Reconnecting with mpfshell to webrepl seldomly works in first try

[ulno]

Connecting to webrepl via the ws option of mpfshell seems a little less reliable than using webrepl from https://github.com/micropython/webrepl.

Connecting the first time to freshly booted esp8266 usually seems to work (even if I have the feeling that it also sometimes fails when the wireless connection is weak - don't have proof for that yet). However, re-opening the websocket or even closing and re-connecting usually does not work the first time. A second re-connect often succeeds.

The webrepl web frontend seems to work nearly always (only sometimes fails when I used mpfshell in between).

Any idea why this is? What is done differently? Can this be fixed or circumvented?

A transcript of my testsession looks like this:

ulno#ulnoiot:$ mpfshell --loglevel DEBUG --logfile /tmp/mpfshell.log

** Micropython File Shell v0.8.0, sw@kaltpost.de ** 
-- Running on Python 3.5 using PySerial 3.3 --

mpfs [/]> open ws:192.168.12.57,ulnoiot
Connected to esp8266
mpfs [/]> close
mpfs [/]> open ws:192.168.12.57,ulnoiot

Failed to open: ws:192.168.12.57,ulnoiot

mpfs [/]> open ws:192.168.12.57,ulnoiot
Connected to esp8266
mpfs [/]> open ws:192.168.12.57,ulnoiot

Failed to open: ws:192.168.12.57,ulnoiot

mpfs [/]> open ws:192.168.12.57,ulnoiot
Connected to esp8266
mpfs [/]> exit

The corresponding debug.log

tail -f /tmp/mpfshell.log 
2017-04-27 13:48:08,883 INFO    Micropython File Shell v0.8.0 started
2017-04-27 13:48:08,883 INFO    Running on Python 3.5 using PySerial 3.3
2017-04-27 13:48:27,619 INFO    websocket connected to ws://192.168.12.57:8266
2017-04-27 13:48:34,338 INFO    websocket closed
2017-04-27 13:48:35,957 ERROR   websocket error: Connection is already closed.
2017-04-27 13:48:35,962 INFO    websocket closed
2017-04-27 13:48:40,807 ERROR   
2017-04-27 13:48:57,758 INFO    websocket connected to ws://192.168.12.57:8266
2017-04-27 13:49:04,248 INFO    websocket closed
2017-04-27 13:49:04,275 ERROR   websocket error: Connection is already closed.
2017-04-27 13:49:04,281 INFO    websocket closed
2017-04-27 13:49:09,249 ERROR   
2017-04-27 13:49:23,899 INFO    websocket connected to ws://192.168.12.57:8266
2017-04-27 13:49:28,621 INFO    websocket closed

[ulno]

So, I assume, the module, I need to look at is mpfshell/mp/conwebsock.py. Would it be hard to at least enable some kind of auto-reconnect/retry? Maybe off by default but some kind of wsretry-flag you could give on the command line. Would it make sense to just play with the timeout? I still just don't understand why mpfshell fails so often and webrepl doesn't? Maybe the websocket handling in python is different than in javascript? I don't see any special code handling errors in the java script part.

Micropython (https://github.com/micropython/webrepl) provides the python command-line client (webrepl-cli.py) which even does a super simple manual websocket handling (in websocket-helper.py). Maybe using that would increase stability?

Thoughts?

ulno

[ulno]

I took a closer look and it seems that switching to raw repl mode messes up the micropython repl. A webrepl reset at connection close seems to fix it.

Here is my current testing fork, there is still a bit too much debug prints in there, but if you feel like testing, check it out: https://github.com/ulno/mpfshell

[skorokithakis]

Have you gotten anywhere with this? Websocket connections are currently very flaky and I'd like to fix that.