Troubleshooting a failed / disconnecting AP

[Steve_Ballantyn]

I have a site with an AP that has disconnected several times now, seemingly randomly (it's happened after hours, with zero client connections). Since it's offline I am not able to pull a trace log using the EWC console. I have had the folks at the site go and reboot the access point to get it back online. They have reported that when it's in this state, there is a single amber light (pretty much like when power is first applied).

Is there anything I can do in the way of troubleshooting a failed and rebooted AP? Is there any sort of memory dump that would survive a reboot? I noticed that there is a /tmp/log/ap.logLastReboot.gz file. But if I gzip -d the file, and cat the ap.logLastReboot file, all it says is "---WARNING: ap-log is not valid (size 2298819153, tail 2261266449)".

This may be indicative of a completely different problem or bug.

For the time being I have ssh'd into the AP and run:
cset sshtimeout 0
capply
csave
tail -f /tmp/log/ap.logAnd now I am just waiting for it to fail again and hoping that it dumps something to the ssh session before it bombs out. Although I suspect this is all over a flaky cable-modem connection that's occasionally dropping packets.

Anyone have other ideas? 🙂

Relevant details:
My AP is a 3825i, and I am running with version 10.11.02.0032.

[Umut_Aydin]

Hi Steve,

after the AP is back you could draw the AP Trace logs now.
And open a case with GTAC.
Maybe we can see more in the AP reboots.

If they had time to write the trace dump during the freeze then we would have maybe ideas what happened and if not we need to wait until the next time.

Regards
Umut

[Ronald_Dvorak]

Hey Steve,

it's in > Logs > AP: Traces > select AP > retrieve traces

[Steve_Ballantyn]

Hello Umut,

I have the AP back online. Where would I find the trace logs?

For the time being when it drops offline, I am remotely connecting to the switch and downing/re-upping the port so that the AP reboots.

[Craig_Guilmette]

Hello Steve

99% of the time when the ap.loglastreboot file is empty or corrupt the cause of the reboot is loss of power. I would try using a new POE injector or make sure if you are using a POE switch that the switch is not having issues. If the AP was rebooting due to a software bug or a reboot from the controller that log would be valid. Hope this helps!