Magic Mirror Blanks Several Hours

[StrIIker]

Hello,

I have a magic mirror and after a period of several hours, the screen goes black. The mouse still works as I can move it and see the cursor. Clicking the mouse does nothing nor does hitting random keys. I can hit Ctrl-Q to exit Magic Mirror and I get the desktop back. A few seconds later pm2 kicks in and reloads the magic mirror. I experience this when connecting via VNC as well as locally at the system (obvious but mentioning for thoroughness). I also disabled screen blanking and screensaver per the install instructions.

This is a new install on a Pi3B. I would greatly appreciate advice on how to approach this. Thank you in advance!

[MadScientist]

I have the same problem. A Ctrl-R helped getting the modules back but I didn’t like doing it at least once a day. Therefore I created a cronjob that reloads the MagicMirror everyday at 6am. Haven’t seen a black screen since then.

Not a fix but a work-around.

[StrIIker]

Ahh, that’s the issue! The modules must get stuck and no longer refresh. Has anyone else run into this issue and found a cause / solution? My issue crops up more often than once per day and I’d prefer to get a permanent fix for this. I don’t have any unusual modules loaded (actually it has been happening from day one while I have been slowly working on it so this has been happening with a fresh install).

[sdetweil]

@striiker is this version 2.4.1?

The update module was throwing an error causing the black screen.

I would comment out that module

[MadScientist]

@sdetweil
That didn’t help in my case, hence the work-around with the cronjob. But it’s true that everybody should first try to disable the update module in their config.

[StrIIker]

@sdetweil said in Magic Mirror Blanks Several Hours:

@striiker is this version 2.4.1?

The update module was throwing an error causing the black screen.

I would comment out that module

I am at the latest build (2.5.0) although I installed Magic Mirror from the previous version and have the update module running.

[StrIIker]

@madscientist said in Magic Mirror Blanks Several Hours:

@sdetweil
That didn’t help in my case, hence the work-around with the cronjob. But it’s true that everybody should first try to disable the update module in their config.

I was unaware of the suggestion to kill the update module. I have removed it from my config and will monitor the status. Thank you for the suggestion (and @sdetweil )! Any other best practice suggestions which I should consider? I have just done the base install and modified weather icons / details and also installed Alexapi (yet to work on that module as I am still trying to understand if I should also install either MMM-Alexa or MMM-Awesome-Alexa too as I am not clear on how these all work).

[StrIIker]

@madscientist Could you please share what you use in your cronjob to reload the modules? Thanks!

[MadScientist]

@striiker 0 6 * * * pm2 reload mm
It reloads my mm.sh script every day at 6am. Working perfectly fine for quite some time now.

[StrIIker]

@sdetweil said in Magic Mirror Blanks Several Hours:

@striiker is this version 2.4.1?

The update module was throwing an error causing the black screen.

I would comment out that module

I’m in the same boat as @MadScientist in that my module rotation still dies necessitating a restart of the modules. Canceling the update check did improve the situation in that it apparently does not crash out as often.

[Graham Rich]

@sdetweil So I’ve updated my MagicMirror today with NPM update and NPM upgrade and my mirror is now black when I load it. My Mirror is pretty busy with NNOA3, video window from MotionEye and a few of the UK train apps. I was going to thin it down to see if that fixes it but thought Id check if anyone else found a fix yet.

[Graham Rich]

I’m not sure if my issue isnt an update failure. Im getting this message on upgrade

pi@pi:~/MagicMirror $ npm update

phantomjs-prebuilt@2.1.16 install /home/pi/MagicMirror/node_modules/phantomjs-prebuilt
node install.js

PhantomJS not found on PATH
Unexpected platform or architecture: linux/arm
It seems there is no binary available for your platform/architecture
Try to install PhantomJS globally
npm WARN grunt-yamllint@0.3.0 requires a peer of grunt@>=1.0.1 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN optional SKIPPING OPTIONAL DEPENDENCY: phantomjs-prebuilt@2.1.16 (node_modules/phantomjs-prebuilt):
npm WARN optional SKIPPING OPTIONAL DEPENDENCY: phantomjs-prebuilt@2.1.16 install: node install.js
npm WARN optional SKIPPING OPTIONAL DEPENDENCY: Exit status 1

