X10 CM11A Plugin disconnecting on Zee S2

[DigitalJ1m]

Having trouble with the X10 plugin. It seems to be disconnecting before fully loaded.

I had to restore my ZEE S2/PI after an SD card failure and have not been able to get the X10 CM11A plugin working again. I restored the Zee S2 from scratch, so I'm pretty sure I did something wrong. My Z-Wave and JowiHue plugins are working, but are temporarily disabled to avoid clutter in the log.

I was on HS3 at the time of the restore and later decided to upgrade to HS4, hoping the X10 would once again work.
I am currently on HS4 version 4.2.6.0 with the X10 3.0.0.50 plugin. HomeSeer startup is normal other than one warning towards the bottom of the attached log. I was getting similar messages on HS3.

Attached are the log and error messages

Thanks for any help,
Jim

[concordseer]

It looks like you have a conflict on your USB ports.

Stop your HS4 first before trying this.

If you open a terminal session on the Zee, unplug your CM11 from the Zee, plug it back in and immediately enter the following command

dmesg

you should see exactly what USB port your CM11 is assigned to. Make sure that port is exactly the same in the configuration section of the CM11 plugin in HS4. Just to confirm all is well with the CM11 enter the following command

lsusb

[DigitalJ1m]

I am not able to SSH into the Zee, but was able to run the commands with a monitor and keyboard connected to the Zee. I am using a dual USB to RS232 adapter and the Comm ports are showing as USB0 and USB1. I was not able to determine which port has the CM11A connected. When I update the comm port in the X10 Hardware Interface Settings, it seems as if nothing happens. Going back to the manage plugins page, I get the same errors as before.

Not sure if it's somehow related, but there are two more anomalies that concern me. Using the Linux Tools, it tells me it's running the command, but no results are returned. And as mentioned above, using the same WinSCP parameters that worked on HS3 (with updated password), I get the error message below.

[concordseer]

What’s preventing you from accessing your Zee via SSH.

[mfisher]

DigitalJ1m Although HS4 may allow you to load and run multiple instances of the plugin, the X10 plugin is no longer multi-instance capable and, as you have discovered, you will likely have issues when attempting to do so. Please uninstall the 2nd instance, reboot HS4 and test whether the 1st instance will work. If not, you'll need to uninstall all instances of the plugin and delete all .ini files with X10 in the name that are located in the /Config directory before reinstalling the plugin.

[DigitalJ1m]

I can now SSH to the Zee, it was user error.

Mark, I never wanted to load and run multiple instances of the plugin. It was the only way I could see to get to the X10 Hardware Interface Settings.

Now that I can SSH, I can't for the life of me get permission to delete the many X10 .ini files. I've been searching the web and this forum all day and have found nothing that works.

[concordseer]

Are you trying to delete a file. Just use sudo in front of the command you are using to delete the file. That will give you the permissions needed to delete but use it wisely. I’m assuming you’ve backed up your system already before you started.

What you need to do is disable the plugin, remove it, reinstall it with your CM11 plugged in and enable it again.

Did you try using the dmesg and lsusb commands in the way I suggested in my previous post now that you can SSH into the ZEE.

[DigitalJ1m]

Thank you for your patience, concord. As you've probably guessed, I'm kinda lost in Linux. Using the command 'sudo rm X10.ini' in the terminal console, I get Command 'sudo rm X10.ini' failed with return code 1 and error message sudo: no tty present and no askpass program specified..

If I try in the puTTY SSH terminal. I can't navigate to the homeseer folder.

[concordseer]

Use the find command to locate the Homeseer folder. As soon as you’ve opened a session in PuTTY enter the following command

sudo find / -name HSConsole.exe

You can see from the output of this command exactly where your Homeseer folder is located. All you need do now is use the cd command to navigate your way to it.

Could you do a screen cap of the PuTTY screen you are looking at once you’ve opened a session with your ZEE.

I’m a little puzzled why you can’t just remove the plugin from the HS4 GUI and reinstall it. Were you manually dropping in files to your ZEE at some stage.

[DigitalJ1m]

Thank you both, I now have the X10 plugin working.

I was opening the PuTTY SSH terminal through the WinSCP program and was still having trouble getting to the Homeseer/Config folder this morning. I then opened Putty directly and was able to get there and delete all of the .ini files pertaining to X10 (around 15 files). I also looked in the settings.ini file and found a line for the X10 Com port and I commented it out.

I reinstalled the plugin and got the same error, so I went back and ran the dmesg command and verified that my dual serrial port adapter was still on USB0 and USB1. I then went back to the Config Plugin page and changed to USB1 and for the first time in all my messing around with it, the Update button worked and I got the Interface OK message.

Thanks again,
Jim

[concordseer]

Do all your file housekeeping via PuTTY. It really is much simpler. Here’s a link to some basic Linux housekeeping commands. Remember to backup your system first before proceeding though https://developer.ibm.com/tutorials/l-lpic1-103-3/

[Pete]

You can also install Webmin and do everything including SSH, file explorer, editing et al via the Webmin web interface.

Easy to install Webmin

1 - sudo su
2 - wget hxxp://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.982_all.deb
3 - apt-get install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl apt-show-versions python unzip
4 - dpkg --install webmin_1.982_all.deb

Wait a few minutes for installation and a prompt telling you how to access the web page.