2. JRC-ESTATION@ec.europa.eu
GMES&Africa – eStation Maintenance
Organization of the Training
4. Session 3: User Support and Trouble-Shooting
1. Organization of User Support and role of Actors
2. Diagnostic on the Stations
3. Most common issues and troubleshooting
3. JRC-ESTATION@ec.europa.eu
GMES&Africa – eStation Maintenance
EUMETSAT User Service Helpdesk
(ops@eumetsat.int)
JRC eStation
(JRC-ESTATION@ec.europe.eu)
EUMETSAT Helpdesk Interaction
with MESA Users
Users
EUMETSAT Helpdesk
available to you:
– During normal working hours,
Monday to Thursday
08:30–17:15 CET, Friday
08:30–16:00 CET.
– Email: ops@eumetsat.int
– Tel: +49 6151 807 3660/3770
Fax: +49 6151 807 3790
Regional Implementation
Centres (RIC):
4. JRC-ESTATION@ec.europa.eu
GMES&Africa – eStation Maintenance
NOTE: In the emails addressed to EUMETSAT Helpdesk:
● The end-user should be a user coming from a Centre (Country) taking part
in the MESA station administration
● The end-user should provide:
Name :
Contact Details* (email ; tel) :
Institution Name :
MESA station number: MESA-2015-ZZZ
Problem description:
* More email addresses are better.
The call number should always be quoted in all correspondences.
When the user enquiry has been dealt with, the EUMETSAT User Helpdesk will close the
call.
5. JRC-ESTATION@ec.europa.eu
GMES&Africa – eStation Maintenance
Organization of User Support for MESA Stations
• As seen, the entry point for the User support is EUMETSAT HelpDesk:
ops@eumetsat.int
• According to the type of issue, the request will be treated by:
EUMETSAT: for Software issues on PC1, issue with EUMETCast data flow
EKU hardware and drivers, info related to other hardware
specifications
JRC: for Software issues on PC2 and PC3, i.e. concerning eStation
6. JRC-ESTATION@ec.europa.eu
GMES&Africa – eStation Maintenance
Organization of User Support for MESA Stations
• What about HW issues ? (i.e. LNB, hard-disks, motherboards)
• Until 2018, the MESA stations were covered by the Contractor warranty,
but, after this date, the beneficiary Institutions have to procure the spare
parts. Remote assistance is provided by EUM/JRC on the material
specifications, procedures, re-installation of SW and data.
• The procurement of the spare parts cannot be done by EUM/JRC.
• AUC is arranging a Maintenance contract, mainly for the Institutions part of
GMES&Africa, which is expected to be in place for mid 2021.
7. JRC-ESTATION@ec.europa.eu
GMES&Africa – eStation Maintenance
• To access new services on
EUMETCast, users need to
subscribe to the new data streams
in the EO Registration Portal
• Access to requested data is
normally activated the next
working day following your
subscription.
EO Registration Portal
User Notification Service (UNS)
To inform users of:
● Planned enhancements to products and services
● Maintenance outages
● Unplanned outages or anomalies
● Register via the UNS for email alerts (unplanned events)
and the weekly operations schedule (planned events)
● View all UNS messages via the web interface
● Service Indicator on our website: traffic lights to show
current status of our prime services.
9. JRC-ESTATION@ec.europa.eu
GMES&Africa – eStation Maintenance
4. Session 3: User Support and Troubleshooting
1. Organization of User Support and role of Actors
2. Diagnostic on the Stations
3. Most common issues and troubleshooting
13. JRC-ESTATION@ec.europa.eu
System report
• The eStation 2.0 implements a mechanism for creating an archive
containing some core information on the status of the application, and
namely:
• All the eStation 2 log file
• The list of products acquired by Get EumetCast and Get Internet
• The local settings
• The status of services on the system
• The postgresql database configuration
• The apache configuration
• The rsync configuration !
• This report can be created as indicated in the User Guide (RD-1) in paragraph 3.9.1.
In particular, when you click on ‘Create System Report’.
• The file can then be send to the User Support.
14. JRC-ESTATION@ec.europa.eu
Install report
• The eStation 2.0 implements a mechanism for creating an archive
containing core information on all CentOS packages installed on the PC.