• moment@2.22.2
• iconv-lite@0.4.24
• walk@2.3.14
  added 5 packages from 11 contributors and audited 2316 packages in 40.649s
  found 5 low severity vulnerabilities
  run npm audit fix to fix them, or npm audit for details

phantomjs-prebuilt@2.1.16 install /home/pi/MagicMirror/node_modules/phantomjs-prebuilt
node install.js

PhantomJS not found on PATH
Unexpected platform or architecture: linux/arm
It seems there is no binary available for your platform/architecture
Try to install PhantomJS globally

electron-chromedriver@1.8.0 install /home/pi/MagicMirror/node_modules/electron-chromedriver
node ./download-chromedriver.js

successfully dowloaded and extracted!
npm WARN grunt-yamllint@0.3.0 requires a peer of grunt@>=1.0.1 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN optional SKIPPING OPTIONAL DEPENDENCY: phantomjs-prebuilt@2.1.16 (node_modules/phantomjs-prebuilt):
npm WARN optional SKIPPING OPTIONAL DEPENDENCY: phantomjs-prebuilt@2.1.16 install: node install.js
npm WARN optional SKIPPING OPTIONAL DEPENDENCY: Exit status 1

• spectron@3.8.0
  removed 4 packages, updated 2 packages and audited 2311 packages in 42.884s
  found 5 low severity vulnerabilities

[MadScientist]

@graham-rich to update your MM installation you have to enter your MM directory and run git pull && npm install. Looks like you tried to update npm instead.

[Graham Rich]

Just run NPM install in the MagicMirror directory and seems to have fixed it. Was suggestion from NPM audit command
thanks for suggestion tho

[chief]

I’m having trouble with this as well - blank screen for the past day no matter what I try to do. Now when I try to git pull && npm install, I get the following errors:

pi@raspberrypi:~/MagicMirror $ sudo git pull && npm install
Already up-to-date.
npm WARN checkPermissions Missing write access to /home/pi/MagicMirror/node_modules/socket.io-parser/node_modules
npm WARN grunt-stylelint@0.10.1 requires a peer of stylelint@^9.0.0 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.

npm ERR! path /home/pi/MagicMirror/node_modules/socket.io-parser/node_modules
npm ERR! code EACCES
npm ERR! errno -13
npm ERR! syscall access
npm ERR! Error: EACCES: permission denied, access ‘/home/pi/MagicMirror/node_modules/socket.io-parser/node_modules’
npm ERR! { Error: EACCES: permission denied, access ‘/home/pi/MagicMirror/node_modules/socket.io-parser/node_modules’
npm ERR! stack: ‘Error: EACCES: permission denied, access '/home/pi/MagicMirror/node_modules/socket.io-parser/node_modules'’,
npm ERR! errno: -13,
npm ERR! code: ‘EACCES’,
npm ERR! syscall: ‘access’,
npm ERR! path: ‘/home/pi/MagicMirror/node_modules/socket.io-parser/node_modules’ }
npm ERR!
npm ERR! The operation was rejected by your operating system.
npm ERR! It is likely you do not have the permissions to access this file as the current user
npm ERR!
npm ERR! If you believe this might be a permissions issue, please double-check the
npm ERR! permissions of the file and its containing directories, or try running
npm ERR! the command again as root/Administrator (though this is not recommended).

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR! /home/pi/.npm/_logs/2018-10-09T16_49_46_380Z-debug.log

AND if I try to update npm itself, a different error appears:

pi@raspberrypi:~/MagicMirror $ sudo npm update
npm WARN grunt-stylelint@0.10.1 requires a peer of stylelint@^9.0.0 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.

npm ERR! path /home/pi/MagicMirror/node_modules/source-map/build/suffix-utils.jsm
npm ERR! code Unknown system error -117
npm ERR! errno -117
npm ERR! syscall unlink
npm ERR! Unknown system error -117: Unknown system error -117, unlink ‘/home/pi/MagicMirror/node_modules/source-map/build/suffix-utils.jsm’

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR! /root/.npm/_logs/2018-10-09T16_54_00_820Z-debug.log

Any help??

[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: