Background:  Polisy 5.6.2 (now .3); Nodelink 0.10.6 with 3 nodes DSC, CAI Webcontrol, and Date Data.  Nodelink runs on 24/7 PC win10 that also runs blue iris and nothing else.  Nodelink has been running for perhaps a decade on that PC.  Nodelink predates Polisy by many years and was formerly connected to a 994i.  It never had issues on 994i, or for the first couple years or so on Polisy.  (I bought one of the very first Polisy units).

Problem.  In the past couple months I have had several incidents where ISY is having issues.  First symptom is ISY stops getting updates from nodelink and a minute or so later I'll get an email from ISY that it has missed heartbeats from nodelink.  After a while UD Mobile will lose its connection.  I will not be able to connect from the admin console, it gets stuck on "starting subscription" and connections to PG2 and PG3 stop working as well.   Michel logged in and says nodelink is leaving hundreds of abandoned open sockets that are blocking ISY from talking to other stuff.  SSH does continue to work and Michel was looking at Polisy via SSH during the issue.  ISY otherwise seems to keep running programs and doing things that it normally does via Insteon.  ISY also continues to send emails every half hour as directed telling me that it is missing heartbeats even after all the other stuff goes down.

I have continued to do updates to Polisy and this all seemed to start after an update not long ago from one version of 5. something to 5. something else (I forget exactly).  The most recent incident ISY was on 5.6.2 but prior to that it happened on a previous 5 version.  Of course there are PG updates and OS updates for Polisy that go along, but I don't know those version numbers.  Nodelink has not changed.  I have had that computer doing periodic windows updates but otherwise nothing much happens there for years.

I don't really know much about sockets.  My feeling here based on the timing of things, as gradually more and more things that use IP to communicate with ISY go down, is that for some reason nodelink starts opening more and more sockets until ISY can no longer talk via IP to other stuff.    I don't know why nodelink would do this.  Does nodelink open a socket and then get no response so it opens another?  Or is nodelink just going nuts and opening sockets for no reason?  And why does it just start doing this. . . .most recently at 11:06 yesterday with the other stuff connected to ISY totally crashing about a half hour later.

Thanks!

@apostolakisl,

Please try 5.6.4. It might help but it will not be a cure till the other side closes the sockets.

With kind regards,

Michel 

@apostolakisl can you tell me how to get an update from nodelink regarding the heartbeat?

On 8/18/2023 at 12:09 PM, gregkinney said:

@apostolakisl can you tell me how to get an update from nodelink regarding the heartbeat?

Sorry, not sure what you mean. If nodelink is connected it alternates the value of "heartbeat" value free 1 to -1 every 30 seconds. If heartbeat value doesn't change that means the node is either not working or not connected. 

sockets discard new work arriving when their buffers are full - might be that nodelink is firing off new connections - in fact, it sounds like it is and the isy side is creating new sockets to hold the work arriving from nodelink - the question is why nodelink is doing that

if disabling that heartbeat is possible, i'd do it to see if nodelink stops creating new connections

 

22 hours ago, RPerrault said:

sockets discard new work arriving when their buffers are full - might be that nodelink is firing off new connections - in fact, it sounds like it is and the isy side is creating new sockets to hold the work arriving from nodelink - the question is why nodelink is doing that

if disabling that heartbeat is possible, i'd do it to see if nodelink stops creating new connections

 

Nodelink works a little different.  It is installed into ISY as a single node, however, you can have lots of sub nodes under that single ISY node and they all show up in ISY tree as if they were separate nodes (but under the "node servers" tab, it is just one node).  In my case, ISYlink (for whatever reason the name on ISY node server tabs is "ISY Link" instead of "nodelink") it is node number 1.  I currently have 3 nodes running on nodelink, 2 of which produce heartbeats (CAI webcontrol and DSC alarm).  There is no setting to disable the heartbeats as far as I can find.  

I also have nodelink running on a 994i at my church.  I have never had any issues with it.  That ISY is on 5.0.16c firmware and has gone without a reboot now for almost a year and runs perfectly.

I have had nodelink running for many years (probably going on 10) and I am not aware of any updates to nodelink in a very long time.  Nodelink predates the existence of polyglot by quite a long time.  This problem on the other hand is quite recent, just in the past few months, which makes me curious how something that didn't change would now change its behavior.  The problem is also hard to predict.  It has not happened now in almost a month.  Prior to that, it went a couple weeks.  Right after the most recent event, a new version of the polisy firmware came out and I installed it.  So I don't know if that has anything to do with everything working now for a month.

I do not know much about sockets.  I assume there is some back and forth acknowledgement?  I suppose an outsider requests a socket, and the ISY grants it.  But is there an acknowledgement?  Does the outsider get confirmation of an open socket and then continue to use the same socket?  Does the outsider just send whatever packet it is sending and then close the socket until the next time it has data to send?