My MP Betas = 1x all good 1x dud

[Ross Bennetts]

Hi All,

I recently received my two Mesh Potato Beta units and cleared the decks for some testing this weekend.
One of my test units appears to have some problems and unfortunately it was the first one I decided to try. After mucking around and trying everything, thinking I must have been doing something wrong... I eventually sparked up the second one and it worked perfectly.

The dud:

• PWR light on
• LINK light on when ethernet cable is connected
  
• no dialtone on the TEL line (even after several hours)
  
• no ping, telnet or ssh to 192.168.1.20 nor 172.31.255.254
• no flashing WIFI light
• I opened it up and reseated the daughterboard and then removed and reseated the daughter board and checked the aerial connection, all to no avail
• there was some external damage to the cardboard box in which this unit was posted, but it seemed to be only to the corner where the power supply was located and the PSU is A-OK (see photo link below)
  

netcat (nc) on OSX claims that it is an error to use -l in conjunction with -p so I haven't yet been able to try disaster recovery/failsafe mode
http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/nc.1.html
I've been planning to run up an Ubuntu VM on my MacBook Pro... it might now be necessary for further testing and diagnosis.

The 'all good':

• is all good
• PWR light on
• LINK light on
• ACT light flashing with activity
  
• WIFI light flashing
• dialtone on handset
  
• connected to telnet, then ssh & web
  
• IP address set & MP connected to my LAN
• ping google.com OK
  

I tried to call Elektra on 87*98*162*247 but it was 8:23 on Sunday morning in Germany and I expected her to be sleeping in... it sounded like it was ringing...

There is some Geiger-counter-like crackling on the line, but other than that it seems groovy... but with only one, I have no mesh...

Any suggestions?

Cheers,
   Ross...

P.S. Photos of my adventure are now on Flickr with a Creative Commons (Attribution 2.0 Generic) license, so feel free to do whatever with any of the less blurry ones... http://www.flickr.com/photos/rmwb/sets/72157623244694449/ :)

--
Ross M. W. Bennetts
http://rossbennetts.com/

E-mail: ross.b...@gmail.com
H.323 Video: 129.180.10.2
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rmwb/
Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/rmwb/
Facebook: http://facebook.com/ross.bennetts

[elektra]

Hello Ross -

sorry to hear that!

> I tried to call Elektra on 87*98*162*247 but it was 8:23 on Sunday morning
> in Germany and I expected her to be sleeping in... it sounded like it was
> ringing...

Actually I came back from a party at 6 am in the morning ;-)

You can try now - however I won't be available all the time. Need to set up a
voice mailbox on the MP.

> There is some Geiger-counter-like crackling on the line, but other than
> that it seems groovy... but with only one, I have no mesh...

These little click sound in the dialtone occur sometimes and are affecting the
dialtone, we haven't found the reason yet.

It seems the reset button is not working on the betas yet. So no chance to use
the OpenWrt failsafe mechanism at the moment. You can reflash the MP via serial
port or telnet. Your MP seems to have a firmware issue. No hardware defect, I
hope.

Cheers,
Elektra

[David Rowe]

Hello Ross,

It's possible your dud unit somehow slipped thru without the firmware
being installed, or it may be a hardware problem.

At a minimum the boot loader should be alive, test like this:

1/ Connect an Ethernet cable but don't power up the MP.

2/ On your host PC start a ping session "ping 192.168.1.20"

3/ Apply power to the MP.

4/ If the boot loader is alive after about 5 seconds you will get ping
replies from 192.168.1.20. Normally these will stop after about 5
seconds as Linux boots.

5/ In the 5-second interval while the boot loader is running you can
telnet into the boot loader using:

$ putty -telnet 192.168.1.20 9000

Regular telnet didn't work for me, something to do with passing Ctrl-C

If there are no pings at all in step 4 post the MP back to me and I'll
take a look.

Cheers,

David

On Sun, 2010-02-07 at 20:37 +1100, Ross Bennetts wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I recently received my two Mesh Potato Beta units and cleared the
> decks for some testing this weekend.
> One of my test units appears to have some problems and unfortunately
> it was the first one I decided to try. After mucking around and trying
> everything, thinking I must have been doing something wrong... I
> eventually sparked up the second one and it worked perfectly.
>
> The dud:

> * PWR light on
> * LINK light on when ethernet cable is connected
> * no dialtone on the TEL line (even after several hours)
> * no ping, telnet or ssh to 192.168.1.20 nor 172.31.255.254
> * no flashing WIFI light
> * I opened it up and reseated the daughterboard and then removed

> and reseated the daughter board and checked the aerial
> connection, all to no avail

> * there was some external damage to the cardboard box in which

> this unit was posted, but it seemed to be only to the corner
> where the power supply was located and the PSU is A-OK

> (seephoto link below)

> netcat (nc) on OSX claims that it is an error to use -l in conjunction
> with -p so I haven't yet been able to try disaster recovery/failsafe
> mode
> http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/nc.1.html
> I've been planning to run up an Ubuntu VM on my MacBook Pro... it
> might now be necessary for further testing and diagnosis.
>
> The 'all good':

> * is all good
> * PWR light on
> * LINK light on
> * ACT light flashing with activity
> * WIFI light flashing
> * dialtone on handset
> * connected to telnet, then ssh & web
> * IP address set & MP connected to my LAN
> * ping google.com OK

> I tried to call Elektra on 87*98*162*247 but it was 8:23 on Sunday
> morning in Germany and I expected her to be sleeping in... it sounded
> like it was ringing...
>
> There is some Geiger-counter-like crackling on the line, but other
> than that it seems groovy... but with only one, I have no mesh...
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> Cheers,
> Ross...
>
> P.S. Photos of my adventure are now on Flickr with a Creative Commons
> (Attribution 2.0 Generic) license, so feel free to do whatever with
> any of the less blurry ones...
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/rmwb/sets/72157623244694449/ :)
>
> --
> Ross M. W. Bennetts
> http://rossbennetts.com/
>
> E-mail: ross.b...@gmail.com
> H.323 Video: 129.180.10.2
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/rmwb/
> Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/rmwb/
> Facebook: http://facebook.com/ross.bennetts
>
>
>

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[elektra]

Hello David -

not sure about the bootloader IPs. I checked one of the new MPs today -
it was 192.168.1.124.

I have added a section about how to detect the bootloader IP in the disaster
recovery howto in the VT wiki.

http://wiki.villagetelco.org/index.php?title=Mesh_Potato_HOWTOs#Detect_the_IP_address_of_the_bootloader

Cheers,
Elektra

[Akshay Mishra]

Hi Elektra,
I could not detect the Redboot IP even with nmap -- it
requires some time juggling.
However, I could reflash my MP by entering failsafe and then using
LuCI to reset the firmware.
I now have my MP fully useful again.

regards,
Akshay

>
> Cheers,
> Elektra

>
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[Ross Bennetts]

The good one is definitely good... I just used it to speak to Elektra in Germany and it sounded like he was in the next room... during the call there was one minor, temporary breakup where I could not here Elektra (possibly FreiFunk related), but most of the time the sound was very clear and good with only very minor occasional (Dalek style) compression artifacts...
I'll try to make time to play with the other one again tomorrow night... and I'll be installing Asterisk shortly...

Most impressed... :)

Cheers,
   RMWB...

[Ross Bennetts]

Sorry Elektra,

Edited for late night, lazy finger typos...

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 11:43 PM, Ross Bennetts <ross.b...@gmail.com> meant to write:

 I just used it to speak to Elektra in Germany and it sounded like she was in the next room...