Electech

I’m reaching because I’m having similar symptoms as when I exchanged with HMS support last on this (late May ’17), but likely not due to the same causes. (see ticket #1721-18747)

Once again, the email sending feature of the SMTP client on this particular HMI is not successfully passing emails through a Cosy 131. Not sure exactly when it stopped (it was working fine for almost 2 ½ years), but it appears to have started throwing email error alarms on the HMI alarm log around early Sept. of this year. The reason I suspect the change is attributable to the Cosy is that I upgraded the firmware to the device from 12.1 to 13.0 and also needed to do a level 1 reset on the Cosy sometime after that due to a forgotten password; between the two, I think there was a correlation in the timing of the failure. The HMI configuration, on the other hand, really has not had any changes that would lead me to suspect it as the source of the problem, and double-checking its settings seems to have confirmed that.

As far as eWon settings go, I’ve compared the syntax of two different “comcfg.txt” files (one contemporary, and one from 8-28-17 – when the email feature was working correctly) using a file analysis tool and found them substantially different (which I suspect stems from the firmware upgrade, at least). I can zip up the files for you if you’d like, but I was hoping to get some guidance here as to the best course of action to get our email service restored.

Thanks in advance.

Jon V

Please follow this document to get the email working again:

What happened is, when you reset the device, it went back to default settings, which do not allow LAN devices to send anything to the WAN so your emails were not reaching the internet. Keep in mind, you will need to make sure the HMI and any other LAN devices are using the Cosy’s LAN address as the default gateway in order to communicate with anything outside the LAN.

Kyle

Good morning, Kyle. It appears that the link you provided is broken. (404 - page not found window pops up). I did a search for kb-0068-0-en on your website as well and all it pulled up was a broken web page also.

I did locate a user query that seemed relevant in the Cosy category, titled ‘HTTP Port Forwarding’ (https://forum.hms-networks.com/u/rta1953), in which about halfway through the thread user ‘rta1953’ comments that "I can now access the HMI via web interface so that now works. I can also connect to my PLC using RSLinx. However it seems changing the NATltf from 2 to 3 is blocking alarm emails from being sent out by the Red Lion HMI. I used the KB article that said to change the settings to the following:

  • NatItf = 2 (Nat and TF on WAN)
  • VPNRedirect = 0 (Allow traffic outside the VPN tunnel)
  • FwrdToWAN = 1 (Forward LAN traffic to WAN)

I’m not sure what KB article he was referring to. Perhaps its same one you’re trying to direct me to?

Kyle, looking at the comcfg.txt differences between the two incidents (before, when it was working versus now, after the firmware upgrade and reset when it is not), I see the following parameter differences:

NatItf: 2 to 3
VPNPortOut: (different port #)
VPNSrv1: (different address)
VPNSrv2: (different address)
VPNProto: 0 to 1
DHCPTo: 45000 to 10000
FrwdtoWAN: 1 to 0

Can I merely edit the associated parameters to their former values to make this work again? If so, what are the values that matter and which ones don’t?

Also, It appears the ‘maintenance’ button option that allowed me to do live edits (referred to in KB-0081-00) has been removed (or at least hidden/relocated?) in the 13.0 firmware dashboard, so I’m not sure what the best way to go about restoring the original comcfg.txt parameters.

This link above is working for me, but here is another copy of the article:

kb-0068-0-en-access_internet_via_cosy_beside_talk2m_vpn_0.pdf (69.4 KB)

You will want to ONLY change NatItf and FrwdtoWAN. The other settings need to stay the same or they will cause problems. Follow the instructions in the article. For firmware version 13 you will find the Comcfg settings in Setup > System > Storage:

SOLUTION: Okay, I think I figured out how the comcfg.txt parameters are intended to be edited from the 13.0 dashboard, but if KB-0081-00 hasn’t already undergone a revision I wasn’t aware of to accommodate the changes in the firmware since 12.0, it probably should be.

I found another related thread here:


that seemed to address the issue, edited those parameters, rebooted device and voila - emails are back.

Okay, I got the KB-0068-00 that way, but for some reason your embedded links only seem to pull up ‘404 -page not found’ errors when attempted from the outside world (that includes the link in the KB-0068-00 document that points to the KB-081 doc), so you might want to have that looked into.

At any rate, the info in the thread mentioned was articulated formally in KB-0068 and did the trick for me. Thanks for your help.

Great! Thanks for letting us know about the links. There are a lot of broken ones since our website was migrated so we are trying to get them fixed.