Home Assistant Blue: First setup, fallen off network and not coming back

Installation
1

Hello.

I’ve just received my Home Assistant Blue (an Odroid N2+ from odroid.co.uk with 4GB, 128GB eMMC, and home assistant preloaded) and on initial power on it has only very briefly joined my network. When I first plugged it in, it joined the network, took an IP and the web UI said it was initialising the software. Then it disappeared from the network after about 30 seconds, and hasn’t come back in two hours.

The instructions in the box just say “connect the ethernet cable, connect the power cable, browse to homeassistant.local:8123” but that hasn’t worked.

Looking at the router admin screens, there is no IP assigned or device detected.

So far:

  • I’ve detected that the green network light is still flashing (it is)
  • I’ve power cycled the N2+ to see if it reconnects to the network (it doesn’t)
  • I’ve tested the patch lead and router port with another device (both fine)
  • I’ve power cycled the router (no change)
  • I’ve connected an hdmi lead to see if its booted (it seems to have, I’m not familiar enough to debug what its saying)
  • I’ve watched the HDMI output when I remove the ethernet lead and it detects that the link is down, and then re-established at 1gbps when I reconnect it

Am I missing something here? Per above, this is its first power on. Purchased from odroid.co.uk with their PSU and assembled by them in advance.

Thanks in advance for any guidance you can offer.

2

I’m not clear on what is displayed. By default it should be the host login:
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Are you seeing more than that?

3

Thanks for this,

I’m seeing that, then a lot of audi apparmor=“STATUS” operation=“profile_replace”, then a lot of port 3 entering blocking state, then entered disabled state, 4 goes blocking, then forwarding, then disabled, link becomes ready…

If I login as root / no pass, it doesn’t give an address for eth0, says HassOS 4.20, Core version 2021.3.4.

Then it tells me a pair of URLs, but neither works.

4

I end up here:

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If I unplug and restore the network lead, I get this:

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I also get this lot:

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Sorry, I can imagine how annoying it is to read walls of console output :slight_smile:

5

Sorry, first time on the boards, replied to myself instead of you. I’ve added some detail below if you’re able to help? Appreciate your time.

6

Edit: on which device are you trying to browse? If I remember correctly Android does not support the homeassistant.local naming…

You have to browse to http://homeassistant.local:8123 on another device, e.g. your laptop, this device is just the server…

7

You got to the custom Home Assistant command line, which is good. Then pulling power and it boots again, you are probably logging in too early as “root”, and the custom HA command line (HA-cli) has not started yet, so you get thrown to the host console.

From the host console, if you enter nmcli you should see a lot more detailed network info. It should be getting an address from your router, and this would normally appear as an active connection in green at the top. You can use the spacebar to get through the pages of details, and use ctrl+c to get back out.

You can also use nmcli commands to set your ipv4 address as static, along with your gateway (route4 in my pic) and dns server. https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/blob/7e702a2ab2ee7e76ed7f3a1be6f98a3c832b557e/Documentation/network.md#using-nmcli-to-set-a-static-ipv4-address

And yes, neither of those hostname URLs are going to work if there is no active ip address appearing.

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1 Like
8

Thanks again for this. Perfect instructions. I did a host restart and let it come up again. After I’d logged in, the nmcli command gave me an orange eth0, which is what I suspect you expected.

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I’m now checking for an unused ip address and will follow the link you gave to set a static one.

Much appreciated.

9

Thanks for those instructions. I didn’t have a “HassOS default” connection,

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so I tried editing wired connection 1 instead with:
nmcli con edit "Wired connection 1"

That’s given me a green link and an ipaddress which should be a step forwards.

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Still no ability to connect on homeassistant.local:8123 or 10.212.1.180:8123 though. The app says “Unknown error: URLSessionTask failed with error: Could not connect to the server.”

The browser just times out. Ping sees no response from that address.

Really sorry to keep bugging you. Any thoughts as to my next steps?

— edit: I tried adding 10.212.1.181 as well, no joy.

10

Thanks for the pointers. No, I’m trying to browse to it from the app, an iPhone, or my Mac. Or even just see an ip allocation on the router. The “Blue” instructions seem to imply plugging it in is all I needed to do, but it’s taking a fair bit more than that. Not quite there yet, either.

