LCDProc 0.5.4-dev

jasonlitka · Nov 22, 2013, 4:10 PM

There was a report recently that another Lanner box worked with the sdeclcd driver. That has code in it to work with the XTM5 which is a lightly modified Lanner box. Easy test.

Steve

Edit: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,68481.msg375797.html#msg375797

You. Are. Awesome. It was "USB COM Port 1" and "Watchguard Firebox with SDEC".

Any idea if there's a way to get traffic statistics for multiple interfaces? I'd love to be able to show total throughput on WAN1 + WAN2.

EDIT: Interestingly enough, Lanner just got back to me and said it's hooked up via Parallel. Not sure why the setting I picked worked unless the driver portion ignored it.

stephenw10 · Nov 22, 2013, 5:15 PM

No idea on network stats though there are various code mods in this thread that add functionality you might look through.
Yeah I think the sdec driver is hardcoded to use the parallel port. It's interesting that it works at all. I had always assumed that Watchguard had insisted on backwards compatibility with their x-core boxes, which had an sdec LCD, and that was the only reason it works with much newer models. Maybe not.

Steve

jasonlitka · Nov 23, 2013, 12:00 PM

Who actually maintains this package? I'd be interested in subsidizing the development a bit if I can get an aggregated traffic option in the UI and have it part of the package.

stephenw10 · Nov 23, 2013, 4:34 PM

Michelle (mdima) forked the original lcdproc package and updated it. See the first post in this thread.

Steve

jasonlitka · Nov 23, 2013, 8:12 PM

@stephenw10:

Michelle (mdima) forked the original lcdproc package and updated it. See the first post in this thread.

Steve

Yeah, I was hoping that wasn't the case. Not online for more than 3 weeks. PM sent though and crossing my fingers.

Topper727 · Jan 5, 2014, 1:56 PM

I just got the updates to fix the LED's merged. I hope this means that it will be and update in our packages list. I think this will happen soon.

I just confirmed, if you re-install the LCDProc-dev package you will get the LED Patch now.

nobita0313 · Jun 5, 2014, 11:58 AM

I am using HD44780 with LCD2USB on PfSense 2.1. My Lcd is messed up and character are not aligned.
Youtube Video

I have another identical LCD display and adapter and they work normally on a NAS with lcdproc 0.5.6, so I think it is a bug in the package?

stephenw10 · Jun 5, 2014, 2:18 PM

Can you try to kill the php client and start the standard LCDproc client?

Steve

nobita0313 · Jun 5, 2014, 3:10 PM

@stephenw10:

Can you try to kill the php client and start the standard LCDproc client?

Steve

Thanks for your quick reply!

I went though the following process:
1. Stop LCDproc though WebGUI
2. ssh into PfSense
3. cd /usr/local/
4. sbin/LCDd -c etc/LCDd.conf
5. bin/lcdproc

and there is no effect. Does it means that this is a problem of the driver?
Youtube Video

ps. php client and lcdproc client use the same LCDd.conf

kilthro · Jun 5, 2014, 3:28 PM

@ nobita0313
Did you try removing the package and conf files and rebuild it from fresh to see if that resolves it?

I have a question on the dev package. Since the last version or two that have been published, there are times that i will notice that the lcd display is blank except for the blinking heart with a 0 by connections ect. Its like it lost communication. The service is still running. If I restart it, its works fine. I am not sure why it just randomly stops working.

I thought it was during snort updates, rules refresh but I have noticed it happening at times that none of that happens. Even after some of these refreshes it works just fine. Has anyone else had this happen? I don't have the log setting to 3 since it was spamming the log with every lcd refresh or status refresh. So I have set it to 0. I haven't noticed any errors in the system log related to whats causing it to lose connection from service to display. I am on most recent version of pfsense 64 bit.

I can list out packages if needed or if there is anything else i can do to track/log whats going on, please let me know. It did work just fine for the past couple of years before most recent update maybe two… These were updated when pfsense was updated and all packages were reinstalled.

Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.

nobita0313 · Jun 6, 2014, 3:39 AM

I tried that before, no luck. I even built lcdproc from source (with FreeBSD 8.4, 8.3 is outdated and the pkg-add command is broken) and copy the files to /usr/local and it result the same. Would it be some problems with libusb that comes with pfsense?

My LCD display on a synology NAS encounter the same problem as you did, not sure why.

stephenw10 · Jun 6, 2014, 1:19 PM

@kilthro
The servce status only monitors LCDd, the server part, and not the client. So if the client dies you just see whatever the server is generating, possibly just the heartbeat. The php client is subject to maximum run time before pfSense automatically kills it, a feature that was introduced for all php processes. I'm not sure if that has been fixed yet, it is possible to call php in a way that prevent this.

@nobita0313
Ok, so I can see output from both just the server/driver and from the lcdproc client in your video and they all exhibit the same errors so it looks like a driver rpoblem of some sort. :-\

Steve

nobita0313 · Jun 6, 2014, 5:06 PM

A clean install in a VM runs the package flawlessly, this is awkward. :(

stephenw10 · Jun 6, 2014, 7:59 PM

You mean using some sort of USB pass-through?

What hardware are you using now? Perhaps it's some USB speed issue, maybe there's a bios setting to force it to usb 1 mode. :-\

Steve

nobita0313 · Jun 7, 2014, 7:38 AM

The problem seems to be caused by packages conflicts. My clean installed pfsense suffered from the same problem only after I restored my setting. If I restore it without any other packages, lcdproc works fine. I had iperf, shellcmd, RRD Summary installed previously.

stephenw10 · Jun 7, 2014, 11:01 AM

Hmm, hard to see how any of those packages could have much effect on lcdproc or a USB device. Only if they're using most or all the CPU cycles for some reason. :-\

Steve

divsys · Jun 7, 2014, 2:11 PM

I'm no expert in this hardware area (hats off to Steve 8)), but I might add:

The problem seems to be caused by packages conflicts. My clean installed pfsense suffered from the same problem only after I restored my setting. If I restore it without any other packages, lcdproc works fine. I had iperf, shellcmd, RRD Summary installed previously.

Perhaps it would be worth a shot to restore without packages and then manually add the packages back one by one? The manual rebuild will be a bit of a pain, but it removes the possibility of some leftover weirdness in the restore file.

matrix200 · Jun 30, 2014, 9:41 PM

Hi, I have modified the original package a bit by disabling the LCDd execution and changing lcdproc.inc to connect to a different ip (vm host which actually has LCDd running and the hardware).
Now my question is how can I make the status to detect it as running instead of using LCDd for status verification?
I understand it does so by checking process list for LCDd?
I suppose the easiest for now would be faking it by writing some binary named LCDd that does nothing and is retained in the process list?

Also I would like to either make this configurable.
That is add another gui page where it is possible to define ip/port of LCDd instead of configuring a local copy of LCDd daemon and make local LCDd settings optional if remote daemon is chosen.
Is anybody interested in such feature?

stephenw10 · Jul 1, 2014, 2:58 AM

It's been a while since I looked but I believe the service monitored is listed in the package config xml file.

Edit: Yep in the <service>section in lcdproc.xml

Steve</service>

matrix200 · Jul 1, 2014, 6:32 AM

Yeah, but I am not sure what I should write in there to make it work.
I can't obviously right php because thats what is actually running.
So I guess I need to write a custom is_running function instead?