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NovaVMS Manual

Camera shows "Offline" after reboot

Camera shows “Offline” after reboot

Symptom

After you reboot a camera, its row on the Cameras page shows a red dot and the status Offline. The camera’s own web UI loads fine from your browser, so you know the camera itself is back up — but NovaVMS still insists it’s offline.

Likely causes

  1. The gateway has not re-detected the camera yet. Default detection interval is 60 seconds after a disconnection, so within the first minute after the reboot the status is still stale.
  2. The camera’s IP address changed on reboot. If the camera is on DHCP, its lease can shift to a new address, and the gateway is still probing the old one.
  3. The gateway itself is offline. If the gateway is down, every camera attached to it shows Offline.

Fix

If the gateway is offline

Open Gateways in the left nav. If the gateway row shows a red dot, fix the gateway first — every camera behind it will recover once the gateway reconnects. See Gateway shows Offline.

If the gateway is online, wait one minute

The gateway re-probes the camera once per check interval. Most transient reboots clear on their own within 90 seconds of the camera coming back up.

If the camera is still Offline after 90 seconds

  1. Open the camera row’s overflow menu on the Cameras page.
  2. Click Rediscover. This forces an immediate probe instead of waiting for the next interval.

If Rediscover finds the camera at a different IP

The camera got a new DHCP lease. Fix it so the IP stops moving:

  • Set a DHCP reservation on your router for this camera’s MAC address, or
  • Give the camera a static IP using its own web UI.

See Camera shows a different IP address than before for the full walk-through.

Verify

  1. The camera’s dot turns green within 30 seconds of the Rediscover.
  2. The live-view tile renders a frame when you open it.
  3. The Last seen timestamp on the Cameras page is within the last minute.

If none of this worked

Collect the gateway log and open a support ticket:

Terminal window
sudo journalctl -u novavms-gateway -n 500 --no-pager > gateway.log

Attach gateway.log and the camera’s ID to the ticket at support.novalien.com.

See also: