New unit 1.2.2 upgrade gets static IP address

[Jonathan Brewer]

When a new Multitech unit has the 1.2.2 firmware upgrade applied to it, eth0 will switch from DHCP to static. A unit I was configuring took 192.168.2.1 – the address of my local gateway. Inconvenient.

[Jeff Hatch]

Jonathan,

I have not seen this in my own testing of upgrades from 1.1.2 to 1.2.2. Might you have possibly reset the device to defaults or to user defined configuration? There is a remote possibility that the /var/config/db.json got corrupted, and the unit defaulted back to the default_db.json.

Did you back up the configuration before you applied the upgrade?

Jeff

[Jonathan Brewer]

This was with a brand-new unit that had no configuration. In the “out of the box” state of 1.1.2, Eth0 is DHCP. When the 1.2.2 upgrade is applied, the unit sets itself to static.

I verified again with a second unit. Four more to configure in this batch!

[Jeff Hatch]

Jonathan,

Thank you for the additional information. We will try to reproduce and fix the problem.

Jeff

[Jeff Hatch]

Johnathan,

I have a hypothesis as to what you have seen. When you performed the firmware upgrade, did you use the Web UI? Did you go through all the steps in the Initial Setup Wizard, or did you just hit the “X” to exit out of the wizard?

The reason I am asking these questions is that I think you were seeing interactions between the “Call Home” feature that is intended to be part of the “Zero Touch” functionality where customers can manage their Conduit entirely from the DeviceHQ remote management server.

When a Conduit is first powered up with the default configuration, the Call Home feature is active and is what is attempting to get a dynamic “DHCP” address. As long as it can successfully negotiate an address it will then try to check in to DeviceHQ and get an account key. If it cannot successfully check in it will continue to manage the Ethernet interface address dynamically.

If someone logs into the Conduit Web UI they will initially encounter the Initial Setup Wizard, and typically walk through it to configure the administrator password, time management, cellular, and the Ethernet interface. Whether they follow these steps, or they hit the “X” and exit the wizard, this activity will deactivate the Call Home feature. When this happens the Call Home feature will no longer obtain an address for the Ethernet interface dynamically. The Ethernet interface will then be configured either statically or dynamically depending on what it was configured to be in the Initial Setup Wizard. If the user clicks the “X” to exit the wizard, the default behavior is for the Ethernet interface to be “static” with the 192.168.2.1 address.

This may be the behavior that you have seen.

Jeff

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