Store logs USB

HOWTO get your Vera log an attached USB drive.

Introduction

On larger Vera deployments, with large numbers of Z-Wave Devices, Plugins or Scenes, it may be necessary to move the Vera log files to external storage to free-up space for Vera to function correctly.

MiOS Version 1.1.1245 introduced an option to let users attach a standard USB drive to offload Vera's log files, the details are in the MiOS Release Notes, inlined here:

2. There is an option with Vera2 on Advanced, Logs to enable logging to a USB drive. This frees up quite a bit of memory, so if you have a lot of devices or plugins and your Vera is running slow or crashing because it's running out of memory, this is a solution. Note that after you check the box it can take up to 30 minutes to format the USB drive, and bootup will take a couple minutes longer with the USB drive installed. It will continue to boot up fine without the USB drive connected, just don't remove it while Vera is running.

IMPORTANT: Use a new USB drive that hasn't already been formatted. In particular, don't use a USB drive that is already formatted for Mac

This How To note shows you how to enable this option, how to validate that it's been enabled, and provides pointers to further reading.

Prerequisites

This solution will requires:

• Vera 2 Hardware only
• Firmware 1.1.1245 and above
• A new USB Drive
  • Drive should be at least 512Mb or higher.
  • Vera will create its own partition on it which will be 512Mb in size and use that to write logfiles to it.
  • Experienced users only: a newly FAT-formatted existing USB drive may work. The jury is out on this one.

Instructions

• After you got your usb-drive connected to the USB port on the backside of your Vera.
  Please be patient, it might not work the first time, but it will work. DO NOT REMOVE THE DRIVE while Vera boots/reboots or during power-cycle operations.
• Log into the UI

UI4

• Select "Advanced" on the sop right (next to "MiOS developers" in the toolbox)
• Select the "Logs"tab
• Activate the "Store logs on USB device*" option and READ the text there:

Please connect an USB drive first then check the checkbox.

WARNING: The USB drive will be erased. Wait 20 minutes after clicking OK.

Status

• Click the "OK" button.

Wait until vera reports progress.

If MiOS reports "FAILURE", repeat the process. If MiOS reports Success, you are done.

UI5

• Select "Setup"
• Select the "Logs"tab
• Activate the "Store logs on USB device*" option and READ the text there:

Please connect an USB drive first then check the checkbox.

WARNING: The USB drive will be erased. Wait 20 minutes after clicking OK.

Status

• Click the "OK" button.

Wait until vera reports progress.

If MiOS reports "FAILURE", repeat the process. If MiOS reports Success, you are done.

Validation

For those who would like to validate it's setup correctly, here are some detailed steps.

SSH into your vera (using Putty or any other SSH client) Login as root with the password thats on the back of your box. If you don't see the root password or need help logging in see Logon # Can't find the root password?.

At the prompt type:

 root@MiOS_1xxxx:~# df -h

If you find something like:

 Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
 ...
   /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1
                         506.2M     29.2M    451.3M   6% /tmp/log/cmh
 ...

Then your USB drive is being used to storing MiOS log files.

Debugging

Check that /overlay isn't full.

Stop LuaUPnP before activating 'Store logs on USB device*' (/etc/init.d/cmh stop).

References

• USB Drive logging discussion [1]