Hello All,
I have setup two Obitalk one locally and another overseas. I have tested the one overseas when I was their last month by powering the surge arestor off/on and it came up fine. Now, I'm away and it seem that it hanged up ... need resetting ...I can not access it.
My local Obi hanged up too without any power failer and had to reset it from the local phone attached to it. I wonder if this had to do something with the Obi server it self or if it can be reset from the server as it can see it through the Obi number... "if I'm correct".
I like to know if there is any way I can access the remote unit to reset it please.
when I dial the internationally number its connected to the phone just keep ringing.
any advise would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Joseph
The same thing happened to my OBi and I had to get a friend to go in and cycle power.
There have been indications that there is a DHCP-related bug; setting a static IP may help prevent future trouble. Obviously, set that up while someone is there to recover, in case it doesn't work as expected.
If you have remote access to the router, see if the OBi is online. If not, it will clearly need human intervention. Have your friend bring a paper clip, so s/he can do a factory reset, in case cycling power is not enough. If it is online, set up a port forward and try to access the OBi's web interface and reboot it.
If you have dynamic DNS set up in your router, check whether it updated recently. If not, there may be nothing wrong with the OBi, but your Internet connection went down.
For the long haul, consider getting a PDU like this: http://www.opengear.com/product-ip-power.html . You can manually cycle power on any attached device, or program it to automatically reboot a unit that stops responding to pings.
Quote from: Stewart on January 04, 2012, 07:04:35 PM
The same thing happened to my OBi and I had to get a friend to go in and cycle power.
There have been indications that there is a DHCP-related bug; setting a static IP may help prevent future trouble. Obviously, set that up while someone is there to recover, in case it doesn't work as expected.
If you have remote access to the router, see if the OBi is online. If not, it will clearly need human intervention. Have your friend bring a paper clip, so s/he can do a factory reset, in case cycling power is not enough. If it is online, set up a port forward and try to access the OBi's web interface and reboot it.
If you have dynamic DNS set up in your router, check whether it updated recently. If not, there may be nothing wrong with the OBi, but your Internet connection went down.
For the long haul, consider getting a PDU like this: http://www.opengear.com/product-ip-power.html . You can manually cycle power on any attached device, or program it to automatically reboot a unit that stops responding to pings.
WoW! Almost $200.
Quote from: Ostracus on January 04, 2012, 08:24:03 PMWoW! Almost $200.
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=IP9258
It says out of stock, but they can probably get one, if you order. Call them first, to check.
If not at Geeks, try http://www.ebay.com/itm/IP-Power-4-Outlet-Network-AC-Power-Remote-Control-w-Built-in-Web-Server-NEW-/400264530382
Hello All, and thanks for responding to my post!
unfortunatly I asked a neighbour to recycle the power but that did not help. I have asked the internet provider to check the line and it checked ok. I have asked them to give me the dynamic IP address assigned to the DSL router in the moment.. hopefully this can help..if not, then I'm out of luck.
if you can think of any think else to bring it on board that would be great ... not sure if any power recycle will bring it back ....
Joseph
If there is a phone attached (or your neighbor is willing to attach one), s/he can do some basic troubleshooting, e.g. is there dial tone, does ***1 give an IP address, does the OBi test number work, can you call out, etc?
Also, see whether the Internet connection is working, if not, try rebooting modem and router. Knowing the states of indicators on modem, router and OBi would be useful.
If needed, a factory reset of the OBi may bring it back to life. This could be initiated by from the phone (if that's working), from the LAN (if that's working) or with a paper clip.
If the neighbor has some technical ability, you could talk him/her through setting up remote management and/or dynamic DNS on router.
unfortunately my neighbour can access the outside of my apartment such the power on/off or the phone line (not the telephone port on the Obi as its inside the apartment) ... would accessing PTSN line itself from outside the apartment would enable me to do any control over the Obi ..such as resetting.
Thanks,
I don't believe that there is anything that you can do from the phone line.
However, if your router has Wi-Fi and you trust the neighbor with the password, they should be able to stand outside your appartment and connect (from a laptop, tablet or smartphone). They could see whether your Internet connection is working and whether the OBi is accessible. Depending on the results, they may be able to reset the OBi or provide you with remote access to it.
If the internet is accessible what is the steps that he can do to access/rest the Obi.
I think the power reset and it came back.
is there any thing that I can do to prevent the hang up from happining again.
your advise would be appreciated.
thanks,
Joseph
Quote from: VeryBigTiger on January 10, 2012, 07:01:50 AM
I think the power reset and it came back.
is there any thing that I can do to prevent the hang up from happining again.
There is some fairly credible evidence that there is a DHCP-related bug; assigning a static private IP address would presumably avoid it.
However, there is some risk in setting that up (a typo could cause you to lose control altogether), and it's not clear that's the bug that bit you, so I don't recommend doing anything until you or a person you trust is on site and can take recovery action if needed.
