that said, most developers including myself, prefer to isolate issues before assuming the problem belongs to someone else.  If the problem disappears when a third party portal is removed, reappears when portal is re-established, and does not appear with another Portal, I assume the correlation would warrant a report as the issue can be replicated.

[dennisric]

Sorry I haven't send any other info on this issue but I do not have time to constantly be checking the ISY for errors. It seems most of my problems started after doing a firmware update. At that time I also lost email notifications but gave up after wasting a lot of time trying to figure it out. I am currently running 5.3.3. When I do a test for the email notifications it gives me a mail server error. I use hotmail.com for my email. This really bothers me because I spent a lot of money and time setting up the Insteon water sensors and an expensive ELK water shut off valve. Now if there is a leak I won't know until I get home. I did find some lines red out in my programs after the firmware upgrade and had to figure out what it was to get those working again. I do not have the time to spend on this and am ready to rip it all out to make my life easier. I have never used the mobilinc app.

[Techman]

When you update from  4.x.x to 5.x.x some of the configuration parameters may get changed. Take a look at your email settings in the ISY.

[dennisric]

Is there anything out there that shows exactly how the Email settings should be for different providers? If I remember right when setting it up originally it was a guessing game until it worked. I never changed anything but did the firmware update.  I still believe that if it isn't broke don't fix it. A firmware update should not change anything in the setup you have.

[Techman]

You would use the same settings as you use for your regular email program

Set timeout for about 6000

Don't check USE TLS

The update from 4.x.x to 5.x.x was a major update and requires some user intervention as set forth in the update notes.