Namely:
• The list of the CentOS packages, but the eStation ones.
• The list of eStation installed packages
• The list of the installed python module.
• This report can be created as indicated in the User Guide (RD-1) in paragraph 3.9.1.
In particular, when you click on ‘Create Install Report’.
15. JRC-ESTATION@ec.europa.eu
GMES&Africa – eStation Maintenance
4. Session 3: User Support and Troubleshooting
1. Organization of User Support and role of Actors
2. Diagnostic on the Stations
3. Most common issues and troubleshooting
16. JRC-ESTATION@ec.europa.eu
GMES&Africa – eStation Maintenance
Hard Disk and RAID - Introduction
All PCs have two identical Hard disk in RAID1 configuration, which means the
same contents is identically duplicated on both (and system works fine with
1 broken).
Together, they are configured as a ‘Volume’, i.e. a logical storage entity,
which you see in the file-system under a single mounting point (you cannot
access them separately).
18. JRC-ESTATION@ec.europa.eu
GMES&Africa – eStation Maintenance
Most common issues 1: faulty Hard Disk
Problem description:
You detect, by doing the diagnostic (see above), than one of the two disk is broken,
and need to be replaced.
Cause/Solution:
The cause can be a sudden shut-down of the computer (e.g. if the UPS is not working)
You have to procure an HD of identical size, and replace it by following the procedure
presented in the following video.
20. JRC-ESTATION@ec.europa.eu
GMES&Africa – eStation Maintenance
Most common issues 2: Data Management does not Display
Problem description:
When you go to the ‘Data Management’ tab of the eStation GUI (normally on PC3)
you see the page empty, and it does not display even if you ‘refresh’ it.
Cause/Solution:
Most probably, there are corrupted files in the local file-system, which you should
delete as indicated in the following video.
23. JRC-ESTATION@ec.europa.eu
GMES&Africa – eStation Maintenance
Most common issues 3: LAN connection problems
Problem description:
One of the PCs or UPS is not reachable, because of its IP definition, e.g. it is defined
as 192.xxx.xxx.xxx while the other are in a different sub-net (192.xxx.xxx.xxx)
Cause/Solution:
The cause can be an incomplete change of IPs (aborted by the User or for internal
error) or an operation by the Sys Admin.
The suggested procedure is to revert back all IPs to the default ones (192.168.0.15x)
by following the steps described below. At that point, it will be possible to change
again the IPs from the CentOS UI.
27. JRC-ESTATION@ec.europa.eu
GMES&Africa – eStation Maintenance
Most common issues 4: eStation upgrade not executed
Problem description:
The version of your eStation software is not the latest one, as announced by JRC or as
visible from the eStation website.
Cause/Solution:
The cause can be either the upgrades have not been received on PC1 (maybe offline
at the time of the dissemination), or they were corrupted.
You have to manually download from the JRC SFTP the latest software packages (.rpm
files) copy to the 3 computers, and run the upgrade.
30. JRC-ESTATION@ec.europa.eu
GMES&Africa – eStation Maintenance
Most common issues 5: Data not received on PC1
Problem description:
There is no Tellicast reception, and the femon command returns ‘no lock’
("FE_HAS_LOCK" is not displayed)
Causes/Solutions:
Broken DVB card, or broken antenna cable, or broken LNB, or antenna de-pointing, or
corrosion in contacts.
Since the causes could be multiple or only one of them then you have to check and
eliminate one by one possible root causes.
It is very unlikely that both DVB cards are broken in the same time. Test if PC2 DVB
Card shows “FE_HAS_LOCK” . If not the root cause should be searched outdoors.
32. JRC-ESTATION@ec.europa.eu
GMES&Africa – eStation Maintenance
Most common issues 6: Add/Edit EKU credentials
Problem description:
There is no reception of encrypted data. Need to add/edit and check the EKU
credentials.
Causes/Solutions:
PC1 or PC2 are installed from scratch or wrong EKU credentials are added to PC1&2
If you have lost or not sure which EKU credentials are to be used for your station
then contact EUMETSAT Helpdesk. Provide the EKU number to EUMETSAT Helpdesk.
Then follow the videos below and adapt to your situation. Therefore the examples
from videos are for “how to do it” and credentials used are fake. They are unique for
each end-user account.
