[arm-allstar] Voice announcements stopping

[David McGough]

Hi Nate,

One possible cause of suddenly ceasing audio announcements (like time of
day) or other strange problems can be a full tmpfs filesystem--like /tmp,
or, perhaps /var/log.  Since these tmpfs devices are reset to "empty"  
after a reboot, the problem goes away for a while, then returns.

73, David K4FXC



On Sat, 24 Dec 2022, Nate Bargmann via ARM-allstar wrote:

> This is an issue that first appeared back in November around the 13th,
> at least that is when I first noticed it and just before our weekly net.
> Prior to that the system had run for just at a year without issue.
> 
> The symptom I saw then in Supermon2 and now is that playing an
> announcement command such as the time and weather is that PTT shows
> asserted but no audio comes from the transmitter nor is it keyed.  Also,
> if the repeater is active Supermon2 shows no COS activation.  A neighbor
> whose repeater we link to via Echolink for the net reported hearing no
> audio from my node which stands to reason as Asterisk never sees the COS
> so it likely never got any audio.
> 
> My setup is that the AllStar node is connected to the link port of a
> CAT-200B controller so the repeater remains functional but AllStar
> appears inoperative.  HamVoip is running on a Pi 3B+ and the interface
> to the controller is a Techno-by-George ARA-1 FOB.  Everything is in a
> box so I doubt there is rodent damage as it comes back working after a
> reboot.
> 
> Fast forward to two days ago and I noticed that top of the hour
> announcements had ceased.  Then as back in November rebooting from the
> Admin menu recovered all functions.  Immediately after the reboot I shut
> down AutoSky in case it was causing an issue as it had been very busy
> with this week's winter storm and wind chill warnings.
> 
> Since it did it again today and since the net isn't until tomorrow
> evening, I have a bit of time to do some forensic investigation.
> Checking with the lsusb command shows the audio interface is still
> present:
> 
> # lsusb
> Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0d8c:0013 C-Media Electronics, Inc. 
> 
> Both the AllStar and Echolink status pages show my node is active and
> there is one active AllStar connection so I'm reasonably confident that
> Asterisk is still running given that and what I see from the Supermon2
> Web page (not publicly accessible since I have access locked down with
> SSH private key and I am reverse tunneling HTTP to my local computer) is
> simply reporting what Asterisk is doing.
> 
> Is there any way to query the status of the C-Media chip?  Or am I stuck
> with reboots until I can get access to the site to replace the interface
> board (I do have a spare)?
> 
> 73, Nate, N0NB
> 
>