cRIO no longer boots

Technical Control System
1

While reimaging the cRIO to v28, there was what looks like a communication error and aborted.

The error displayed in the Imaging Tool error window:
“Error 60 occured at UDP open in repFPC open connection.vi”
It gave as a possible error that there was another .2 on the network causing a duplicate IP condition. Of course there is only one cRIO and one .2 address.

When I rebooted the cRIO for another attempt, it will not boot up normally.

My question is how do I recover from this problem? The cRIO is unusable. Do I try reimaging in Safe Mode? Did I brick the cRIO?
I found this:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-70753.html and see that it is recoverable but I don’t need to do an IP reset, I just need to get it to reimage and boot up properly.

Thanks for help.

Further info:
Using a directly connected console, the following is displayed (the cRIO’s IP address is still correct):

                        cRIO-907x Boot

Copyright 2007 National Instruments Corp.
Bootrom version: 2.4.7
Creation date: Jul 9 2007, 00:45:07
Press any key to stop auto-boot…
0
auto-booting…

boot device : tffs=0,0
unit number : 0
processor number : 0
host name : host
file name : /c/ni-rt/system/vxWorks
flags (f) : 0x8

Mounting tffs…
Attaching to TFFS… Datalight Reliance v3.00.1218T
VxWorks Edition for ppc603
Copyright © 2003-2007 Datalight, Inc.
done.

Cannot open “/c/ni-rt/system/vxWorks”.

Error loading file: errno = 0xd40005.
Booting into Safe Mode from ROM…
Uncompressing kernel…
done.
2910608
Starting at 0x100000…

Mounting tffs…
Datalight Reliance v3.00.1218T
VxWorks Edition for ppc603
Copyright © 2003-2007 Datalight, Inc.
Entering safe mode.
Initializing network…
Device 1 - MAC address: 00:80:2F:11:50:9E - 10.12.58.2 (primary)
Device 2 - MAC address: 00:80:2F:11:50:9F - 0.0.0.0 (secondary)

2

I’d reformat it. If you need to, do the safe mode format. If you get errors related to duplicate IPs, try plugging the cRIO and the laptop into the dlink. This will keep the enet controllers connected.

Greg McKaskle

3

By reformat, do you mean reimage using the Imaging Tool?

4

The cRIO is nothing but a computer. Reimaging it puts a running OS on the system, but only replaces the system files… Kind of like reinstalling Windows without reformatting your hard drive.

Well, reformatting erases everything off, and installs the NI-Real Time OS to the cRIO.

If you cannot connect, try booting into Safe Mode.

I’d recommend a reformat with the reimage. No good reason not to. You will have to redeploy your code though.

5

Problem solved:

I connected both the cRIO and Windriver laptop to the router using ethernet cables. I disabled all wireless on both laptops plus turned off the Driver Station PC. I also connected another laptop to the console output of the cRIO to watch VxWorks do its thing…or not.

  1. Switched Safe Mode on and booted up.
  2. Attempted to reimage and the Imaging Tool offered to reformat. Accepted the offer and reformat was successful
  3. Turned off Safe Mode, rebooted and discovered on the console that the cRIO was back to IP adr 0.0.0.0
  4. Used MAX to set the IP to the proper address.
  5. Rebooted and ran the Imaging Tool successfully. The robot is now at v28 and will boot.

This is our one and only original cRIO and we never had this problem. Here is the cause of the problem: we ran the Imaging Tool while connected over wireless. Almost instantly, there was an abort of the imaging process and a corrupted cRIO that wouldn’t boot. Lesson learned: no wireless when reimaging.

Great relief to solve this problem!