Disaster Recovery Problems

Posted on
Mon Feb 20, 2017 4:33 am
RedYuriPrime offline
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Joined: Oct 14, 2014
Location: Oxford

Disaster Recovery Problems

Yesterday a power fault stopped my Mac Mini, and on resumption of power the Mac would not restart. :evil: Since the System controls heating, lighting, security, etc., then getting it up and running again quickly was an imperative.

I have another Mac/Indigo setup, with its own license, for testing purposes (it stops me messing up the house control system to often as I try new bits of hardware), but in this instance I just wanted to use it as a working Mac, and get the normal 'home' license and software running on this Mac Mini before sorting out the failed Mac. Fortunately I had an almost up to date backup of the Indigo database (Indigo 7.02) and the python scripts that run a lot of the functionality. However, I met with a couple of issues:

i) The two macs have different user file structures (e.g. different user names). Within scripts, I reference a file path stored in a variable, which enabled me to accommodate this, but within Indigo itself it appears uses absolute file paths for python files called from triggers etc. so all of these needed updating. The only workaround for this I can think of for the future is to set up 'user' or 'all user accessible' folders which are the same on every Mac, to contain all the python files, unless there is an embedded path variable within indigo you can access.

ii) Having got this system working, I have not been able to get the reflector working. I can control the system locally via Bonjour, but the system will not make contact with the reflector - what do I need to do to correct this. This is important for any rapid disaster recovery - remote access is a key facility the system provides. I suspect the underlying issue here is one of license control (although I have of course had to move the control stick over - the Aeon Labs Z stick gen 5, so the license is seeing some of the same hardware). If this is the case, things could get worse before they get better, as I need to know the old Mac will at least allow Indigo to run stably before I move back to that as the control Mac.

iii) I have got the failed Mac Mini working again - Apple (on a Sunday afternoon!) helped me rebuild the OSX (v10.10). However Indigo will not run properly on it. I have yet to try installing an older version of the database, which may restore this, but the symptoms are odd - i) when started Indigo performs normally for the startup process and then suddenly starts reporting an infinite series of errors into the log file at very high rate and completely overloading the processor, and ii) Indigohost remains active even when Indigo is forcible shut down, and even after a reboot of the Mac! - the only solution seems to be to to use the Activity Monitor app to force processes to close. I upgraded Indigo to version 7.03 in case Indigo had become corrupted, but the problem persisted. Hopefully I can resolve this by going back to an earlier version of the database (having got the system working at least in part I am trying to work through the issues steadily rather than cause more problems) - I assume it indicates database corruption but the symptoms threw me for a while, since the problem was not resolved with a reboot! Will post the results with an older database when tested.

Any input welcome! Is there an accepted protocol for managing a Mac failure (and associated license issues). Whilst they are impressively reliable, hardware failure is bound to happen sometime!

Regards,
Geoff

Z-wave system with 80+ devices, Indigo7 on a dedicated MacMini
Controlling lighting, heating, hotwater, security; but still a lot to learn ... :shock:

Posted on
Mon Feb 20, 2017 9:45 am
RedYuriPrime offline
Posts: 58
Joined: Oct 14, 2014
Location: Oxford

Re: Disaster Recovery Problems

Following on from above. :shock:

Spent some more time trying to resolve the fact that Indigohost starts up everytime I reboot.
Having moved the current indigo database and all the python files to another folder so that indigo can't find them, and stopped Indigo automatically booting as an application, Indigohost still manages to start up and run the python programmes - sending out emails amongst other things, and clogging up the processor again. Boy is this programme tenacious! (Actually one of the issues that has caused confusion seems to be that under IOS, whenever you move a set of files it keeps track of where you have moved the files to, enabling them to be found by programmes - having mainly a Windows background this behaviour is confusing and very weird!)

Final solution was to uninstall Indigo 7, deleting all the files under - Library/Application Support/Perceptive Automation/Indigo 7, then reinstall. Careful testing showed that Indigo was now well behaved in that Indigohost didn't keep restarting on reboot.

Finally have my original Mac Mini running the house again :D

Z-wave system with 80+ devices, Indigo7 on a dedicated MacMini
Controlling lighting, heating, hotwater, security; but still a lot to learn ... :shock:

Posted on
Mon Feb 20, 2017 10:23 am
jay (support) offline
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Re: Disaster Recovery Problems

Not sure why a plugin host process would start on boot - we never do that. The server always starts and manages those processes so I don't know how that was possible.

Mac OS X uses something called aliases - which are persistent references to files. If you move a file, apps that store the alias record will always find it. This is standard behavior on Mac OS X.

It sure sounds like your Mac got into some bad state. The restore on your failed Mac likely screwed up file permissions - and unfortunate bug that's been in all versions of Mac OS X since, well, the beginning. Just rerunning the installer, however, should have fixed those permission issues. Otherwise, it's hard to know what happened.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Mon Feb 20, 2017 12:19 pm
matt (support) offline
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Re: Disaster Recovery Problems

As long as the backup Mac has the following folder from the main Mac:

/Library/Application Support/Perceptive Automation/Indigo 7/Preferences/PrismReflector/

it will have the reflector pairing/key information. Reflectors can only be actively used by a single Mac, so you'll want to make sure you deselect the Enable anywhere secure access checkbox on the backup Mac (inside the Start Local Server dialog) until you need to use it (when the main Mac goes down). If it doesn't work, then you can always follow these steps to reset the activation of the reflector which will re-pair it with the other Mac.

Image

Posted on
Fri Mar 17, 2017 9:55 am
RedYuriPrime offline
Posts: 58
Joined: Oct 14, 2014
Location: Oxford

Re: Disaster Recovery Problems

Thanks Jay and Matt. Recovered from the disaster and have had the original MAC running the system again for some time :D

I now need to correctly configure the temporary MAC, back to how it was, running my development installation.
How do I get Indigo 7 to change the (Indigo 7) license back to the one assigned to this machine, without having to uninstall and re-install indigo? During the disaster recovery I moved from 6 to 7 and that gave me the opportunity to put in the Indigo 7 license code from the failed MAC, but now I need to remain in Indigo 7, but bring up the license window.

Regards,
Geoff

Z-wave system with 80+ devices, Indigo7 on a dedicated MacMini
Controlling lighting, heating, hotwater, security; but still a lot to learn ... :shock:

Posted on
Fri Mar 17, 2017 3:13 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Disaster Recovery Problems

Open the about window and shift click the registration code.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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