cRIO imaging problem

[joel.castillo]

Thanks Kevin for your quick response.

I had already tried an IP reset. However, I had not put my NIC to obtain the IP address, so I did as you suggested. Here are some screenshots of the process:

  

As you can see, the address that my NIC "gets" or "sets to" is 196.254.190.101. With this address it manages to re-establish the cRIO IP to 10.35.26.2, but I get the same message. Of course, after that I tried statically assigning my laptop's IP address to 10.35.26.6 with no success.

Thanks again for your support.

[Kevin_F]

Hey Joel,

I would definitely try in safe mode as well. This will give you an additional option when the imaging tool first starts to format the disk. After you reset the IP Address are you able to FTP to the controller? Are you able to ping it? Are you able to FTP/ping after the imaging tool says the controller is unreachable?

[MichaelCoss]

I'm not sure what to tell you.  You get the 196.254.190.1 address when DHCP fails on Windows, but once the imaging tool resets the ip address, you would need to reset your ip address to a vaild 10.x.y.z address.  I recovered the cRIO by doing the following steps.

0) statically configure laptop to 10.x.y.6 (although I used 20)

     a) directly connect laptop to cRIO via a cross over cable or

          if you laptop support auto sensing you can use a regular ethernet cable.

1) used the IP reset dip switch to reset the ip address to 0.0.0.0

     a) turn IP reset switch on

     b) power cycle cRIO

     c) turn IP reset switch off

2) used Measurement and Automation tool to set the ip address of the cRIO to 10.x.y.2

     tool should see cRIO with ip address of 0.0.0.0

     after you've set the ip address, you should be able to ping and ftp to the 10.x.y.2.

     if you can't then there's something wrong with the network setup. 

3) used imaging tool to reimage cRIO

     a) sees the cRIO at address 10.x.y.2

Of course, it seems like you've performed these steps already.  You should also make sure that you've got the Windows firewall turned off, and disable any and all other interfaces on your laptop.  You can also try to connect to the cRIO thru a router/bridge/access point.   This will eliminate some strangeness that happens as the cRIO goes thru it's reboots, and ensures that your laptop doesn't loose it's network connection during the imaging process.  This can be a real issue with Win7.  If you do this you can configure the network device to do DHCP on the LAN ports and eliminate having to statically provision your laptop.

Hope this helps.  I know how frustrating it can be when this curcial step isn't working

---Michael J Coss - Mentor team 303

[joel.castillo]

I had tried safe mode & IP reset, but then again, not with the "automatic IP" setting on my NIC. So I did as you suggested.

The result was that the tool asked me to format the cRIO, and I said Yes. Apparently it did format it correctly (took no more than 1 minute) since no errors were displayed. Then it asked me to turn off the safe mode switch, reboot and re-run the Tool. I did that and again I get the same error. So right after that I tried FTP/ping with no succes.

After that I statically changed my IP to 10.xx.yy.6 and FTP/ping it with succes. Then tried again with no succes.

PS: I tried this with all the suggestions -> Off Firewall, Off antivirus, Disabled all other Network Interfaces even Bluetooth. I tried with crossover, then striaght, then trough a Hub.

Here is a screenshot of the correct ping/FTP and error.

[joel.castillo]

Thanks Michael.

Yes, I have tried the steps you mentioned, and yes it is a little frustating, mainly because we haven't been able to test our code and our programming team is feeling "lost". But I really appreciate all your help to try to get a solution.

By the way, I tried what you suggested and connected the cRIO and my computer trough a Hub with no succes as you can see in my previous post. After that I tried also with a switch, with no success. Unfortunatly I don't have a router with me right now but I will try that as well tomorrow. I will let you know how it goes.

Best Regards.

Joel

Programming Mentor

Team 3526

[techdude]

1. Go to Start Menu -> All Programs -> National Instruments -> Measurement & Automation.

2. In the left column, expand "My System" -> "Software"

3. Expand "NI-RIO 4.0" If your version is different than 4.0, you need to install/reinstall the Utilities Update. If there is no entry named NI-RIO then you need to install the tools and utilities off of the NI flash drive that came with the kit and then reinstall the Utilities Update.

4. Check the versions of each Item under the NI-RIO category.

Mine are:

     CompactRIO               4.0.0

     CompactRIO Module   4.0.0

     FlexRIO                     2.1.0

     R Series                    4.0.0

Post back with your versions of these. Also, what version of Image are you trying to format it with?

--

techdude

FRC Team #4072

FTC Team #4968

Programming Team Lead.

[MichaelCoss]

One thing you could try, assuming you have the right cables and a way to hook it up is hook up the console port on the cRIO and see what is happening during the boot.  It might provide some insight as to what is going on. It looks like the cRIO is working fine, and that there is something odd on the laptop side.

To hook up the console, you'll need a serial cable and terminal emulator.   I use putty.  Unfortunately most modern laptops no longer have serial ports, and so you'll need a USB to serial connector.  And typically most serial cables will need a null modem connector to attach and talk on the serial port of the cRIO, and you'll need to set the console switch on the cRIO.

The thing that is odd is that the imaging tool isn't reporting your ethernet interface when it complains that it can't reach the cRIO, but obviously you can ping the device.

Good luck and keep us posted.

[joel.castillo]

After many times of trying we finally got the cRIO working.

Unfortunately the cRIO Imaging Tool did not work for us as intended.

What finally worked was:

1. Format the cRIO using the Imaging Tool, but with the safe mode switch ON.

2. After formatting, the tool tells you to reboot the controller to the re-run the tool again. However, it gave us the same mistake: "The cRIO IP address (10.35.26.2) is unreachable. Ensure that one of your computer's network adapters..."

3. So, instead of using the Imaging Tool as intended we copied manually the files of the "FRC_2012_v43.zip" file trough FTP. All we did was uncompressed the file, then we copied the contents of the Folders "cRIOcommon" and "cRIOFRC" into the cRIO.

4. Then we run the code in LabVIEW, and checked communications with the Dashboard and everything was OK.

PS: Here is proof that after the manual "imaging" the Imaging Tool gets to "see" the version installed, but fails again to format the controller giving us the same mistake. The tool even sees the modules instaled properly.

PS2: Hope someone at NI realizes what this error was since this was definitely a very frustrating and time consuming error.

Thanks everyone for your support.

Best regards.

Joel Castillo

Mentor Team 3526

[mgurgol]

Joel,

I was looking over one of your earlier posts and noticed that your subnet was set at 255.255.0.0.  Have you ever tried reformatting with the subnet at 255.0.0.0?

Mark

[DAQjr]

mgurgol wrote:

Joel,

I was looking over one of your earlier posts and noticed that your subnet was set at 255.255.0.0.  Have you ever tried reformatting with the subnet at 255.0.0.0?

Mark

If you read the control system manual at FIRST for this year, you will see the correct subnet to use is 255.255.255.0.