[Support] Linuxserver.io - Unifi-Controller

[nia]

6 minutes ago, vw-kombi said:

Oops.....  I have two devices I never knew were out of date.  I set them up years ago and never changed my config.

They are a AP-Lite and AP-LR.  Version 2 devices I believe.

Based on this, They should never have gone higher than 6.0.45 -

I have an AP-LR and I'm on 7.2.95 with no issues. The AP-LR won't update anymoe, but you can IMO safely upgrade the rest of your equipment. I have for many many versions with no issue. 

 

There is a few things you can't do as long as you have the old AP, like e.g. assign devices to a specific AP, but otherwise you are fine. No reason to downgrade at all.

[PeteAsking]

The problem is - as we are finding out realtime - is that unifi simply turn around one day and break it by design and when you ask why they say “well we said nobody was supposed to do that and they ignored us so now we changed it so that the devices no longer function”. So your strategy is simply a ticking timebomb. 

[vw-kombi]

Okay - re the ticking time bomb - to avoid, I know I have to 'go back' to 6.0.45.

There is a container tag from > 2 years ago - linuxserver/unifi-controller:version-6.0.45.

So my question is....... 

if I take a backup my current controller on 7.3.76-ls171, can I then install this old container version 6.0.45, then restore the 7.3.76-ls171 to that ?

 

 

[Hoopster]

I bit the bullet and ordered a USW-Lite-8-POE 8-port switch which supports PoE/PoE+  It was the same price ($109) I paid for the USW-8-60W 4+ years ago and I found a supplier that had it in stock with free shipping instead of the ~$11 Ubiquiti wanted to charge.

 

The Controller software upgrade may have surfaced a potential issue but that is not the only reason I decided to upgrade my 8-port switch to the newer model.  I assume that future hardware may have the same PoE+ requirement and I don't want to be surprised again.  My main 16-port switch already supports PoE/PoE+

 

I can move the USW-8-60W switch downstairs to get some wired connections there and power the U6-Lite AP downstairs which does not have the PoE+ requirement.

Edited February 12, 2023 by Hoopster

[JonathanM]

3 hours ago, vw-kombi said:

Okay - re the ticking time bomb - to avoid, I know I have to 'go back' to 6.0.45.

There is a container tag from > 2 years ago - linuxserver/unifi-controller:version-6.0.45.

So my question is....... 

if I take a backup my current controller on 7.3.76-ls171, can I then install this old container version 6.0.45, then restore the 7.3.76-ls171 to that ?

 

 

I also have obsolete devices in my menagerie, and am on 7.2.95. At this point I believe you would be best to hold at your current version, specifying that tag if you are on latest, if it's working for you. Don't mess with a working system, until you see what effects an update could have on you.

 

6 hours ago, nia said:

I have an AP-LR and I'm on 7.2.95 with no issues. The AP-LR won't update anymoe, but you can IMO safely upgrade the rest of your equipment. I have for many many versions with no issue. 

 

There is a few things you can't do as long as you have the old AP, like e.g. assign devices to a specific AP, but otherwise you are fine. No reason to downgrade at all.

I fully agree, but I also wouldn't allow any more upgrades to the controller if you aren't willing to give up and replace old equipment. Every upgrade is a risk point, which is why we stress to never use the latest tag.

 

My obsolete AP's are still chugging along, and if it becomes necessary I could always log in to them and set the inform host to a different controller running an older version.

[PeteAsking]

Also dont forget ‘obsolete’ just means unifi one day decided they dont support them. It doesnt mean they are broken. Most times the hardware is still reliable and fast enough for daily use.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[vw-kombi]

After research, it seems you cant restore a backup from the later versions to the older version of the controller.  So I am stuck here on my version 7.3.76-ls171.  I am not moving off it due to my (currently working) UAP-AC-Lite and UAP-AC-LR.  I tested I can change the wifi passwords at least anyway! 

[wgstarks]

49 minutes ago, vw-kombi said:

After research, it seems you cant restore a backup from the later versions to the older version of the controller.  So I am stuck here on my version 7.3.76-ls171.  I am not moving off it due to my (currently working) UAP-AC-Lite and UAP-AC-LR.  I tested I can change the wifi passwords at least anyway! 

Just out of curiosity, what isn’t working?

[vw-kombi]

Nothing I know of is not working, but then again my configs were setup years ago and have not been changed.  I doubt I will need to do an vlan, wifi or network changes ever again.  It’s more the gloomy outlook in these recent posts and the general unknown for the future as my controller version does not support these AP’s.

[Hoopster]

13 hours ago, vw-kombi said:

After research, it seems you cant restore a backup from the later versions to the older version of the controller.

