Raspberry pi SBC reboot required

[BABALUCHA]

Hello Everyone
Thanks for stopping by and checking it. I have some raspberry pi SBCs which are connected to 3cx hosted instances.

Problem
If there is ever internet goes down , customer has to reboot the raspberry pi in order to get the SBC working again.

The noticeable thing is that these are all using RG6 cable internet connection.

 

[JohnS_3CX]

Hi,

You have to troubleshoot the Pi next time this happens, do not reboot it.

Log in to the Pi with a keyboard/mouse/screen and ping www.google.com to see if the device has internet at least.

If the device cannot get back on the internet, the SBC is not going to work.

 

[BABALUCHA]

Hello JohnS
So yes i went to this client again and found out that i could ping 8.8.8.8 but not ping www.google.com , it was coming with error saying that temporary couldn't do name resolution. so what i did is for now since the first dns was 192.168.0.1 and second was 8.8.8.8 i changed it to 1.1.1.1 8.8.8.8 and waited like 30 sec and it didnt come back to life so what i did was is rebooted the pi to get going and it worked now that being said atleast i know that name resolution was the issue ? The funny thing is that this only happens at two of the clients which are in same area like litterly one block away from each other and also uses same ISP and both goes down at the same times , it seems like every few months or so this ISP has either outage and these two SBCs dont make it back unless these SBC s are rebooted , but this time client tried rebooting with no success so came down to the site and found name resolution problem .

 

[JohnS_3CX]

There rules of the internet say "it's always the DNS" that's the problem

It was a good idea to change the DNS manually, the ISP appears unreliable and you have to bypass them if you want your Pi to work correctly.

Let's see how it goes, I hope this change solves the issue permanently.

 

[BABALUCHA]

There rules of the internet say "it's always the DNS" that's the problem

It was a good idea to change the DNS manually, the ISP appears unreliable and you have to bypass them if you want your Pi to work correctly.

Let's see how it goes, I hope this change solves the issue permanently.

Hello John
i have total 3 clients that are small businesses uses Rogers Cable Internet and they do not want me to install 3rd party router because they have to spend extra money on equipment and labor. and also probably thinking that i m maybe bulshitiing to make extra bucks in their back head , i dot know.
So what happens to these clients is that whenever the internet goes down the Raspaberry Pi dont make it back . Customer have to manually power off and power back on. i know this because i have notifications turned on for everything in 3cx.
Now i have so far lost one client because they called their IT guy and this guy installed a Sonicwall Firewall and now problem even got worsen ( the raspberry pi was going offline and coming back online whenever it felt like) and this was happening like 1000 times a day. And now the customer had ported over to someone else and i have lost the client.
Now there are two more where i have same issue so since i changed the DNS to 8.8.8.8 1.1.1.1 the problem still remains the same. Out of these two one is a nice client they dont ,mind rebooting it ( which happens like every two weeks or so) but i have already started an argument with a second client now i may lose this client as well. Please see pic attached , you will see this clients phones are down since 21 days and they dont have time to go into IT Closet and power cycle the Raspbery pi.
i hope someone can help.

 

[JohnS_3CX]

Hi @BABALUCHA

While we can help you when it comes to issues with our software, the one thing we can't help you with is network issues.

i went to this client again and found out that i could ping 8.8.8.8 but not ping www.google.com , it was coming with error saying that temporary couldn't do name resolution.

And you did say above that you checked and found problems with the DNS. You could not resolve google.com, and as a result could not ping it. If the DNS cannot resolve (due to network or ISP, or DNS issues), then I'm not sure anyone can help you.

At the end of the day the SBC is just an application running on a linux computer (ie. the Pi) so if the computer does not have proper internet access, there isn't much more left that we can do to help from our end, even though we fully understand the frustration and consequences.

The last thing I can advise you (because each case can indeed be unique and we should not generalize), is to open a ticket with 3CX Support and see if they can help you analyze this further, but a fair warning: if they see that you are facing networking issues they will not be in any position to help you and will have to close the ticket.

 

[BABALUCHA]

Ok fair enough. Thanks John

 

[SteveITS]

@BABALUCHA First off, have not run into this issue where a Pi needs a reboot to come back online.

