OpenHAB Cloud connector constantly OFFLINE

1

I have Pi 4 running debian 12 and OH4.1.0 stable version
Localy the OH4 is runing stable inclunding conunications over MQTT in local network.
Internet access is over 4G, but runs fairly stable, with odd dropout in rainy weather that i get notified about over my other network gear.
I have that setup for over 4 years and it didn’t cause much cloud offline issues until latelly.

Now i have an isssue with Cloud connector beeing Offline all the time, it reconects daily but goes offline in notime and wont reconnect. :thinking:
It was working fine for many months no dropouts, not sure what broke it now after many months of smooth operation, since last upgrade to OH4.1.0

I understand that myopenhab cloud recived upgrades, so some comunications with this OH version happen to conflict, i need to fix somehow authentication to server as per logs.

How to fix it for good, as myopenhab cloud is constantly upgrading and changing as i understand, i am not keen on fixing things constantly and upgrading when others change.

I would mainly like to have reliable notifications, my final goal is to have back up comms locally by MQTT in other app or by any means straingt to OH app, even if delayed the notifications woud appear when you open the OH app if everything else breaks, like no internet or OH cloud, you would get notified same day, thats it, i am avare of Android limatations at sleep.

I mean maybe also i need to set up notice text box in my sitemap for backup alerting option.
As the site has many systems that need monitoring for watering, storage, electricity, and automations .

OH cloud connector really needs to work reliablly, i get lots of complains about it from my users, so i need to find out good solution, for now i have VPN for backup remote access to the OH device, but no notifications in that case.

Here is the debug log, plese help me understant what to look at and how to fix openhab cloud connection.
Openhab Cloud error 2024-08-05.txt (94.0 KB)

Cheers Matej

2

The only changes that I’m aware of are dropping support for OH 1.x and changing the API for notifications to allow for more features.

There was no change to the login and connection logic of the cloud server nor the cloud connector add-on.

I, like most users, haven’t had to do anything special to keep the connection to myopenhab.org since OH 2.0. The cloud server is really quite stable. I doubt the issue you are seeing now has anything to do with any of the changes to the cloud server. Something is clearly going on but it’s unlikely that’s the cause. There were no changes to the cloud server related to the connection between clients and the server.

Have you reported these to the github repo? What sorts of complaints. About once or twice a year something happens on the servers that cause a briefe outage but beyond that I’ve seen no reports here on the forum (beyond this one) nor the github repo complaining of unreliability.

For a free service it’s remarkably reliable for most users.

For those for whome it’s not reliable, well we can’t fix it if we don’t know about it.

Looking at the docs for SocketIO (the source of the error), a “connection error” usually means there is no network path between the client and the socket server. If the server was rechable but rejected the connection you’d get a “connection refused” instead.

3

Well, thanks for log insights.

I dinnt report yet, i got complaints that is offline all the time, i guess i need to make sure if there s anything obvious causing it.

I have to say that on site no.1 i have OH2 and i had issues like offline untill restart, i did nothing to fix it yet, and now it is stable and at same time here on site no. 2 OH4 has issues.

So how i proove the connection from Pi to cloud server is available, with some tool like ping or nmap over longer time?

I will test on vm with my laptop if it new OH connects over this 4G network.

I tried deleting UUID and secret and uninstalled Cloud connector, did restart and installed it back but nothing is working, it wont even connect.

On that 4G network i can access myopenhab.org on browser.

I will continue the eleimanation process by paralel testing independant system on same network, any recomendations on recomended procedure :smiley:

Cheers Matej

4

I’m not an network engineer but the first thing I would do is when the logs say the connection is down see if you can ping the myopenhab.org server from the OH machine.

Because it’s 4G there might be filters and firewall rules in place on the wireless provider’s side that shuts down the connection for various reasons. There is a ping Action you can run from an OH rule which might be the most informative since it will be a ping comming not only from the same machine but also from the same service on the same machine. Many ISPs don’t like one hosting services and the connection to the cloud service could look like hosting a server perhaps.

I believe it will let you ping a specific port too which would be informative.

Beyond that I don’t have a whole lot to offer in terms of help. I do know that every time the cloud server goes offline there will always be two+ posts to the forum within minutes complaining about it. And if there were general incompatabilities between the server and the latest OH releases that too would generate multiple threads. I’m not saying that there isn’t a problem, but given the sheer number of people using myopenhab.org without complaint, it’s going to take significant evidence to figure out why and what the problem is.

Note, you can see the online status of the server at https://status.openhab.org/. The cloud server has been 100% available for the past seven days.

5

Indeed, myopenhab cloud server should be reasonably fine, it clearlly isn’t offline all day like my instance, as the other OH at home is online, so there is something wrong from my cloud connector including itself and on the way to the cloud server.

The fact is that lately it isn’t the case of droping but beeing offline completely, that indicates the issue is diferent.

I am surprised by the new OH instance in the VM connecting to cloud fine.

Ping to myopenhab.org seems like it is blocked, like protected from flooding, but i could do TCP ping on port 80 i see.

I suspect something is wrong with that OH4.1.0 instance on Pi4 that it got somehow bad in terms of cloud connector and its backend. There were some power outages, before i had UPS, but i would assume that cleaning uuid and secret and reinstalling cloud conector would fix any broken data it needs?

I am considering trying out a fresh install on seperate machine to see, how it goes.

Thanks so far, that ISP may be misterious, they may be interfering, but i hope not :smiley:

6

I would assume so but maybe try clearing the cache if it’s be awhile since you’ve upgraded. That will force the reinstallation of all the add-ons.

7

well it showed up that DNS wasn’t resolving when i did apt update, not sure why, but i did everythying else, but not reboot.

@Rich you were right,

DNS malfunction is so misterious, as local DNS records kept the appearence that cached sites like mypoenhab.org are reahable but new connections reqired querries that failed until i did reboot.

Reboot resolved DNS issue, but not OH cloud.
I tried cleaning cache before, but addons refused to install than.

I had backup soo.

I than decided to do fresh install of OH, i got latest OH 4.2.0.

I installed Addons i took note of.

Restored backup and all seems fine now, all things started workin including cloud.

Hopefully DNS on Pi keeps resolving, i mean i have TP-link MR 4G router it relays DNS from ISP. Well router reboots daily for fixing 4G, hopefuly that doesn’t interfere.
I see i have not manually configured dns servers on Pi, only static ip. So have filled in gateway and dns nameserver IPs to be static as well.

This bellow probably needs a to be seen by Basic UI devs, it is a buggy.

I have one little issue with sitemap loccaly on web browser, the gear icon doesn’t react to click and there is no back button in sub menues, it stays gear and won’t react to click.

All of these gear button, menu and back button work fine via myopenhab but fail locally.

On phone app also everything works fine localy and remotely.

Thanks Rich

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