NetBurner Community Forum

Short question:
Is the software-watchdog enabled for SBL2e, v1.65, when running the "Dual Serial-to-Ethernet Application" ?

Long story:
My company has been using hundreds of SBL2e's as a Serial to Ethernet adapter for our on-site gateways since 2011.

Recently, we have been experiencing SBL2e lockups at two different installation sites.
Each site has 20+ plus SBL2e-units interconnected with Netgear ProSafe 16-port switches.
All SBL2e run v1.65 and they are powered by this DC/DC converter:
https://www.elfaelectronics.com/elfa3~e ... co+tmr2410
The bootmon is set to the other UART (UART1) to not disturb normal function.

What I mean by lockups is when the SBL2e :
1. Stops responding to IPSetup (v2.1) and the serial-socket connection is lost.
2. Speed and Link diodes are responding as usual when the ethernet-jack is reinserted.

The following may trigger random lockups:
1. Ethernet jacks are reinserted.
2. The switch is restarted. SBL2e are powered in separat.
3. When IPsetup is used to set a certain SBL2e, this SBL2e may lockup. The settings are effective after power-cycling.

SBL2e has always recovered from a lockup after power-cycling.

It is difficult to reproduce this in the lab, but I think I succeeded to trigger one lockup after switching the network-switch on and off in two days in a group of five SBL2e.
The SBL2e in lockup did not respond to commands through UART1, who was set in DEBUGMON. Speed and Link diodes were responding as usual when the ethernet-jack was reinserted.
After tying the reset-pin low and resetting, the unit functioned again and responded to commands through UART1.

If the watchdog is enabled, this could be a hardware issue, and we have plans to implement a hardware watchdog.
I have tried to look for this in the forums and the documentation and we have ordered the development-kit for further investigation, but after seeing it once in the lab, a hardware watchdog seem the most feasible solution.

Regards
Binh

Are you using a POE router? What is the exact model number? Is there any possibility at all that the power is fluctuating?

The model of the switch is JGS516 and there is no PoE.

More than one SBL2e has entered lockup in the same occasions and each SBL2e is powered by separate DC/DC converters, which should rule out power fluctuations on SBL2e.

Power is fluctuating in the sense that mains is is cut from time to time since this is an ongoing installation, but that is only effecting the switches since they are placed centrally.
The SBL2e's together with the gateways are placed in sections where power is not cut since those are finished sections.

Hi
We are also having issues with the SBL2e locking up.
We have 2 products using this board
1. Using only the serial to Ethernet bridge function, this one works fine and doesn't lock up.
2. Using the GPIO server function with or without the serial bridge, the SBL2e is locking up about once a week.

Are you using the GPIO function of the SBL2e?

No, GPIO server is disabled.

Its strange that it happens at only select locations. Is there any possibility that the unit is not locked up, but rather the IP address is no longer valid because other devices in your system were affected during the power cycle they experienced?

We've had IP-conflict in one of the installations where the main Windows-PC has two network cards, one connected to the our installation and another to the customers network.
We can see that the IP-conflicts are gone after the customers sysadmin resolved the conflicts after assigning a subnet to us, but the lockups still occur.

For another installation, we are the sole operators on our own network that we physically built ourselves, and we also still experience these lockups.

The development kit has arrived and I can see that the watchdog is not enabled in the example program named Dual-Serial-to-Ethernet application.