In my case, control was lost after a reboot related to a config change; a friend went in and cycled power to bring it back on line. What i'm doing to "prevent it from happening again" is to not mess with the configuration until I get back there ;)
Thanks Stewart, your advise is appreciated!!
I have noticed that there is a firmware update, and wonder if I need it and what is it for. ...
Thanks to you ALL!!
I had a sil´milar problem and in my case, the update fixed it.
Hi Paulo,
thanks for your respond.
you saying that with the upgrade the hangup of the device now eliminated on power failure to seek the IP address.
Quote from: Stewart on January 07, 2012, 08:44:58 PM
I don't believe that there is anything that you can do from the phone line.
However, if your router has Wi-Fi and you trust the neighbor with the password, they should be able to stand outside your appartment and connect (from a laptop, tablet or smartphone). They could see whether your Internet connection is working and whether the OBi is accessible. Depending on the results, they may be able to reset the OBi or provide you with remote access to it.
Hi Stewart,
I'm back to halt :-(. My Obi went off line and with no reason at all ... I assumed another power failer but I'm not sure what condition happened that brought it back either. I asked my neighbour to turn power of the apartment off/on, twice and that did not help. I contacted the ISP and they assured me the internet is working. "its their say".
If I can get a neighbour to access my internet from outside my apartment what he can do to get to the OBI to reset it.
thanks!!
The OBiTALK Service was down on and off during the course of the day. Could that explain why you were unable to make contact and why it showed offline?
if the OBItalk service was down, and they have our OBI phone numbers in, it might have a glitch preventing my second OBI to come on line.
Guys, I'm sure after today server maintenance that the problem layed in the OBI Server. I have updated the obi overseas now and hope that their is no more glitches. I will be getting a static IP address their over the weekend and hope that help for the overseas unit.
Line overseas is off again.
when is the next maintenance is planned so I can hope that it will be back (if my assumption is correct).
Obitalk is quite unreliable recently.
Although both line 1 and line 2 work well when configured with other providers, the obitalk part has been frequently offline (brown) with a backing off message, only to connect normally after a few hours / days without any change in configuration.
if its unreliable then that is a problem.
I just got the line back after my posting and sending the ISP an email inquiring about my request for Static IP. I hope that my effort is not going in vein.
is there any way to get the IP address for my obi over seas now its back. I went in the advance configuration and the only thing I see is "192.168.1.2" ... it seem like the DSL router assigning this number ... but I'm sure the Obi server have to call the obi over DSN relative to its number or the correct IP address ... any advise would be appreciated.
You didn't mention a router between your dsl modem and your OBIs, but if you have multiple OBis at your remote site I would guess you must have one; if this is the case what model router do you have there? Most modern routers support dynamic dns from places like http://dyn.com (http://dyn.com). If you don't have this setup then I would highly recommend it so that you can access your router and OBi control webpages remotely. You'd have to open a port on the router and point it to port 80 on your OBi so that you could access the OBi's website control/status.
Your router hands out the ip address to your OBi via dhcp. There are two ways to have this be a "fixed" or "static" address. One is to assign an ip address on your lan to the OBi using the OBi itself. A second way if your router supports it is to "reserve" an ip for your OBi's mac address; that way the router will always hand out the same ip address to your OBi while your OBi still operates in dhcp mode. It is handy to have a static lan address for your OBi so that you can find it at the same lan ip all the time.
It sounds as if your making arrangements to obtain a fixed ip for your wan which may or may not improve your connecting to the OBiTalk network. Each OBi sends out packets of information to the OBiTalk network to identify itself which contain the wan ip address currently assigned to your network periodically. I do not have experience with dsl where the ip changes more frequently since I have cable service and my wan ip is virtually static anyway. I would think the OBi's would report frequently enough to keep up with dsl ip changes but others with real experience may pop in to prove me wrong on this.
If your router supports remote access then you should be able to access it's status page and find out if your OBi is connected or not. I would suggest using SSL remote management or ssh which is even more secure if your router supports it.
The power device Stewart suggested would give you great flexibility and added reliability by being able to toggle the power on the remote devices yourself. I would suggest the http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=9258T-PING (http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=9258T-PING) instead of the basic 9258 model because it adds the ability of the device to ping devices and automatically power cycle them if they do not respond to pings as you define.
The 9258-ping could periodically ping your OBi, and if the OBi does not respond, then the 9258-ping can cycle it's power to force the OBi to reboot. Likewise it can ping your router and perform the same function for it in case the router hangs. Using ping is a little harder for the modem itself, since you cannot ping it from the lan side, but it appears you could ping something like Yahoo or Google and if they do not respond then you could have the 9258-ping power cycle the dsl modem.
I would believe the ISP assigned the Static IP address, and service was working fine.
today >:(. is down again. so I wonder if the OBI server is doing its thing again.
I only have one OBI connected directly to the DSL... it should pickup the IP address from that DSL, but not sure what is happening now.