Magic Mirror Blanks Several Hours

MadScientist

Why are you running the update command with sudo?
Does your mirror work but it blanks the screen after some hours or is it always black?

chief

@madscientist It was always black - if I don’t run with sudo it quits almost immediately. I’m not sure exactly what the issue was, but I went ahead and restored a backup from 2.4.1 and it’s working fine now (removed the update alert on the top bar).

StrIIker

I’m still having the issue where my screen blanks (modules stop loading) after about 5-6 hours. I perform a Ctrl-r to reload and it continues. Has anyone else figured out a cause or a solution? I’ll have to add several more cron jobs to reload modules periodically. I am not running anything beyond the core modules at present. I even performed a fresh install and still see this happen. I can’t see this being normal or people just tolerating it…

Thoughts?

/* Magic Mirror Config Sample
*
* By Michael Teeuw http://michaelteeuw.nl
* MIT Licensed.
*/
var config = {
	"port": 8080,
	"language": "en",
	"timeFormat": 24,
	"units": "imperial",
	"modules": [
		{
			"module": "alert"
		},
		{
			"module": "clock",
			"position": "top_left"
		},
		{
			"module": "calendar",
			"header": "Calendar",
			"position": "top_left",
			"config": {
				"calendars": [
					{
						"symbol": "calendar-check-o ",
						"url": "webcal://www.calendarlabs.com/templates/ical/US-Holidays.ics",
						"color": "#FFFFFF"
					},
					{
						"symbol": "calendar ",
						"url": "https://eleted",
						"color": "#04f448",
						"fetchInterval": 30000
					},
					{
                                                "symbol": "birthday-cake ",
                                                "url": "https://deleted                              "color": "#DA70D6",
                                                "fetchInterval": 30000
					},
				],
				"colored": true,
				timeFormat: "absolute",	
				showEnd: false,
				fullDayEventDateFormat: 'Do MMM',
			}
		},
		{
			"module": "compliments",
			"position": "lower_third"
		},
		{
			"module": "currentweather",
			"position": "top_right",
			"config": {
				"location": "deleted",
				"locationID": "deleted",
				"appid": "deleted
			}
		},
		{
			"module": "weatherforecast",
			"header": "Weather Forecast",
			"position": "top_right",
			"config": {
				"location": "deleted",
				"locationID": "deleted",
				"appid": "deleted",
				"colored": "true"
			}
		},
		{
			"module": "newsfeed",
			"position": "bottom_bar",
			"config": {
				"feeds": [
					{
						"title": "New York Times",
						"url": "http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml"
					},
					{
						"title": "BBC World News",
						"url": "http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/world/us_and_canada/rss.xml"
					},
					{
						"title": "Reuters Science News",
						"url": "http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/scienceNews"
					},
				],
				"showSourceTitle": true,
				"showPublishDate": true
			}
		},
		{
			"module": "MMM-Admin-Interface"
		}
	],
	"address": "0.0.0.0",
	"ipWhitelist": [
		"127.0.0.1",
		"::ffff:127.0.0.1",
		"::1",
		"deleted"
	]
};
/*************** DO NOT EDIT THE LINE BELOW ***************/ 
if (typeof module !== 'undefined') {module.exports = config;}

StrIIker

@chief said in Magic Mirror Blanks Several Hours:

@madscientist It was always black - if I don’t run with sudo it quits almost immediately. I’m not sure exactly what the issue was, but I went ahead and restored a backup from 2.4.1 and it’s working fine now (removed the update alert on the top bar).

If you need to run this as sudo then your installation probably has root as the owner of the files. A simple way to check this is log in as pi and type cd ~ and then ls -al you should see the list of files and directories and a column of pi pi (shows owner and group membership of the file or directory). If you see a lot of root root then you ran something which changed ownership of these files and directories…