Yeah, database changes between versions, when they occur, will render new backups useless for restoring with older versions of the controller.

 

So you had no previous backups of the system when running older versions of the controller?

 

I have backups going back to version 5.6.22.  Probably time to clean some of those up.

 

You can configure in the controller automatic backups and tell it how long to keep each backup and how many to keep.

 

Fortunately, I had a backup from 7.2.95 or I would not have been able to roll back to it from the 7.3.83 version that caused my UAP-AC-IW to cease working.

Edited February 13, 2023 by Hoopster

[vw-kombi]

Nah. I never thought the controller would be hobbled like this.  I have loads of backups, but not for the container that far back.

[PeteAsking]

8 hours ago, vw-kombi said:

Nah. I never thought the controller would be hobbled like this.  I have loads of backups, but not for the container that far back.

I think a lot of us have been surprised that updating the controller software can break devices or stop them working, and that you have to check your site before running an update to see if its compatible. Its actually quite tricky to know because some changes fly under the radar. On one hand the hardware is excellent and works reliably and well, and is cost effective. On the other had the software controlling it is very dangerous in a business setting to just blindly update. Its really a shame because unifi let themselves down and it reflects badly on their brand.

[Hoopster]

2 hours ago, PeteAsking said:

you have to check your site before running an update to see if its compatible

I only stumbled on the thread I linked about the issue because the problem with my UAP-AC-IW and USW-8-60W happened and I went looking for a "solution."  There was no mention in the 7.3.83 release notes indicating this could happen. 

 

The closest thing is this in the Improvements section:

Improve PoE usage information in the device property panel.

which seem totally irrelevant to the problem the upgrade introduced.

 

Seems Ubiquiti dropped the ball on this one.

[PeteAsking]

Their logic is they said one time dont do this, people did it and found it worked, so they feel they have no obligation to help.

 

Same for unsupported devices. They have said dont do it, dont upgrade. If you continue to do it and it causes some fault, then dont expect any help from them. in addition expect them to actively try break something...

[Pink Flag]

Hi guys! I've installed the container (latest version, grabbed in the apps section) but I'm receiving an error upon logging in.

 

I type my username (or email - tried with both) and password, then I am brought to the 2fa prompt which I complete, then the system returns this error message: Invalid username and/or password.

 

This is not true because the same details allow me to log into the Unifi portal just fine. 

 

Anyone encountered similar issues? Cheers!

[Hoopster]

53 minutes ago, Pink Flag said:

This is not true because the same details allow me to log into the Unifi portal just fine.

If I recall correctly, the controller does not have a default user name and password.  There is supposed to be a wizard that appears at controller first run that allows you to setup controller username and password.  I think you may have to disable cloud options if you want to set a local username/password for the controller.

 

Your Ubiquiti portal/community login credentials do not work for the controller. 

 

It's been years since I setup my controller credentials so I may be rusty on the details.

 

The default user name and password for logging in to Unifi devices via SSH or PuTTY is ubnt/ubnt but again that does not work for the controller.  It should prompt you to set that up on first run.

 

Perhaps someone who has done this more recently can provide additional information.

[Pink Flag]

6 hours ago, Hoopster said:

Your Ubiquiti portal/community login credentials do not work for the controller. 

 

 

I got it to work, thank you! It worked when i uninstalled the container, deleted all its files in appdata and installed it again. 🤷

 

The controller now uses your Unifi account though, I can confirm that! The linuxserver container version does at least (but I assume the others do too).

 

Thanks again, appreciate the input! 

Edited February 14, 2023 by Pink Flag

[Hoopster]

I have once again updated the controller to version 7.3.83.  I caved and bought a new USW-Lite-8-PoE switch which supports PoE+ for the UAP-AC-IW.  I moved the US-8-60W to the basement with an AP attached to it that only needs PoE.

 

So far, no errors and everything looks good after about 30 minutes of uptime.

 

One problem I did have after putting in the new switch and moving the old one is that many of  my client devices were reporting they were connected to the wrong switch.  I have three switches now (1 16-port and 2 8-port) and with all three there were devices claiming to be connected to port X on switch Y which were just wrong.  Apparently, this problem goes back almost five years and Ubiquiti has never fixed. it.  The solution that worked for me was to forget the devices in the controller one by one and reconfigure them with the right device name and icon once they came up on the correct switch.  Sometimes, I had to do this twice but everything appears to be correct now.

 

I will say Ubiquiti is bound and determined to keep things interesting.  😁

Edited February 15, 2023 by Hoopster

[Ritmjunk]

Quote

 

The US8-60W is standard PoE (af). The product specifications limit PoE delivery to 15.4W per port.

