Hub hangs following period of inactivity

Yep. Go to settings))backup and download a new backup (that will be a clean up the database) then go to yourhubip:8081 and do soft reset. On reboot, when prompted to restore, use the database you downloaded to your pc

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Thank you for the PM. May I ask how do you determine that hub stops working, and also, mind me asking when was the last time such event occurred. I took a look at your hub's engineering logs and I do not see any traces of your hub going missing, or "crashing" of any kind. I see that the hub was disconnected from the network 10 days ago, but no problems more recently. You do not need to perform Soft Reset or take any further actions. Instead, let me know as soon as you find the hub unreachable so we can address the issue when it happens.

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OK willdo. When I restarted it this weekend, I substituted the power supply with a PoE adapter, so I now have the ability to power cycle the hub remotely if necessary (fully managed network).

To elaborate further: I define "Hub Stops working" in one of two ways

  1. I discover I cannot connect to the GUI from my remote location, coincident with this I can see zero network activity on the hub from network instrumentation.
  2. When I arrive at the property after my typical 5-day absence, the two devices I have (both buttons) are nonfunctional. This usually leads to me discovering that 1) is the case.
    The only recovery appears to be power cycling.
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I believe that the two items are unrelated. I do not see any evidence of the first to happen, as the routine tasks are running uninterrupted. The second, may be related to the mesh. When first powered, the radio has boosted power, if devices are at the edge of your mesh, they may stop working. Adding a repeater to support the battery powered devices may help alleviate second item.

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This is where having an external logging system comes into play. There's a number of options. I think most folks go with influxdb and Grafana: Linux and Windows guides. I personally use Splunk and have a dashboard setup for the info from the Hub info driver. Here's a snippet:

You can graph and retain the data locally using something like Hubigraphs, but your data retention periods are going to be shorter.

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The two devices are located within 5 feet of the hub, so it seems extremely unlikely to be a mesh or battery problem. These are the only zwave/zigbee devices within several miles (this is in the middle of nowhere), so not likely interference.

I am unclear on what you mean by "I do not see any evidence of the first happening". When this happens, the device is not contactable on the network - no response to either attempts to login or to ping it.

Thanks for the "howto" links. I had already run up an influx/telegraf/grafana in a spare VM in anticipation, i was just not sure on the plumbing at the Hubitat end.

The engineering logs hold a lot of data and nothing was indicating lockups. What color is the LED on the hub when this happens? Is it connected into a switch? What make and model? Or directly into a router? (Make/model?). Have you tried switching ports on what it's plugged into?

The LED is green when this happens

It is connected to a Ubiquiti Switch 24, which connects via fiber to a UDMP, via cat6 to an ARRIS SB8200.
I switched the network ports this weekend when I moved to using PoE power via an adapter to allow me to power cycle remotely, so we will see if that makes any difference.

Concerning the network connection, the Hub exhibited the same behavior when I first set it up last year. At that time, the network was completely different - different switch, different router, and different address space (in the same physical location) The behavior was the same, but I simply had no spare time to troubleshoot since I would not be needing to integrate it until this year.

Now I am at the point where I am integration testing various network infrastructure components and ran into the problem again.

There have been rare instances, where some hubs stop working due to local network issues. When that happens, those events are clearly recorded in the engineering log, and the hub stops performing its routine tasks. That is not the case with your hub, that's why I said the next time it freezes to let us know so we can address the issue when it happens.

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Ok, willdo.

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OK, after several weeks of stability, I had the behavior happen again. The last activity I see from the hub in the log was 11-07 09:00:54.035. When I checked this evening, there was no response from the GUI nor to pings of the IP address. Nobody has been at the property since around 18:00 on Sunday evening (11-06), so nobody pressing buttons or doing anything.

I remotely power cycled at 18:38 this evening, and the hub came back up. Any suggestions for further troubleshooting?

Since the last time the issue occurred, I had updated the device to 2.3.3.140.

I also added the hub information driver, although i had not done much with setting up a database, i see activity at 11-07 09:02:00 but nothing after that

Just a point to note. Power cycling as opposed to a controlled shutdown or reboot can cause database corruption. That corruption itself could potentially cause the hub to lockup necessitating a soft reset and restore to clean the database.

As it’s remote you might want to set up a VPN so you can troubleshoot. Even when the hub gui is not responsive you may be able to access the diagnostics page at hubipaddress:8081. That would allow you to reboot it, restore it.

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Please be careful. Power cycling the hub like that can lead to corruption in which you will have to soft reset and restore again.

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Understood, however, since there is no response either from the primary GUI or the diagnostics page at 8081, and the device's network interface is not pingable, it is unclear what the next steps are with a device that appears to be inert other than drawing power. I am open to suggestions.

What color is the light on the hub?

If it's green then hub is booted. I would press and hold the reset button on the bottom of the hub for 7 seconds. (It's the only round hole out of all the square ones) using a paper clip or toothpick. This will ONLY reset the network settings, not the hub. Then see if you can get to the hub.

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The device is physically remote, but the network involved is part of my larger private WAN, so network access is not an issue. No response to GUI, no response on the diagnostic port, and it is not pingable. At the moment, the device is in test/staging with a couple of buttons for evaluation purposes and is not yet deployed for active use. Given the trivial nature of this setup, its very concerning that the lockup behavior is occurring repeatedly.

Lockups can be caused by a few reasons. Rogue devices, badly written 3rd party drivers. Badly written 3rd party apps. Devices spamming the mesh because they're paired with s0 encryption (especially zooz stuff). Over power reporting by devices. A notorious offender is the zen 25. Also database corruption will cause lockups

I would still hit that reset button just to eliminate the issue