However, FWIW we have a client for whom we installed a Pi maybe 2-3 years ago now. For some reason last month it started losing/regaining connection repeatedly. We did try powering off and that didn't help. Since they had one phone that could be a router phone I reset and reconfigured that phone remotely, and changed the other phones to use it...took about 15 minutes or so. The Pi has actually been OK since then so maybe some sort of weird problem-only-under-load issue? They opted to leave the Pi connected, as a backup, but are not using it.

That Pi is a 3b, IIRC, and the older OS since we hadn't reinstalled it.

 

[BABALUCHA]

@BABALUCHA First off, have not run into this issue where a Pi needs a reboot to come back online.

However, FWIW we have a client for whom we installed a Pi maybe 2-3 years ago now. For some reason last month it started losing/regaining connection repeatedly. We did try powering off and that didn't help. Since they had one phone that could be a router phone I reset and reconfigured that phone remotely, and changed the other phones to use it...took about 15 minutes or so. The Pi has actually been OK since then so maybe some sort of weird problem-only-under-load issue? They opted to leave the Pi connected, as a backup, but are not using it.

That Pi is a 3b, IIRC, and the older OS since we hadn't reinstalled it.

Thanks SteveITS
Good idea to use one of the phone to be the router.
I will see if i can do that. I ll also try to post this on raspberry pi official website or even get help maybe to pay someone from there.
Cause whole network is fine after that but it is only my raspberry pi that dont make it back. So looking for a long term solution.

Thanks agian everyone for your help.

 

[BABALUCHA]

Hello Guys
If i replace the FQDN with Static which is assigned to the PBX , would that help ? So lets say Https://forexample.my3cx.com replace with https://1.2.3.4.my3cx.ca ?

 

[SteveITS]

An IP would be https://1.2.3.4 without a domain attached. I haven't tried but I'd expect that would fail to connect due to the certificate name mismatch.

 

[SweetAction]

You could edit the hosts file on the SBC and hardcode the name so DNS isn't needed. Not great, but an option.

sudo nano /etc/hosts

 

[BABALUCHA]

You could edit the hosts file on the SBC and hardcode the name so DNS isn't needed. Not great, but an option.

sudo nano /etc/hosts

Hello SweetAction , thanks for your input and help. if i understand correctly, than you are saying i should put a name on the SBC so that it always know the ip address for that name ........so that it won't rely on the DNS.
I mean if you think about it , That raspberry pi is dedicated to be the SBC and nothing else , i would want to try that . Could you give me an example how that it is exactly done .

 

[SweetAction]

DNS is used to turn names (FQDNs) into IPs.
If you have bad DNS the host file can do the same thing.

SSH into your pi and run the command I gave above.
Add your FQDN and it's IP in the format shown.

Now your Pi can resolve the FQDN without needing DNS servers.

 

[BABALUCHA]

i will log in and update here once done. i m sure when you said "format shown " it means format that is already there with some examples.? , sorry I m a noob when it comes to Linux. Thank you so much

 

[SteveITS]

File /etc/hosts typically has examples.
Nano is an editor.
Sudo tells it to run the command elevated/admin.
If you search online there will be plenty of examples of the hosts file.

However, note the default Pi install from 3CX does not have SSH enabled by default. You could connect a monitor and keyboard.

 

[SweetAction]

i will log in and update here once done. i m sure when you said "format shown " it means format that is already there with some examples.? , sorry I m a noob when it comes to Linux. Thank you so much

Correct, you can also follow a tutorial like this: https://vitux.com/hosts_file_debian/

 

[BABALUCHA]

I see it. i honestly don't see why this is a bad idea. To me, it looks like this is the MUST thing I should do . What is the draw back ? Sorry for all these questions.

 

[SweetAction]

I see it. i honestly don't see why this is a bad idea. To me, it looks like this is the MUST thing I should do . What is the draw back ? Sorry for all these questions.

When your IP changes, instead of updating it at the DNS server and being done you must update each host file you have customized for one.

 

[BABALUCHA]

When your IP changes, instead of updating it at the DNS server and being done you must update each host file you have customized for one.

oh ok in that since this is dedicated SBC only we should be fine.PBX ip never changes anyways .