Maintenance
Re: Maintenance
Unfortunately, I was unable to log in again at approx 0730 today. I'll see what happens after the 0900 reboot and report back.
Terry
Re: Maintenance
Well. The reboot worked and I am now in again. The main mystery now is why history shows that after a Power Cycle the system stays up for 2-3 days, but it stayed up for less than 24 hrs after yesterday's scheduled reboot..
Maybe the wind in the trees that partially screen the WiFi Antenna? Possibly, but the gale force winds of a couple of days ago didn't take it down. Any other ideas?
Maybe the wind in the trees that partially screen the WiFi Antenna? Possibly, but the gale force winds of a couple of days ago didn't take it down. Any other ideas?
Terry
Re: Maintenance
This morning, at 0640, I've been unable to log in again. I'm fairly sure that communications will be restored with the 0900 reboot and I guess we can live with that for now.
A new idea has surfaced from the Raspberry Pi Forum. I can run a short script at intervals to check if the Pi has connectivity with the rest of the network. This will work by pinging three hosts; if one fails and the others are OK, then the WiFi is still working. If all three fail then the WiFi is probably down.
What I do next is down to how long the WiFi stays up. If the connectivity fails during Opening Hours, I don't want to reboot arbitrarily when there may be visitors listening to the music, but if the connectivity lasts until the evening, then that would be OK.
I also have a better solution hiding in the wings. If I can stop and start the WiFi, that may do the trick and I am working on the best way to do that. In theory it should be simple; just take the wlan0 interface down and then bring it back up again. However, one of the guys on the Raspberry Pi Forum uses an incredibly complicated script to do this, which involves killing the WiFi process and deleting a bunch of files. I'd rather do the former, but I'm doing some tests at the moment to work out which is the most reliable method.
Penri,
I mentioned the trees on Sunday. This behaviour, which is clearly getting worse, might well be due to tree growth. Could you have a look at the sight lines the next time you are in?
BTW. I can only connect to one Tiny-TV at the moment. It used to be two before the site manager turned on the power, so the trees may be affecting the reception there too.
A new idea has surfaced from the Raspberry Pi Forum. I can run a short script at intervals to check if the Pi has connectivity with the rest of the network. This will work by pinging three hosts; if one fails and the others are OK, then the WiFi is still working. If all three fail then the WiFi is probably down.
What I do next is down to how long the WiFi stays up. If the connectivity fails during Opening Hours, I don't want to reboot arbitrarily when there may be visitors listening to the music, but if the connectivity lasts until the evening, then that would be OK.
I also have a better solution hiding in the wings. If I can stop and start the WiFi, that may do the trick and I am working on the best way to do that. In theory it should be simple; just take the wlan0 interface down and then bring it back up again. However, one of the guys on the Raspberry Pi Forum uses an incredibly complicated script to do this, which involves killing the WiFi process and deleting a bunch of files. I'd rather do the former, but I'm doing some tests at the moment to work out which is the most reliable method.
Penri,
I mentioned the trees on Sunday. This behaviour, which is clearly getting worse, might well be due to tree growth. Could you have a look at the sight lines the next time you are in?
BTW. I can only connect to one Tiny-TV at the moment. It used to be two before the site manager turned on the power, so the trees may be affecting the reception there too.
Terry
Re: Maintenance
Well the script mentioned above has now been installed and running for over 24 hrs and is detecting the WiFi functionality effectively. There was one snag. One of the hosts that I chose (the WMT Webserver) failed the ping test. Penri checked it on site and it appeared to be working so I asked for advice on the Dorset Linux User Group Mailing List.
Apparently it's possible for a device to be set up to refuse ping requests. I never knew that and can only assume that the Captive Portal software that I installed (nodogsplash) did this.
Anyway, I've now proved that the device is accessible by SSHing into it. Sorry about that Penri.
I have now updated the script to ping a different host and will report back when I've tested the script a bit longer.
Apparently it's possible for a device to be set up to refuse ping requests. I never knew that and can only assume that the Captive Portal software that I installed (nodogsplash) did this.
Anyway, I've now proved that the device is accessible by SSHing into it. Sorry about that Penri.
I have now updated the script to ping a different host and will report back when I've tested the script a bit longer.
Terry
Re: Maintenance
No problem, it’s nice to keep learning new things are we roll along.
Re: Maintenance
Going back to sight lines.
I stood with by back to the Minster’s West door and could see the gazebo antenna, there were some leaves between it and me but I could see it clearly.
There was no wind and there has been no appreciable rain so the leaves will have been dry and not wiggling around, rather ideal conditions for signal propagation !
I stood with by back to the Minster’s West door and could see the gazebo antenna, there were some leaves between it and me but I could see it clearly.
There was no wind and there has been no appreciable rain so the leaves will have been dry and not wiggling around, rather ideal conditions for signal propagation !
Re: Maintenance
The system hadn't gone down overnight . It would be interesting to record the weather conditions the next time it loses the WiFi signal.
With the new script we should know what time that was to within an hour.
With the new script we should know what time that was to within an hour.
Terry
Re: Maintenance
OK. Some good and bad news.
Bad news first; the WiFi went down overnight. The good news is we know roughly when it happened. The script recorded that the WiFi was OK at 0451, but down at 0551. Did we have rain between those times or strong winds?
The system is still being rebooted every day at 0900, which restores the WiFi. Yesterday I updated the script again; this change added code to try to reconnect the WiFi once the script has detected it is down. The new code wasn't run at 0951, because the WiFi was up.
I'll keep you posted.
Bad news first; the WiFi went down overnight. The good news is we know roughly when it happened. The script recorded that the WiFi was OK at 0451, but down at 0551. Did we have rain between those times or strong winds?
The system is still being rebooted every day at 0900, which restores the WiFi. Yesterday I updated the script again; this change added code to try to reconnect the WiFi once the script has detected it is down. The new code wasn't run at 0951, because the WiFi was up.
I'll keep you posted.
Terry
Re: Maintenance
I asked the gardening team to trim back any branches / foliage shading the signal paths, at least the ones they could reach, when they had some time to spare.