Mirror turning black after a while

retroflex

I have a problem after the latest update (v 2.2.2). After a few hours (7h one day, 12h another day etc.) my mirror goes completely black. I can show the mirror from other devices though and I can access MMM-RemoteControl. If restarting MM, all modules reappear again, only to fail a few hours again.

I have checked the logs (.pm2/logs/*.log) and nothing is reported about this.
I’m running a pi3 with Jessie 8.0.
The mirror has been running ok for several months before this and all previous updates have gone ok.

My update procedure was this:

MagicMirror/> git pull && npm install
Got error “Electron failed to install correctly, please delete node_modules/electron and try installing again”
Deleted electron folder.
Updated npm (sudo npm install -g npm) just to make sure.
MagicMirror/> npm install (electron was reinstalled).
No errors while updating or running.

I’m running these modules:

default/alert
default/updatenotification
default/clock
default/calendar
MMM-MyCommute
MMM-RemoteControl
MMM-SkolMaten (x2)
MMM-ResRobot

Any ideas?

Mykle1

@retroflex

Very odd. Does the display you are using have a status light? Sounds as if the display loses the video signal then fails to reacquire it. In which case, the status light would be yellow. Can you temporarily connect the display to another PC and to see if it exhibits the same behavior? A PIA, I know, but it would eliminate the possibility that the display is failing.

Or, there are commands that you could try to force the display on (or off) to see how it responds. Those commands escape me right now but they are on this forum somewhere.

Wish I could have been more help. Good luck.

retroflex

@Mykle1
Thanks. I’m pretty sure the monitor is on, because if I connect a keyboard I can start a terminal and it doesn’t look like it has been down in sleep mode (should take longer time to wake). I’ve also tried to turn off/on screen with MMM-RemoteControl just to make sure, but no luck. I’ll double check the status light when the error occurs again.

Chris

@retroflex
Hello,
I also encounter this problem episodically. Magic mirror works normally but no module appears on the screen a simple ctrl + R (reload) is enough to refresh and make reappear modules.
Regards,

retroflex

@Chris
Did you have the same error on the old version or did it appear with the latest?

doubleT

Is there any kind of “sleep” mode on the system itself?
The node log probably doesn’t detect what’s going on but maybe the console log would show (unfortunately, it’s reset when the browser window is refreshed). I’d start MM in dev mode and wait for the crash, then check the browser’s console log.

retroflex

@doubleT Thanks for the tip! I will try dev mode and report back.

Chris

@retroflex said in Mirror turning black after a while:

@Chris
Did you have the same error on the old version or did it appear with the latest?

Hello,
it is true that this is happening since the last version.
I did not pay much attention to this because it was during an attempt to install a module that caused me a lot of trouble. I thought it was just that.
As I told you, it’s still very episodic, it must have been more than two days since it did not happen.

Regards,

bimalnair

Hello All, is this issue fixed? I still have this issue and I get back the screen only by ctrl + R. I am experiencing this issue only after the recent update.

retroflex

@bimalnair I haven’t done any more research. But now I have started in dev mode and will see if the console log says anything useful. But it usually takes some hours before my freezes, so I will know later today (hopefully).

Another test is to remove module by module to see if a certain module is causing problems. Or the opposite, start with only one module and see if it will freeze. Can you check which modules we share? Maybe we can narrow it down a bit.

bimalnair

I am using the following modules
default/alert
default/clock
default/calendar
default/currentweather
default/weatherforecast
default/newsfeed
default/compliments
MMM-ShipmentTracking
MMM-Traffic
MMM-ImagesPhotos
MMM-dht22

Will try disabling each module

Chris

Hello,
I think it would come from one of your modules because I do not encounter the problem since I put my mirror with my usual modules. if that helps you, it happened to me when I tried to install and set up the MMM-Assistant.
Regards,

prysme01

Hello, After upgrading MM to 2.2.0 and also upgrading my debian, I am also facing this issue of random black screen. PI is still up and I can log in and restart mm. Really annoying issue.

retroflex

@bimalnair Have you tried to find out which module is causing problems for you yet?

I have finally got a dev log file from the error… As it’s not timestamped, it’s hard to draw any conclusions. But this is one of the lasts logs, which presumably is when the mirror goes black:

[5966:0125/191204:FATAL:memory_linux.cc(35)] Out of memory.
#0 0x0000012a3bb0 
#1 0x0000012b4406 
#2 0x0000012c8ae6 
#3 0x000000d8bb1c 
#4 0x000000d8ba9e operator new()
#5 0x0000012b9ee0 
#6 0x0000012b94ce 
#7 0x0000012ba204 
#8 0x0000012cb2c6 
#9 0x0000012b89f6 
#10 0x000000b58d18 
#11 0x000000a34c38 
#12 0x000000a35a80 
#13 0x000000a349c2 
#14 0x00000221e2fa main
#15 0x000074c0f294 __libc_start_main

I did not check which process is eating all the memory though. That will be the next step.

Other than that I can see in the log that I lost internet connection a couple of times:

fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/MichMich/MagicMirror.git/': Could not resolve host: github.com

Whoops! There was an uncaught exception...
TypeError: Cannot read property 'feed' of undefined
    at ClientRequest. (/home/pi/MagicMirror/modules/MMM-Skolmaten/node_helper.js:45:20)

And a lot of these logs, which I guess is ok:

Reusing 14 cached departure(s) for module: MMM-ResRobot

Any bright ideas? :)

cruunnerr

@retroflex

the wifi on the RPi 3 is not the best. So i installed an automatically wifi_rebooter here. U could try that as well: http://alexba.in/blog/2015/01/14/automatically-reconnecting-wifi-on-a-raspberrypi/

in my case my Pi pings my router address every 3 minutes and when it cannot reach it, it reboots it’s wifi itself.

For your other problem u could try “nmon”.

sudo apt-get install nmon

start it by simply typing nmon

when it starts u can type letters to choose what u want it to show. with “t, l, m, c” it will show u “top processes”, “long therm CPU usage”, “memory usage” and “actual CPU usage”

Mykle1

@cruunnerr

I agree. nmon is a very useful tool for diagnosing Pi cpu and memory issues.

https://forum.magicmirror.builders/topic/4684/electron-cpu-usage/11

retroflex

@Mykle1 @cruunnerr Thanks. Nmon is a great tip. I can clearly see that I have a CPU issue beside the memory leak. CPU for electron process is at 100% all the time. Currently at 30% mem, but I guess this will increase over time. Will check later.

PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
1146 pi        20   0  700648 300408  47112 R 100.0 31.6 215:22.52 electron

I’ve read the CPU usage thread and can conclude that I use electron v1.4.15 and MM v2.2.0. Mykle1, the thread said to use an older MM version, but I guess the new one should work ok too? Since electron was forced to the older version in the new release?

Now all I have to do is check each module I run and check CPU and mem for each :)

retroflex

My problem was MMM-ResRobot. I deactivated it and kept all other modules and now CPU is at 2% and memory stable over time at around 10%. Not sure if the MM/electron/ResRobot update caused the problem, but it worked ok before. Strange…

Mykle1

@retroflex said in Mirror turning black after a while:

and now CPU is at 2% and memory stable over time at around 10%

That’s great news, mate! I did that testing months ago to determine what was causing the CPU spikes. It was rather rewarding to have discovered the cause. They gave me an award. :-)

Peace!

schlachtkreuzer6

I got the same problem with an TV, around 6 to 9h it went black and I had to restart MM