GX400W rebooting every 5 minutes

My GX400W (which had been working fine) has suddenly started rebooting after ~5 minutes of uptime. It appears to power up and run up all its services OK, but then promptly reboot.

I looked through the log, and it looks like a deliberate reboot:

Jan 1 00:05:32 alert ALEOS_SYSTEM_SCR_aleosreboot: Rebooting…

Is there a setting I could have accidentally enabled that acts as a watchdog unless some condition is fulfilled? Or is there a way of telling why it wants to reboot?

I should have mentioned - I see that there is a watch dog option on the cellular connection. By default it is set to 120 (minutes, according to the help text). That has not been changed. Unless the units are wrong or there is a bug, I don’t believe that option is to blame.

I have saved a complete copy of my configuration and reset the unit to factory defaults. The problem goes away. Reapplying the configuration makes the problem come back. It’s not obvious from the file what changes there are, but I’m trying to work my way through them to see which one (or combination) are causing the reboot…

Glad to see you’re progressing on this. Would be interesting to understand what in your configuration makes this happen.

.Thibault.

I realise I’m posting progress in very small increments, but I thought it better to note things as I found them in case anyone recognises this and chimes in… Sorry if that produces a large splurge of messages!

Anyway, the first thing I did was turn on debugging for everything, then inspect the log. The lines prior to the reboot looked interesting:

Jun 29 12:12:59 err ALEOS_EVENTS_dpRptGen: **** No GPS data received since 1340971917 current time 1340971979. ****
Jun 29 12:12:59 crit ALEOS_EVENTS_dpRptGen: **** Resetting system. No GPS data received for 5 timeouts. ****
Jun 29 12:12:59 alert ALEOS_SYSTEM_SCR_aleosreboot: Rebooting…

I assume I have some aspect of GPS reporting enabled that is giving me issues. I’m not yet sure what. If there’s any bit of the log that can tell me, I can more more sections. I don’t have a GPS lock at the moment.

If I disable the GPS (GPS tab -> Global Settings) then I get no resets. Re-enabling it causes my device to reset again.

I can confirm that If GPS receives no data for 5 minutes ALEOS triggers a reboot.
GPS is activated by default (in AceManager, GPS>Global Settings), meaning that GPS will be reactivated if you do a ‘reset to factory defaults’ (in AceManager, Admin>Advanced>Reset To Factory Default).

I was getting the reset when the GPS was enabled, and not when it was disabled. Presumably if GPS is enabled, ALEOS expects the data and resets when it isn’t received. I don’t understand why I still don’t get resets after factory reset though, since GPS is enabled at that point.

Do you know if the reset is triggered when no data is received, or when no valid position data is received?

Even after a factory reset, my GPS is not showing a lock when I would expect it to. I’m wondering if I could have had a failure in the GPS itself?

Hi Alan,

Do you have a SIM card inserted in your GX400 ?
If not, please try with a SIM card in, and let us know if this solves the issue.

Cheers

Gillo

Concerning GPS, ALEOS triggers a reboot if no data is received for 5 minutes (no data has been read from the GPS device file descriptor).

Most of my testing has been with a SIM card inserted. I tried removing it, and it made no discernible difference to the resetting.

Alan

Since this problem started, I have not seen any sign of GPS lock, even when I have a configuration that does not cause it to reset. All the status screen shows is a column of zeroes. Should I be concerned that there is no data from the GPS unit? Is there a setting that could allow the GPS to be enabled, but have no data come out? Or is this likely to be the result of a hardware failure?

The setting that is causing the GPS failure is GPS Fix Mode. If I perform a full reset (button held in for 8 seconds) then the unit works OK. Setting GPS -> Global Settings -> GPS Fix Mode to “MS Based” (instead of “Standalone”) then causes the reset to occur.

It’s not entirely clear at this point whether MS Based is something that I want or am able to use. However, that setting was turned on at some point and caused the GPS to stop responding, causing the GX400W to reset.

Is this expected behaviour? I’m not very familiar with MS-Based GPS assistance, and I assume that some server-side infrastructure is required, but it seems pretty harsh to reset the unit if it’s not available. I’m using a Vodafone SIM in the UK if that helps any.

Alan