ls -al
total 221604
drwxr-xr-x  17 pi pi      4096 Oct 10 16:00 .
drwxr-xr-x  27 pi pi      4096 Oct 10 10:33 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 pi pi     24164 Oct  8 18:56 CHANGELOG.md
drwxr-xr-x   2 pi pi      4096 Oct  8 18:56 clientonly
drwxr-xr-x   2 pi pi      4096 Oct  8 19:00 config
-rw-------   1 pi pi 498610176 Oct 10 16:00 core
drwxr-xr-x   3 pi pi      4096 Oct  8 19:16 css
-rw-r--r--   1 pi pi       856 Oct  8 18:56 dangerfile.js
-rw-r--r--   1 pi pi       132 Oct  8 18:56 .eslintignore
-rw-r--r--   1 pi pi       448 Oct  8 18:56 .eslintrc.json
drwxr-xr-x   3 pi pi      4096 Oct  8 19:00 fonts
drwxr-xr-x   8 pi pi      4096 Oct 10 10:33 .git
drwxr-xr-x   2 pi pi      4096 Oct  8 18:56 .github
-rw-r--r--   1 pi pi      1074 Oct  8 18:56 .gitignore
-rw-r--r--   1 pi pi      2385 Oct  8 18:56 Gruntfile.js
-rw-r--r--   1 pi pi      2675 Oct  8 18:56 index.html
drwxr-xr-x   3 pi pi      4096 Oct  8 18:56 installers
drwxr-xr-x   2 pi pi      4096 Oct  8 18:56 js
-rw-r--r--   1 pi pi       271 Oct  8 18:56 jsconfig.json
-rw-r--r--   1 pi pi      1118 Oct  8 18:56 LICENSE.md
drwxr-xr-x   4 pi pi      4096 Oct  8 18:56 modules
-rw-r--r--   1 pi pi      1040 Oct  8 18:56 module-types.ts
drwxr-xr-x 642 pi pi     20480 Oct  8 19:00 node_modules
-rw-r--r--   1 pi pi      2195 Oct  8 18:56 package.json
-rw-r--r--   1 pi pi    271341 Oct  8 19:00 package-lock.json
-rw-r--r--   1 pi pi     14450 Oct  8 18:56 README.md
-rw-r--r--   1 pi pi       142 Oct  8 18:56 run-start.sh
drwxr-xr-x   2 pi pi      4096 Oct  8 18:56 serveronly
-rw-r--r--   1 pi pi       478 Oct  8 18:56 .snyk
drwxr-xr-x   2 pi pi      4096 Oct  8 18:56 splashscreen
-rw-r--r--   1 pi pi       126 Oct  8 18:56 .stylelintrc
drwxr-xr-x   6 pi pi      4096 Oct  8 18:56 tests
drwxr-xr-x   2 pi pi      4096 Oct  8 18:56 translations
-rw-r--r--   1 pi pi       285 Oct  8 18:56 .travis.yml
drwxr-xr-x   3 pi pi      4096 Oct  8 19:00 vendor

If you have a permissions issue, you can fix it easily by typing:

sudo chown -R pi:pi /home/pi

This will change owner and group membership to pi

MadScientist

@striiker Could it be the screensaver? Have you tried updating to 2.5.0 or downgrading to 2.3.x? I am pretty sure I didn’t have the problem with 2.3. In my case it’s enough to reload the MM only once a day. Also I had noticed that my Pi was reeeeeeeaaaaaaallllllyyyyyyy slow when connecting via shh after the screen blanked. Slow to the point I thought it crashed. Pretty sure it was a memory leak or so.

I haven’t updated to 2.5 yet as I want to wait and see what problems other users experience :face_with_stuck-out_tongue_winking_eye:

StrIIker

@madscientist said in Magic Mirror Blanks Several Hours:

@striiker Could it be the screensaver? Have you tried updating to 2.5.0 or downgrading to 2.3.x? I am pretty sure I didn’t have the problem with 2.3. In my case it’s enough to reload the MM only once a day. Also I had noticed that my Pi was reeeeeeeaaaaaaallllllyyyyyyy slow when connecting via shh after the screen blanked. Slow to the point I thought it crashed. Pretty sure it was a memory leak or so.

I haven’t updated to 2.5 yet as I want to wait and see what problems other users experience :face_with_stuck-out_tongue_winking_eye:

Well, I have disabled the screensaver via config settings as advised by several of the tutorials for setting up the mirror. Plus, if it were blanking or a screensaver, it would wake when I move the mouse or type. When I try to type etc, nothing shows, just the black screen. Ctrl-R or CTRL-Q works.
I am on the latest (2.5) and have not tried downgrading. I assume that would require a full wipe and re-install but may be worth trying… When I experience this condition, I see no slowness while connected to ssh. I’m sure this is some odd leak which crashes some aspect of whatever displays the modules over time. I’m just surprised that nobody else (in any significant number) is experiencing this. It happens with a new everything… (Pi3B, latest firmware and latest mirror version)

hrjmsh

@striiker I am having the exact same problem. Screen goes black every 6-8 hours with just the pointer showing. I have to reload/restart the Magic Mirror then. This started to happen after upgrade to version 2.4.0
I have upgraded to 2.5.0 but the issue remains the same.
I am still trying to figure out the solution; just wanted to share with you that you are not the only one facing this problem!

Lexingtonian

@hrjmsh

Same here as well. Would love to hear if anyone got this one sorted.

bhepler

Has anyone found anything interesting in the logs? pm2 status MagicMirror?

@striiker said in Magic Mirror Blanks Several Hours:

When I experience this condition, I see no slowness while connected to ssh.

That makes me think it’s an electron problem. If you have no slowness during an SSH session, I would try the pm2 command above and see if something is kicking out error messages. Likewise, try the top command and see what your processor utilization level is, plus see if something is taking up an inordinate amount of resources.

Skorpionbird

@madscientist Thx for this now it works perfect