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reflections avatar image
reflections asked

Venus GX Remote Console White Screen

A strange thing has happened to my Venus GX Remote Console today. I connected using my laptop browser through VRM early in the day and all was fine, then later the screen just shows a white panel. Nothing I do seems to change the Remote Console display.

The Dashboard and other pages in VRM work fine and data is being measured by the Venus GX from my system, it is just the Remote Console that is blank. I have tried the following things:

1. Connect via VRM on my mobile phone: the screen is also white

2. Connect directly to the Venus GX using its WLAN connection from an iPad: also white screen

3. Power cycled the Venus GX: no change

4. Disconnected everything from Venus GX, power cycled then connected with WLAN on iPad: still no difference.


I am setup to receive beta Firmware drops automatically and the WLAN connection from VictronConnect shows Firmware: v2.60~21


Any ideas anyone? I love my Remote Console and really need it working again!


Thanks

Richard


Venus GX - VGXremote console
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15 Answers
jeroen avatar image
jeroen answered ·

v2.60~21 causes the white screen, which has been temporarily available in candidate. v2.60~22 is now in candidate which works properly again. When auto update is enabled, power cycling the device should fix it after a while.

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reflections avatar image
reflections answered ·

Hi Jeroen,

Indeed with v2.60~22 everything is working again!

Thanks

Richard

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Espen - avatar image
Espen - answered ·

Seems like I have lost contact under update to v2.60~22. It doesn't connect to my router either over wifi or the wired connection....

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Jmarc avatar image
Jmarc answered ·

We are experiencing similar situation on a site. Unit auto upgraded from V2.89 to V2.90. We have the same Remote white console. BUT the main console is also White.

Also strange is that VRM reports that the Remote console access is disabled. Yet we can access it.

How can we downgrade to V2.89?


JMarc

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nickdb avatar image nickdb ♦♦ commented ·
If you have tried rebooting and that has failed, the backup image is under the firmware tab in the GX settings. You can select the previous one and restart.
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Jmarc avatar image
Jmarc answered ·

I nick,

Thank you for your response. As I described both the Control console and the actual GX screen are White. Therefore we have no way to go to navigate to the page. we are completely blind. The system is otherwise working. meaning, the GX gets the BMS data and sends reference to quattro's and MPPT's.


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Anthony Kirkby avatar image
Anthony Kirkby answered ·

jmark I have exactly the same problem. Rebooted a dozen times and still white screen. However the Victron logo and "Starting" logo come up during the reboot so i know the screen is ok. The remote link comes up but I can not navigate. I will be interested to see if you get an answer..... Ant

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jez71 avatar image jez71 commented ·
Same here. I'm stuck for weeks now with this white screen. Reinstalling does nothing
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arthurb avatar image
arthurb answered ·

Same problem here on RPi running Venus OS. The issue started today. No alterations made to the system. Tried reboot and shutdown. No difference.

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jeroen avatar image jeroen ♦ commented ·

The gui mods cause this @Kevin Windrem :

file:///opt/victronenergy/gui/qml/PageSettingsGuiMods.qml:215:5: Cannot assign to non-existent property "unit" 
    				unit: "W"
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Kevin Windrem avatar image
Kevin Windrem answered ·

OK. I'm on it. Thanks jerome.

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jez71 avatar image
jez71 answered ·

Same here with a Cerbo and Touch 50 with guimods. Been like it a while now. Tried reinstalling Venus os and reinstalling setup helper and guimods on a USB stick. Nothing works, still white screen. I have lost superuser and remote access so can't SSH in. Version 2.87

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arnold-teufel avatar image arnold-teufel commented ·

Did anyone solve this problem?

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bobke avatar image
bobke answered ·

Same problem with version 3.20. Hope I still have super user rights to try SSH???

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bobke avatar image
bobke answered ·

No, Venus probably lost superuser access. After reconnection, only this white screen again . Hoe that somebody can give me a hint how to proceed. Or is the only solution to do a complete re-installation?

..

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Kevin Windrem avatar image Kevin Windrem commented ·

There are instructions for getting to the serial console port on some of the Venus OS platforms here:

https://www.victronenergy.com/live/ccgx:root_access

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bobke avatar image
bobke answered ·

Thanks for this reaction, Although access by SSH (via PUTTTY) is not possible (neither my personal root password neither ZZZ is accepted) I have the impression (on the 1 line display at the bottom of the RPI touch screen) there is a # symbol and I can enter a command as reboot. But other commands are difficult or impossible to enter and have strange results, because of some truncation on that single line display.(input and output command data seems to be mixed)..

Unless somebody can help me soon, I think I need to reinstall everything from the beginning. I saw that other and earlier remarks on this white screen in remote console were not resolved yet. A pity that is not simply possible to forget the change to the beta version (where it is acceptable that bugs can happen) and restore the previous version. But maybe this is an exceptional case?


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Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) avatar image Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented ·

After a firmware update, you have to set the superuser password again in the Remote Console in order to get ssh access.

not simply possible to forget the change to the beta version

You can always revert to the previous installed firmware (Settings > Firmware > Stored backup firmware).

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Kevin Windrem avatar image Kevin Windrem Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented ·
This requires the GUI which with a white screen isn't available.

I think console access is really the only way.

The root access document discusses setting up ssh keys which step around the need for a superuser password during the ssh negotiation. These keys are contained in the root user account which is in /data so do NOT "restore to factory defaults" as this wipes out /data completely.

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Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) avatar image Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ Kevin Windrem commented ·
Ah yes, I forgot about the white screen problem.
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bobke avatar image
bobke answered ·

Did not any further testing. I reinstalled completely from start and up to now everything works again.
But anyhow, thanks for all reactions.

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nwac avatar image
nwac answered ·

Hi Just over the weekend I rebooted venus OS on raspi - took 3 or 4 reboots for it to connect to the LAN again (didnt get to the bottom of that!) But now Remote Console doesnt work (as described above) - BUT i can still access SSH via putty. I am suspecting that remote console has switched to disabled. Is there are a Venus OS command to re-enable Remote Console? Many thanks in advance.

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nwac avatar image
nwac answered ·

ah ha, i found the answer to my question here: https://github.com/victronenergy/venus/wiki/commandline---operational

Hope it helps someone. :-)

Enable Remote Console on VRM: dbus -y com.victronenergy.settings /Settings/System/VncInternet SetValue 1

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nwac avatar image nwac commented ·
My issue started following an install of a mod from GitHub that was inappropriate for the version of venusOS running. Solution in the end was to reinstall Venus OS (latest version) then applied the mod. All ok since.
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