HSSentry Question

[DanWheeler]

My HomeSeer has been crashing once a month or so for a couple years now and I finally got around to doing something about it. I've been starting it with a scheduled task. I came across HSSentry and enabled it. I looked all over for a Windows service, scheduled task, startup task.. the usual suspects for Windows background tasks. Didn't find anything that would start HS3Sentry.exe

I finally came to the conclusion that when HS3 starts, it also starts HS3Sentry.

I just wanted to double check that I'm understanding this right... the watchdog utility to monitor the software is started by the software it is intended to monitor? This is real?

(putting aside the fact that we have to start HS (a console app) using a scheduled task in 2018)

[Eman]

My HomeSeer has been crashing once a month or so for a couple years now and I finally got around to doing something about it. I've been starting it with a scheduled task. I came across HSSentry and enabled it. I looked all over for a Windows service, scheduled task, startup task.. the usual suspects for Windows background tasks. Didn't find anything that would start HS3Sentry.exe

I finally came to the conclusion that when HS3 starts, it also starts HS3Sentry.

I just wanted to double check that I'm understanding this right... the watchdog utility to monitor the software is started by the software it is intended to monitor? This is real?

(putting aside the fact that we have to start HS (a console app) using a scheduled task in 2018)

What version of HomeSeer and plugins are you running? And true HomeSeer starts HS3Sentry if enabled in the settings.
So from your statements above it's not HS3Sentry crashing HomeSeer, so please state your plugins so you can find help!

It's also good practice to save your HomeSeer folder elsewhere then update your server with the latest updates and also try the latest beta version of HomeSeer (let the server run smooth) before r enabling HS3Sentry.


Eman.

[DanWheeler]

Thanks, Eman. I knew it wasn't HSSentry that was crashing HomeSeer, I still need to figure out what is but I'll do that in a separate post. I just wanted to confirm what I was seeing with HS3 being the initiator for HSSentry since I couldn't find any documentation about how the process actually works. That's pretty crazy that homeseer starts its own watchdog rather than them being two independent processes. *SMH* thanks for confirming.

Dan

[randy]

It's not crazy at all.

They are two separate processes. HSSentry.exe is a compact executable in the HomeSeer root directory. They can be started independently or HS can be configured in Setup>General>Other Settings to launch HSSentry.exe when HomeSeer is started. If you would prefer to launch HSSentry.exe through another mechanism, deselect it in Settings and use another method. Allowing HS3 to start the process makes sure it is always running - it won't start it if it is already running. If you search HomeSeer's help documentation for HSSentry you will find an explanation for what it is and configuration options:

HSSentry (Software System Monitor)

Enables a small monitoring program the monitors the built in web server. If the server does not respond, the system is restarted. This program is started when HomeSeer is started and it sends a small request to the HomeSeer webserver. If the server does not respond it will terminate the HomeSeer exe and then restart it. On Linux, it will restart the computer HomeSeer is running. The Sentry program gets the IP address of HomeSeer using the IP of the system it is running on. In the case where the system may have multiple IP addresses the IP address may be manually set by editing the settings.ini file in the HomeSeer Config folder. In the "Settings" section add line like: SentryIP=IPADDRESS The port number is obtained from the same settings file and is the port number that is set in the HomeSeer settings. The number of errors that the sentry will allow before restarting is set with the setting: SentryErrorCount=# The default error count is 7. The frequency of how often it checks the web server is set in the setting: SentryCheckInterval=SECONDS

I have read more recent explanations that HSSentry looks to scheduler.dll for a heartbeat. It really doesn't matter what the mechanism is, HSSentry does exactly what it is supposed to do. If you launch HSSentry without launching HS3.exe, it will launch HS3 after about 2 minutes.

[bsobel]

Thanks, Eman. I knew it wasn't HSSentry that was crashing HomeSeer, I still need to figure out what is but I'll do that in a separate post. I just wanted to confirm what I was seeing with HS3 being the initiator for HSSentry since I couldn't find any documentation about how the process actually works. That's pretty crazy that homeseer starts its own watchdog rather than them being two independent processes. *SMH* thanks for confirming.

Dan

Not crazy at all, pretty standard practice. As rprade mentioned, you can launch it independently as well. Whats crazy is not this, its how often HS still crashes...

[Eman]

Not crazy at all, pretty standard practice. As rprade mentioned, you can launch it independently as well. Whats crazy is not this, its how often HS still crashes...

Take a look at this this thread here : https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/ho...high-cpu-usage and examine my post at # 3 on that thread. Now if you take into context 's post here at # 4 and imagine a scenario where you are updating HomeSeer and before you know it, HSsentry restarts HomeSeer half way through the process My answer to that will be, you will not have a clean installation of HomeSeer. That's why it's good practice to disable HSsentry before repairing your server!

Note: Always look into your logs first, there could be a plugin misbehaving or an event looping



Eman.

[bsobel]

A clean shutdown such as for an update should stop sentry. This is an issue for folks who run it independently. There is nothing wrong from an engineering perspective for Hs to start sentry, in fact for this reason (updates) it would be preferred.

[sparkman]

You could add the following to the shutdown script:

    Process.GetProcessesByName("HS3Sentry")(0).Kill() 

It would need the following at the beginning of the script as well:

Imports System.Diagnostics 

[randy]

You could add the following to the shutdown script:

 Process.GetProcessesByName("HS3Sentry")(0).Kill() 

It would need the following at the beginning of the script as well:

Imports System.Diagnostics 

I added the lines to my shutdown script earlier this year and it makes it a lot easier to shutdown HomeSeer for manually copying or editing files, etc. HSSentry will start back up with HomeSeer as long as it is selected in setup.