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Manual Control

Boaz Feldboim edited this page Aug 1, 2021 · 10 revisions

The manual control is used to control recovery from the box front panel instead of the HTML interface and get information about the recovery stages. A secondary usage for the lamps of the manual control is to get information about the setup (initialization) stages when the box is turned on until it is operational.

When the Control page is shown in the browser and manual control is used, the control page is updated according to the operations done by the user. Also when the box is controlled from the Control page, the indicator lamps of the manual control are updated accordingly.

Initialization Stages:

The setup process is slightly different when the box is used with wired ethernet or with WiFi.

Wired ethernet:

  • The blue (left most) lamp blinks for 10 seconds. This delay is required for the router to get through its first initialization process. Without this delay period the router might assign a wrong address to the box. This time can be configured using the RouterInitTimeSec parameter in the config.txt file. The default value is 10 (seconds), in case this parameter is omitted from the file.
  • The red Modem lamp blinks until the box is assigned with an IP address by the router.
  • The yellow unlock lamp blinks until DNS queries returns successfully. This in general means that the router and modem established a valid connection to the Internet. This stage is limited by default to 5 minutes. This time period can be changed using the DNSAvailTimeSec configuration parameter in config.txt file. If DNS queries are not successful within this time limit, initialization would still continue to the next stage.
  • The red Router lamp blinks until a valid time reading is returned from the time server. This stage is limited to 5 minutes. If time could not be retrieved from the time server within this time limit, initialization stage is ended. This means that the time stamps for recovery records shown in the history page would not be correct. The code still periodically attempts to retrieve the time from the time server also during the operational stage.

Each of the three last stages above can fail. If this happens, the box would still get into the operational state, but it would most probably start recovery cycles right away.

Wifi:

The blue lamp lit constantly almost right after turning the box on. The rest of the lamps function the same as with wired ethernet.

Controlling the box manually

Normal state

In normal state, when Internet is connected, the lamps lit as follows: the blue lamp lit in full brightness, the other three lamps lit dimly.

Initiating connection test

When the box is in the normal state, that is Internet is connected (no recovery is in progress), pressing the blue button will start a connection test cycle. During this cycle the blue lamp will flash until connection is tested to be OK, otherwise a recovery cycle will start. Usually when internet is connected, the blue lamp will blink once briefly and will return to light in full brightness.

Initiating router or modem recovery cycle:

When the box is in the normal state, pressing the yellow unlock button for one second unlocks the red modem and router recovery buttons for three seconds. During this time the yellow unlock button and the two red modem and router recovery buttons lit in full brightness. When the recovery buttons are unlocked, pressing the modem button initiates a modem recovery cycle and pressing the router button initiates a router recovery cycle.

During a recovery cycle:

When a recovery cycle is in progress the corresponding red lamp blinks twice in a second. If internet connection is resumed, the lights return to the normal state. If internet connection is not resumed within the corresponding configured time period, a new recovery cycle begins for the other device. That is if router recovery failed, mode recovery starts and vice versa. This can continue depending on the configuration forever until internet connectivity is resumed, or until maximum number of recovery cycles is exceeded. Then the box enters the Recovery failed state.

Recovery failed:

During this state the yellow unlock lamp and the two modem and router recovery lamp lit dimly and the blue lamp is turned off. During this state the box periodically tests internet connectivity. If internet connectivity is resumed, the blue lamp lit in full brightness and the other lamp continue to lit dimly. The user can initiate a recovery cycle by pressing the unlock button for one second and then pressing one of the recovery (modem or router) buttons within three seconds.