How-to guide - Tools => Upgrades Troubleshooting

Automation Help

Automation Help includes support for the most common problems with Tools => Upgrades.

Automation Software => Project Management => Workspace => Upgrades => Troubleshooting

B&R Online Help

Fire wall / HTTP / TLS

So far we only had one single case where a customer ITs firewall blocked our upgrade service that couldn’t be solved by the customers IT themselves. The Upgrade service accesses our homepage to download the upgrade files and allowing this the problem was solved.

User rights

Automation Studio

As a test it should always be attempted to start AS explicitly as administrator. Some operations of AS always need administrator rights, see Automation Help:

Automation software => Software Installation => Administrator rights for B&R software

Upgrade Service

Tools => Upgrades relies on the B&R Upgrade Service for operation, see services in Windows.

Note which user (e.g. LOCAL_SYSTEM, LOCAL_SERVICE,…) is used to run this service. The customer IT must ensure that this user has sufficient rights to:

  • Access B&R homepage
  • Download files (including zipped files) into C:\Temp
    (e.g. this file is downloaded: https://www.br-automation.com/addons_xml.zip )
  • Unzip files in C:\Temp (and subfolders)
  • Install the upgrade files from there

In some cases switching the user from LOCAL_SERVICE to LOCAL_SYSTEM or vice versa could solve the problem.

Known problems

List of HwUpgrades in Tools=>Upgrades outdated / not updated anymore

In rare cases it could happen that the list was simply not updated anymore, even restarts of the PC could not fix this. (Deleting everything in C:\Temp and restarting the PC normally does fix the issue)

The problem itself was never reproducible in HQ so a definite fix could not be found but based on the available information several improvements were made and introduced with AS 4.11

==> All further analysis must happen with AS >= 4.11

==> To rule out interference of older AS UpgradeServices no AS < 4.11 should be installed on this test system

==> Provide as much information as possible including all the logs listed below

Information for further analysis

Tools Upgrades Logging

Some components of AS can activate a logging function. In location C:\Users<username>\AppData\Roaming\BR\Logging\Settings there are config files for this
functions.

The Level in the configuration file controls what is recorded. 1 = Information, 2 = Warning, 4 = Error, 8 = Debug ( Sum 15 = everything)

After Saving of changes in this file and a RESTART of the application (AS and Windows Service) the logged files can be found here:

C:\Users<username>\AppData\Roaming\BR\Logging\Data

Attention: The Logging should be deactivated again after it finished to avoid performance loss and creating unnecessary files.

LOCAL_SYSTEM

If the upgrade service is started as “Lokales System” (LOCAL_SYSTEM)

2 of the relevant files are here: C:\ProgramData\BR\Logging\Settings

BR.AS.UpgradeCore.config
BR.AS.UpgradeService.config

And another one here: C:\Users<username>\AppData\Roaming\BR\Logging\Settings

BR.AS.UpgradeService.config

LOCAL_SERVICE

If the service is started as „Local Service“ the Logging is stored here:

C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Roaming\BR\Logging\Data

Data for B&R Support

If you can’t get this to work together with the customer IT please do the following test and take a video (fullscreen, not cellphone) of the whole test:

  1. Close all instances of AS

  2. Activate full logging as described in the attached PDF

  3. Stop all B&R Upgrade Services

  4. Delete everything in C:\Temp

  5. Start one B&R Upgrade Service of the AS version you want to test, the latest installed AS version

  6. Wait 1-2 minutes to allow the service to download the upgrades list from the homepage (you can pause the recording of the video here)

  7. Check the contents of C:\Temp and subfolders and compare them to a working PC
    ==> If there is no “asupgrades.xml” or “addons.xml” then something on the customer’s PC is blocking our service

  8. Start AS explicitly as Admin

  9. Try installing some online upgrade

  10. Try installing some local upgrade

  11. Access our homepage with some browser
    ==> Provide this video and all the logfiles described above.

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