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p44-ledchain driver v9 is now available as an installable package from the Onion repo!

Upgrade to firmware 23.05.3-20250121, then run opkg update; opkg install kmod-p44-ledchain

Some technical details:

• The previously available p44-ledchain driver package was implemented through a patch to the OnionIoT/openwrt-buildsystem-wrapper, this patch has been removed
• The new p44-ledchain v9 driver package is now built using the OnionIoT/openwrt-sdk-wrapper
• To make this package installable on the device, we added new package repo to the firmware. This repo holds kernel modules compiled using the OpenWRT SDK, making it easy for Onion to publish custom kernel modules
  • The repo can be found at http://repo.onioniot.com/omega2/packages/openwrt-23.05.3/core/

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@mayur_ingle said in Firmware Boot Failure on Onion Omega2+: Steady Orange LED, Stuck Bootloader Mode and Missing Hostname:

Initially, it performed as expected, but after 14 days, the device entered a stuck mode, similar to previous occurrences.

The fact that it now takes 14 days instead of 8-10 days is strange. If the cause of modules getting stuck was indeed too many writes to flash, then I would expect the problem to be resolved. If this was not the cause, I would expect the time it takes to get stuck to be the same as before. It's strange that it changed by a few days.

From a high-level, what else does the script do? Are there any other interactions with the filesystem?
How often do you move the files from /tmp to the flash storage?

@mayur_ingle said in Firmware Boot Failure on Onion Omega2+: Steady Orange LED, Stuck Bootloader Mode and Missing Hostname:

The script is designed to automatically reboot and restart the system if Python is detected as not running,

How are you starting the python program in the first place? And is there a specific reason why you're rebooting the whole device if the python program stops running?

A more straight forward solution would be to run the python program as a service: the system will take care of restarting it if it stops executing, without the need for a full reboot and downtime.
This is the recommended approach.

See this blog post for more information on running a program as service: https://onion.io/2bt-custom-initd-service/

@mayur_ingle said in Firmware Boot Failure on Onion Omega2+: Steady Orange LED, Stuck Bootloader Mode and Missing Hostname:

Do you have any further suggestions for recovering the stuck devices, given that the bootloader menu doesn’t appear to be accessible?

This is a very strange situation. The bootloader is in a completely separate partition, I'm not sure how anything done in linux can impact the bootloader partition. Especially since the bootloader partition is set to read-only from Linux...

Suggestions from my previous post:

For the stuck devices your next step should be trying them on a standard Dock from Onion, and using a simple terminal program like screen, minicom, or putty to try to activate the bootloader menu.
Otherwise, these 3 devices might be write-offs. You can try to recover them by using an external device to rewrite the flash but we (Onion) don't recommend this procedure as a lot can go wrong.

@mayur_ingle said in Firmware Boot Failure on Onion Omega2+: Steady Orange LED, Stuck Bootloader Mode and Missing Hostname:

Could there be an underlying hardware issue contributing to this behavior?

I find this highly unlikely. Otherwise this issue would be seen on all Omega devices eventually.
Since other users have seen a similar issue and successfully resolved it by moving the writes to /tmp, I would venture a guess that it has something to do with how the compressed filesystem reacts to very frequent writes to files.

There's one more avenue you could explore. Try running the same program (but as a service and all file writes going to /tmp, and your reboot script removed) on the new beta firmware.
The beta firmware is based on kernel 5.15, there may be updates to how the kernel interacts with the flash that could resolve the issue you're seeing.

More info and installation instructions for the beta firmware found here: https://onion.io/embracing-the-future-new-omega2-beta-firmware-and-documentation-site/

Let me know how it goes!

Cool! Thanks for the heads up @luz

I've made a github issue to track this update: https://github.com/OnionIoT/OpenWRT-Packages/issues/106

For now the plan is to make this updated driver available in the new 23.05 firmware.

Does anybody have a specific need to have this available in the older v0.3.4 firmware??

@mayur_ingle ok, glad to hear you're now seeing the expected behaviour with the working devices.

The situation is a little unusual with the stuck devices. I didn't expect the bootloader to be impacted by the file system issue.

I agree with what @crispyoz said above:

If you are using an Omega2+ (through hole) my next step would be to insert it into a standard dock and view the boot process using minicom or some other terminal software. I looked at DockLight but haven't used it, but a raw terminal would remove any potential issues of handshaking or such causing the issue.

