Support Book - Diagnosing Looping Controllers using the Provisioning Server

Owned by Lee Walker (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jul 09, 2019 by Joshua Roe (Unlicensed)

When supporting technicians that are installing new genflow hardware, if the installer reports that their controller can't discover its connectors and therefore they cannot complete any of the gen-flow.com setup process, refer to this guide.

Be sure that you have attempted all steps in the Support Book - General Support Steps guide first (except the last resort options: USB Tethering and Ethernet to Router) 

Before moving onto last resort options, if your controller's Amber LED is still inactive you can use the provisioning server and the gencloud management portal.

  • Log into Gencloud Bastion server in WinSCP (ask a software engineer to assist in setting this up). Support Book - Setting up SSH connection to servers
  • Hit CTRL-P to open a connection to the server
  • Enter connect 10.0.102.254 (This IP may have changed, consult software developer to check AWS for new IP) - this connects to the provisioning server
  • At the command line, enter tail -f /var/log/web-1.log -n 10000 | grep -i 'c.g.c.p.a.s.ProvisioningServiceImpl\|co.gendis.cloud.persistence.StatsFilter' to access the provisioning server logs with specific reference to the newly provisioning controllers
  • Ask the technician to read you the controller serial if you don't already have access to it
  • Filter for the serial number in the Gencloud Management Portal 
  • On the far left of the field, click the three-vertical-dots symbol and click Reprovision.
  • Watch the command prompt carefully for new entries tagged with the controller's serial number.

  • If the SD card cannot be provisioned for any reason, you will receive an error response 

if you are seeing any information in the logs, the controller can make a connection and has signal - this is another good confirmation of controller online in regards to signal strength of cellular data.

If you receive this error response,

  1. ask your technician to power down the controller completely,
  2. replace the SD card with a fresh one,
  3. click on reprovision again in the management portal
  4. then power the controller back up. 


  • At this point, the controller's amber LED will light up within the usual 20-30 seconds after boot-up. 
  • If after this period, the amber LED still doesn't light up, power down, re-send the provision command from the management portal , power up and watch the command prompt. 
  • If the provision command was successful, the command prompt should read the following response:

  • Once the amber LED is on you are good to carry on with the installation.

Glossary of terms in the logs:

Already provisioned, cloud believes it is already provisioned,

If my controller (I know the serial number) then reprovision from management portal.

Change state and restart controller

Controller online, and starting provisioning process.

Controller online and downloading files again as it failed the first time

Controller is online