Anyone know if there a way to enable some debugging messages in (say) the system log file?

I just installed (trial) version 2.0 on a PPC Mac Mini running OS X Server 10.4.8. Twice in the past 12 hours (since installing) the machine has hung. This "never" happens otherwise. It responds to pings, but I cannot ssh into the machine, and it is totally unresponsive at the console. I have to power cycle the machine to get it back. I don't have anything fancy enabled that I know of---I have one control page, a few devices, and an applescript that checks my network connection (pings a server) every 30 minutes. All of this worked fine under Indigo 1.8 (except of course the control page). I am running the server as a background app (client has not been running). /var/log/system.log shows nothing---only some misc commands up to the point I power cycled the machine, and then all of the rebooting information. It would be great if I could make the IndigoServer (and IndigoWebServer?) log some messages as it's doing things, so I can see if there is any correlation.

Thanks in advance....
--greg

Hi Greg,

I'm not sure what could be causing a system-level lockup. Indigo always logs error messages to the system log -- there is no option to enable/disable this. This type of lockup is normally caused by either a corrupt system, bad memory, or some type of hardware failure.

Technically, it should be very difficult for Indigo to cause such a failure, but I'm sure it is possible. I'd start by running the Indigo Server with no interface (PowerLinc) hardware connected at all to see if it still hangs. It won't be able to control your HA obviously, but this will help rule out a faulty PowerLinc (or USB cable) as the culprit.

If it still crashes, then I'd turn off the Indigo Server to see if the crashing continues.

That should help us track down the problem -- is it the PowerLinc, Indigo Server, or something else.

Oh, one last thought -- you are not running Indigo 1.8 at the same time at all, are you? I could see bad things happening if they both accessed the PowerLinc at the same time...

Regards,
Matt

Hi Matt.

Thanks for the quick response.

I'll let it run a little more to see if it hangs again. I was hoping I could turn on some extra debugging messages, but c'est la vie. It certainly could be a "corrupt system, bad memory, or some type of hardware failure" but the first hang happened within hours of my installing the v2.0 trial. Prior to that I had not rebooted the machine in a long time. So (of course) Indigo was my first thought. But who knows.

It's a good thought about running both, but I'm only running 2.0. I can see the server, and the (python) web server.

Turning off the server is a good idea. I think most (all?) of my automated tasks, at least the light controls, should continue to function. I'll keep that in mind. I'm going to need things to run for me in the coming week, so if necessary I might also just (temporarly) try using 1.8 again.

So several things I can try, each taking a little time, but that's the way it goes!

Thanks again. I'll keep you posted.

--greg

My promise to keep you posted....

It could well be that you (Matt) were right about hardware. I had two complete machine hangs within hours of installing Indigo 2, but since then have had none, *until* last night when I the server hung severely such that I had to power it down several times, wait a while, then power it back up. (I'm traveling so limited in what I can do. If I can't log in, all I can do is power cycle the machine.) When I finally got the machine back up again, I saw some "IOATAController device blocking bus" messages in system.log, which apparaently could mean a drive is failing. None of my SMART checks have complained though, and since then the machine has remained up, and there have been no more "IOATAController..." messages. I'll run some more tests when I'm home. It's a Mac Mini so I hope (pray) the drive is not failing....

Thanks again. I now have to decide whether I want to pay the steep (IMHO) upgrade price or stick w/ 1.8.

Take care.
--greg