fix for black screen in 2.16 and later

sdetweil

where xxx is the library noted in the message cannot find module xxx

so your message was

 Cannot find module 'request'

so xxx is

request

just to clarify
there are MORE libraries not found than just request. so I am trying to teach you all how to read the messages and understand what to do…

MacG

@sdetweil Thanks, I will use it that way. MMM-OneTracker has the same “request”. Others had this problem with MMM-DWD-WarnWeather - not me. It is strange.

sdetweil

@macg no not strange. the authors didn’t know what they were supposed to do with libs they used. and it ‘worked’ by doing nothing.

oops, request has a fatal security bug, and the authors decided the amount of work to fix it wasn’t worth the effort, as new libs are out that don’t have the problem.

so they discontinued it (aka deprecated), mm doesn’t want to drag that security flaw in and took action to move the base code to another lib, and remove the bad one(s)…

oops now we have lots of old, some unmaintained, modules that used the only copy of the lib and didn’t say so. .(as a dependency in their module’s package.json file)…

so nobody knows, and it’s gone. oops…

sdetweil

@macg as for the cert error, not the mm code at all

the certificate authority cert expired and electron didn’t handle it. chromium did

but we have to upgrade electron to a version that works, and drag along all the other stuff

libs not found I already explained

welcome to the world of open source

in my career at IBM there was one cardinal rule

never EVER make changes that break existing apps.

same data in produces the same data out, always.
u made a mistake?! oops, somehow have to make a DIFFERENT input to get a different output.
it takes work, and thought and time.
but developers and customers can work on new value instead of costly rework

in the new internet world time is critical, so ship, and fix as fast as u can, breaking changes need to be DOCUMENTED. what a relief THAT is for users and customers…!
and, stuff that can’t keep up will be discarded ‘quickly’…, yeh, sure… hahahaha… customers think that makes their life easier too.

MacG

@sdetweil I understand that some authors do not use the current libs. The “strange” referred to the fact that I have no problems with MMM-DWD-WarnWeather, but others have to install the module “request”.

Open source is both a curse and a blessing. Now everything works again and MM’s layout changes to the clock module were also quickly undone. :slightly_smiling_face:

sdetweil

@macg said in fix for black screen in 2.16 and later:

The “strange” referred to the fact that I have no problems with MMM-DWD-WarnWeather, but others have to install the module “request”.

did u npm install request in the mm folder, or in a module folder where there was no package.json, the latter ends up putting it in the mm/node_modules, the same as the former

mumblebaj

Maybe this can help some users.

The following will search all *.js files in the modules folder for the reference of request. You can then just enter the module folders and install as per @sdetweil suggestion above. The same can be done for the other missing modules.

grep -r -E '('request')' ~/MagicMirror/modules/*/*.js

or search for multiple problem modules

grep -r -E '('request') | ('valid-url')' ~/MagicMirror/modules/*/*.js

Produces the following:

sdetweil

@mumblebaj and then pull off the module name and scan it’s package.json to see if it’s referenced

MacG

@sdetweil said in fix for black screen in 2.16 and later:

did u npm install request in the mm folder, or in a module folder where there was no package.json, the latter ends up putting it in the mm/node_modules, the same as the former

I installed it the way you suggested. In the two module folders with the addition of package.json (npm init -y) and then npm install request. The MMM-DWD-WarnWeather worked on my mirror from the beginning after updating to MM2.17.

sdetweil

I enhanced my upgrade script to do all this for all installed modules…