11

It looks like your router is 192.168.1.1 ? It is also set as the DNS server in the bottom of your screenshot. Did you add the 10.212.1.180 yourself? Two separate networks? It should absolutely be plug in and go, assuming you have one router.

12

You can also try resetting the network configuration to default, using the instructions on that same page I linked. https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/blob/7e702a2ab2ee7e76ed7f3a1be6f98a3c832b557e/Documentation/network.md#reset-network

That way you know you are starting from the beginning.

13

Yep. Instructions said gateway and dns should be the same as my router. 192.168.1.1.

My wired connection comes via a velop mesh. The towers have rj45 ports on the base and the hue bridge plugged into the adjacent socket is assigned the 10.212.1.x address.

I’ll try it directly into the router. No screen there though, so won’t know what it’s up to if it doesn’t connect.

14

This may be relevant to your situation

15

That’s a good idea. I tried resetting but it said it couldn’t stat the system-connections folder.

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Not sure where that leaves me now, as step one was killing off my connection settings.

Am glad it should be plug and play. I’m sure we are getting closer.

16

hmm…try this instead?

cp /mnt/overlay/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/* /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/

17

Thanks.

This says they are the same file. Will restart and see if anything has changed.

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Edit: nope. Still has my IP address as 10.212.1.180/24. Is there any other way to reset this?

18

We can still manually set up a new network profile using nmcli. You might come over to the Discord chat?
It would be faster

2 Likes
19

Interim update for anyone else with the issue (I hit my post limiter, else would have updated sooner):

End of first day, the HA Blue is still not showing up on my network. Despite very good efforts of @cogneato, it still doesn’t take an IP address or show any connection in the router software. We’ve tried setting manual ipv4 addresses, gateways, dns servers, and no dice.

We have uncovered some uncertainty around the interplay of the velop mesh and the router, where the former manages DHCP services and the latter is an ISP provided router physically patched to the first mesh tower. I hadn’t realised that might be problematic, because although its not necessarily common, everything I’ve ever plugged into any of the mesh towers has just picked up an IP address from it and been immediately connectable. Taking the same port on the tower, the same patch lead, and plugging in a game console has revealed working autodetected settings for ip range, gateway and dns server, and yet copying those into blue then reattaching it to the same port and lead did not show any presence when rebooted.

None of which takes away from the efforts of cogneato. We did go to Discord, and we tried to set up a new network profile. The system default one we’d expected to find in /mnt/overlay/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/* was identical to the one we were using, and we’ve not yet found a way to get back to a clean start.

I’ve factory reset the mesh and started anew with that. No change on blue. Still doesn’t appear on the network. Velop now putting out addresses in the 10.13.1.x/24 range, so I’ve tried that too.

We’ve also tried to get the connection back to its auto state, but as we were unable to make the connection on blue save after set ipv4.mode auto (as removed the addresses, but then wouldn’t save without them) To attempt a workaround on that I’ve also run set ipv4.dns with no value and set ipv4.gateway with no value. print ipv4 now shows no addresses and saves with auto enabled, but on restart nmcli just shows no ip address and says its getting ip configuration.

I was glad to have a tv with an hdmi lead on it near the mesh tower, as we are mostly iMac and laptop here. Screens and keyboards are not an easy find, and I’d naively thought I’d just be able to plug it in and go from the web UI. Much poring over console output. Thank goodness for HDTV sets, but I dread to think how this would have worked if I didn’t have a TV near a network port.

We’ll get there. Just not yet. If we find a solution, I’ll post it here as I’d hate for anyone to read this lot, say “Gosh! That’s me too!” and not know how we solved it in the end.

Presently, I’ve gone back to set ipv4.mode manual and given it a dns via set ipv4.dns 8.8.8.8 and the gateway set ipv4.gateway 10.13.1.1 and the address set ipv4.address 10.13.1.200/24

I’ve also realised I can remove ipv4 addresses via:
nmcli con mod "Wired connection 1" -ipv4.addresses "10.13.1.200/32"
which is easier than resetting to auto when I forget the subnet.

Restart shows me a green connection, but http://10.13.1.200:8123/ doesn’t take me anywhere. So, learning lots but going nowhere thus far :frowning:

20

When you try and connect to that address are you connected via the mesh from both the browsing device and the blue?