For the stuck devices your next step should be trying them on a standard Dock from Onion, and using a simple terminal program like screen, minicom, or putty to try to activate the bootloader menu.

Otherwise, these 3 devices might be write-offs. You can try to recover them by using an external device to rewrite the flash but we (Onion) don't recommend this procedure as a lot can go wrong.

@mayur_ingle said in Firmware Boot Failure on Onion Omega2+: Steady Orange LED, Stuck Bootloader Mode and Missing Hostname:

a) On a working device:
I followed the recommended steps: powering on while holding the FW_RST pin (GPIO38) active.
Observation: This process erases the existing firmware on the working device, resets it, and allows me to re-upload the firmware. After this, folders become accessible, and the hostname is visible.
I did not see a bootloader menu during this process; it directly erased the firmware and enabled reconfiguration. In short working fine

This is not expected.
Can you elaborate on your observations? What do you mean by it erases the existing firmware on the device? What were the steps you had to do to make this happen? Can you post a log of the terminal?

Expected behaviour

If you have Omega2 devices manufactured in the last ~7 years, you should see a bootloader menu if the device is powered on with the FW_RST active:

You then need to select an option from the menu. See the Firmware Flashing With Web Recovery Mode docs article for the full process.

@mayur_ingle said in Firmware Boot Failure on Onion Omega2+: Steady Orange LED, Stuck Bootloader Mode and Missing Hostname:

Following your suggestion, I updated the file writes to /tmp and the device is under observation for 8 to 10 days (as my old device is got stucked after 8 days).

Great! I suspect this will resolve the issue. Let us know how it goes!

@mayur_ingle this is a great bug report, very detailed!

Since you're using the through-hole Omega2+, I agree with @crispyoz 's suggestion to try out your stuck devices on a standard dock. Just to rule out any hardware issues.

IMO the issue is more likely to be file system corruption than RAM corruption

Avoiding File System Corruption

@mayur_ingle said in Firmware Boot Failure on Onion Omega2+: Steady Orange LED, Stuck Bootloader Mode and Missing Hostname:

The main_app.py script captures Modbus data packets (32 packets of 105 bytes each) and appends them to an Excel file every 2 seconds.

I responded to your colleague on a GitHub Issue but I will post this here for visibility:

A few other users have reported file system instability when programs are running that frequently write to the flash storage. To get around this, we recommend moving any file writes to the /tmp directory (as this is actually on the RAM, not the flash).

In this case, data that should persist indefinitely should be copied over from /tmp to the flash filesystem (anything else on /) at some longer interval, perhaps daily. Cron is solid tool for this copy job.

Recovering Stuck Devices

How many stuck devices do you currently have?
I'd like to confirm if the bootloader can be accessed on a stuck device.

On a working device, the bootloader menu can be enabled by powering on the device while holding the FW_RST pin (GPIO38) active. This reset pin is active-high, and this is the pin used by the reset button on the Omega2 Docks.
Keep in mind pressing the enter or space keys will not activate the bootloader menu.

Please try this first on a working device, and then try it on a "stuck" device. Report back how it goes.

@crispyoz Your PoE suggestion is interesting! Can you give us a little more detail on why, when, and how PoE is helpful?

This goes for all users!

Who knows? Maybe we make a variant with onboard PoE

Yep!
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We’d love for you to give our campaign page a look and consider backing our Omega2 Eval Boards!

hi @mauriziomeucci, sorry to hear about the frustration caused by not having the avahi daemon.

To quote @crispyoz:

The term "Beta" indicating that it is a test release inviting feedback, which would include which packages users may prefer to be included.

The 23.05 firmware is still in beta and not yet our stable firmware. We want to give users a chance to try it out before rolling it out as the default firmware in the factory.

If you have specific improvement suggestions (or bugs to report), you can create an Issue in the OnionIoT/OpenWRT-Packages GitHub Repo. There are issue templates you can use for Improvement Suggestions/Feature Requests and Bug Reports.

You can also try building your own version of the 23.05 firmware that includes the avahi daemon. This is now very easy and takes minutes instead of hours. See the How to Build Custom Firmware article in the new documentation for the procedure.

Let me know how it goes!

@luz what's a quick way to test if IPv6 and link local is enabled in the new fw? I'm not too familiar with IPv6 - I need to study