eisy networking blew up after 5.9.1 release.

[Marky Mark]

Hi, hoping for some troubleshooting tips with the new 5.9.1 release.

For a fun valentine's day activity, we decided to upgrade from our ISY994 w/serial PLM to a brand new eisy w/USB PLM (we're an Insteon only household).

The migration took about an hour and went great, and everything seemed to be running smoothly with the eisy running the initial out-of-the-box 5.8.4 release from June 2024.

An hour later, we unplugged it to mount the eisy in its final location.  Upon rebooting, it would not appear on the network.  I plugged in an HDMI monitor + keyboard + mouse and found that the 5.9.1 release had somehow installed itself, and that the "re0" network interface was no longer accepting its DHCP provided IP address.  In other words, "ifconfig -a" would show re0 without any ipv4 address.  If I manually force the IPv4 address via the command-line, then I could reach the IoX UI via the Java Launcher/etc, however it was clear that other issues existed (like the USB PLM was no longer showing up, and the timezone is now unset - maybe ntp is failing due to the lack of an IPv4 address at boot).

I'm not certain why the box upgraded itself from 5.8.4 to 5.9.1 without our permission, or if we perhaps unplugged the power while it was in the middle of its upgrade, but the 5.9.1 release is definitely not running smoothly so I'm curious if we can downgrade.  Trying the "Upgrade Packages" button seemed to do nothing at all, so it may think everything is up to date already even if it is half-baked.  I'm too afraid to try the "Upgrade BIOS" button (which incidentally was dimmed out under 5.8.4).

Is Factory resetting back to 5.8.4 an option?

Thanks for any tips,

   Mark

[Techman]

Does your router have DHCP enabled?

Did you follow the replace PLM procedure (see attached) when switching PLMs

It's probably best to try to stay with 5.9.1  and resolve your issues. Don't use "Upgrade Bios"

Have you cleared your java cache and downloaded the current version of of IoX Launcher from this link:?

        https://isy.universal-devices.com/start.jnlp

 

Replace PLM Procedure (EISY or POLISY).pdf

[Marky Mark]

Thanks...yes, my Ubiquiti Cloud Gateway Max router is serving up DHCP addresses just fine.  When the eisy was running 5.8.4, I could see DHCP working fine in /var/log/messages, and the PLM migration went relatively smoothly as well following the migration wiki instructions.  Just had to run around to put the battery-operated remotes/leak detectors into linking mode before updating their link tables again.

Like I said, we had a good 30-60 minutes of perfect running under 5.8.4 until we powered the eisy off to mount it.  That's when it both would not bring up the re0 (ethernet) interface anymore and (later) noticed it had magically updated itself to 5.9.1

Now via a direct connect to the console w/HDMI + keyboard, I can manually bring up re0 via ifconfig and route commands (akin to what the DHCP client software should have done), and then launch the Java Admin Console.  But then the USB PLM is no longer seen as connected as per Tools->Diagnostics->PLM Info/Status.

I've opened a support ticket with UDI since this has all gotten above my pay grade, but I've also attached a lot of the log files here in case anyone else knows this stuff inside out.

eisy_full_var_log_messages.txt eisy_var_log_messages_and_route_check.txt eisy_etc_contents.txt eisy_dmesg_output.txt eisy_rc_conf.txt

[Techman]

Unplug the monitor and keyboard from the eisy. Removing power from both the PLM and the eisy, wait about 15 seconds then power up the PLM. Wait another 15 seconds then power up the eisy.

If you can access the eisy from the admin console, try doing an update. After an update the java cache needs to be cleared and an updated IoX Launcher downloaded. 

Lastly, it's possible that it was in the process of updating  to 5.9.1 when you first removed power and something got corrupted.

 

[Marky Mark]

Thanks for the tips!  After power cycling the PLM & eisy, the eisy still appears to not pick up an IPv4 address, so it does not show up in the IoX Launcher.  I did wipe the Java file cache, then fully un-install Java 8, re-install Java 8, and download the start.jnlp from isy.universal-devices.com just to be super paranoid.

My network scans do detect the eisy's MAC address, which is the same behavior I've seen since 5.9.1 was installed, so the device is effectively bricked unless I log in via the command-line and hand-configure the ethernet interface.

I had seen mention of all these various "press the power button X/Y/Z times to reset networking / etc / etc" but that was all fairly unclear to me.  I am curious though.  I'm also curious if there is a specific shutdown command in the Java Admin Console that we should always be using if we want to power down an eisy safely to avoid this kind of mess in the future?

 

[Techman]

There's no specific command to power down the eisy. Post a screenshot of your IoX Launcher window

Are you on a PC or a MAC?

If you're still having issues then it's probably best to submit a support ticket.

[Marky Mark]

Nothing too interesting to see in the IoX Launcher since it cannot find the eisy.  But in the attached screenshot you can see the eisy's MAC address showing up when I run the third-party Mac app named "LanScan" (it also shows up in the Ubiquiti UI).

I will keep you posted based on what UDI says to my support ticket.  Thanks for the assistance over the long holiday weekend!

[Marky Mark]

Michel just saved the day with the following solution.

Step 1.  manually get IPv4 networking up and running again - although he gave me the shortcut of running just one command to do it all: "sudo dhclient re0"

Step 2.  run their fix.upgrade shell script via "curl -s https://pkg.isy.io/script/fix.upgrade | sudo bash"

That triggered a few reboots and then things were back up and running under 5.9.1 normally.

Thanks Michel!!

[chachdog]

My networking broke also but I did not upgrade anything. I am on 5.8. I was in the gui and had plugged in some usb stick\hard drives when this all stopped working.  I ran the dhcp command and it gave me an ip but it did not work upon a reboot. When running the dhcp command it does say unknown dhcp option value 0x7d but gets an ip. Should I run that script also even though I didn't upgrade to 5.9?  I also did not see my plm in the diagnostics menu. Thanks

Edited February 16 by chachdog

[Marky Mark]

I can't speak for Michel or UDI, but I did review the fix.upgrade shell script and it seems fairly generic - nothing specific to 5.9.1 although it did contain one conditional section to see if FreeBSD 14 was the current OS.  I'm just not sure if IoX 5.8.x also shipped with FreeBSD 14.x vs 13.x.

I'd really suggest opening a support ticket at https://www.universal-devices.com/my-tickets, if only so UDI can track the "hot bugs" / overall trouble areas.

And you are correct that the "sudo dhclient re0" will never survive a reboot - it is just a hack to do the network initialization steps that should run automatically each time the eisy boots up.  So part of what fix.upgrade does is resolve whatever issue/bug was causing dhclient to not be run at startup.

[Techman]

When you run update you should have UDX 3.7.2.3 and FreeBSD 14.1, your version willl display as 5.9.1 in the admin console

You can view your current config status here:

              https://eisy.local:8443/WEB/sysconfig.txt

 

[chachdog]

Thanks for your reply. I opened a case.

udx 3.5.5 freebsd 13.