Time to upgrade - anything I need to know?

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1

My C7 has started going offline. (This has happened three times in the last week- and twice in the last 24 hours. The first two times, under an older firmware, and last time with the latest firmware.)

I think it may finally be time to move to a C8. I'm assuming I can easily back up all my data and settings from the C7, and then upload it to the C8. Is there anything else I need to know when making the move?

Thanks very much!

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You need a cloud backup to migrate the zigbee and zwave mesh, especially important for Zwave. They are allowing free migration cloud backups for people who upgrade to a C8.
This covers it all: How to Migrate to a New Hub | Hubitat Documentation

That being said, unless you suspect some sort of hardware failure it is unlikely that upgrading will solve your problem. Usually hub lock-ups are from driver/app issues so if you migrate that over it will continue on the new hub.

The C8 has the same memory and processing power as the C7. The improvements are mainly the zwave / zigbee chips, and the external antennas. Much of the rest is relatively the same as the C7.

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3

Thanks for the insights! I guess I need to figure out what's causing it. I haven't changed any drivers, etc. The only thing that changed was updating the firmware last night. Hopefully, the logs will help uncover.....something.

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There are a lot of other threads out there that go through things to check and look for, many of which I have replied to and tried to help. The logs are only useful if you happen to have a bunch of warnings or errors being spammed out, otherwise they are often of no help.

The first and biggest thing to check is when it goes offline, check if you can access the diagnostics UI which is at http://HUB.IP:8081, you need the MAC from the sticker on the hub to log in. This will tell you if the network interface crashed or just the main hub OS. The diagnostic tool is supposed to be available even if the Hub OS goes offline.

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Thanks for that! I obviously can't open the web interface. The first symptom has been Alexa reporting that the lights I'm trying to switch through Hubitat are not responding. That could also be a network issue, as opposed to the OS. I'll definitely look into this.

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Yes but the diagnostics tool (8081) is supposed to still be up if the main interface goes down. If not then it points to networking.

Also, check the LED light color when it hangs.

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7

Got a little more insight now. The diagnostics tool page is working, And the LED remains green. It still cannot communicate with Alexa to control lights, and the dashboards do not load in the app *as well as the main interface in the web browser (which seems completely logical to me).

So it seems the OS is running, but the network interface isn't. At the same time, the OS is not communicating with other devices. (Alexa is the only symptom here. I will have to reboot to restart the network interface, so I can check logs to see if it is still able to communicate with OctoPi. The Thermostat runs fine on its own, unless Hubitat is sending commands to it.)

All that said, any insights on what could be causing the network interface to shut down repeatedly?

Thanks!

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If you can connect to the diagnostics port, but not the hub platform (port 80), then the network interface is not down. Rather, the platform JVM has crashed.

To fix it, perform a soft reset as described in the Hubitat documentation.

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9

What @aaiyar said is correct, the network interface is fine since you can still connect to the other port. Try doing a local backup and then restore it right away (which does a soft reset). See if this helps at all.

If that does not help, then you will need to look at the Logs > App / Device Stats.
Check all the boxes and see what your top contenders are for % of total, anything above 1.0 I would consider suspect.

The most common things to crash the hub would be Wifi/Lan integrations that are not able to connect and keep trying over and over again, which eventually can crash the hub platform.

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Thanks to both of you. I guess I misunderstood 'network interface', and didn't realize it is really more synonymous with 'network connection'. :slight_smile:

This definitely gives me a better idea of what's going on. I'll give this a go!