The U6-LR is a PoE+ (at) device. The product specifications have a max operating power consumption at 16.5W.

 

 

I have an US8-60W POE, my controller is at version 7.3.83 and working fine!

There are indeed some system logs: ## AP is connected to a PoE port incapable of providing enough power for the AP to operate at full capacity. Please connect it to a PoE+ port or adapter##

 

7.37 W on the poe port (US8-60W) that powers my U6-LR. For me there are no problems at all, even no power loss or capacity loss.

 

My equipment:

2 x  US8-60W POE

1 x  U6-LR

1 x UAP-AC-LR

 

To summarize, the equipment did not stop working. Just a message in the system log. Maybe in high density environments it can cause problems...

 

[petsheep]

On 12/15/2021 at 9:02 AM, jademonkee said:

Good luck! For me it worked with only small problems. Although I think I might have had to reset the APs so that they would adopt.

The tag I use is:

linuxserver/unifi-controller:version-6.5.54

 

So for both to confirm, going from 5.14.23 to 6.5.54 is a good route? No need to take any earlier 6.* version to start with and then upgrade to 6.5.54? I'm really just looking for a stable version of 6 so I can eventually get upgrade to 7. Thanks!

[Hoopster]

10 minutes ago, petsheep said:

So for both to confirm, going from 5.14.23 to 6.5.54 is a good route?

I went all the way from 5.14.23 to 7.1.66 in one upgrade with no other incremental version needing to be installed in between.  Given that worked, it should be the same for 6.5.54.  You can likely go all the way to a 7.x.x version now if you wish.

Edited February 23, 2023 by Hoopster

[petsheep]

19 hours ago, Hoopster said:

I went all the way from 5.14.23 to 7.1.66 in one upgrade with no other incremental version needing to be installed in between.  Given that worked, it should be the same for 6.5.54.  You can likely go all the way to a 7.x.x version now if you wish.

Thank you. I just worry about their latest versions and don't need the latest features. I believe 6.5.55 is stable and has the Java patch so I should be set if I ever upgrade a device. 

[ZenBuddha]

I'm sure this is answered somewhere and I just don't know how to put the right search terms together, so apologies for a redundant question...

What's the proper way to make the gui available behind a reverse proxy?  I have swag installed on it's own network so the only way I've figured out how to get to the controller is to enable Host access to custom networks.  Otherwise it doesn't work.  I would rather not do that as I know it's not that safe.  The other thing I tried was to put the unifi-controller network into my custom proxy-net but then it couldn't talk to any of my devices.  Kept trying to adopt them over and over.

 

Appreciate any guidance on this one.

 

Thanks

[Hoopster]

FYI - A post in the Ubiquiti forums (from a customer not Ubiquiti) claims the beta 7.4.145 controller seems to have fixed the issue with a UAP-AC-IW going into a restart loop if powered by the US-8-60W PoE switch. 

 

I don't know if it is true as I wouldn't touch a Ubiquiti beta release, but it is a good sign if true.  Perhaps Ubiquiti listened to the uproar from customers on this issue.

[TNJed]

I've already got a Cloud Key currently running software version 6.0.44 for my newer Unifi gear.  But I have some of the old square AP AC v2 units lying around I was planning to deploy.  They're way too old for my Cloud Key so I looked for a Docker to run an older version and discovered unfi-controller.  I loaded the current release and had no issues other than it not seeing the old AP AC v2s.  Did some research, found this forum post and have read pages and pages and I'm not able to get LTS-5.6.42-ls97 to run despite hours of effort. 

 

I deleted my install of current via the UI, downloaded the template again, and changed the Repository to:  lscr.io/linuxserver/unifi-controller:LTS-5.6.42-ls97.  The install goes fine but when launching the WEBUI I get "This site can’t be reached" message. In reviewing the log file it starts but shortly after starts throwing errors as follows:

 

[cont-init.d] 10-adduser: exited 0.
[cont-init.d] 20-config: executing...
[cont-init.d] 20-config: exited 0.
[cont-init.d] 30-keygen: executing...
[cont-init.d] 30-keygen: exited 0.
[cont-init.d] 99-custom-scripts: executing...
[custom-init] no custom files found exiting...
[cont-init.d] 99-custom-scripts: exited 0.
[cont-init.d] done.
[services.d] starting services
[services.d] done.
Error occurred during initialization of VM
Too small initial heap
Error occurred during initialization of VM
Too small initial heap
Error occurred during initialization of VM

 

Too small initial heap errors keep repeating about every second until I stop it.  I've tried to increase the MEM_LIMIT and MEM_STARTUP in increments up to 4096 and still get the same result.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Edited March 11, 2023 by TNJed