Error in the handling of the serial buffer

[RCGV1]

I was running the network management client, which was connected via serial to a node running the latest version. I got this error:
[2025-01-04][06:54:56][ERROR][meshtastic::connections::stream_buffer] Could not find header sequence [0x94, 0xc3], purging buffer and waiting for more data

[caveman99]

That's not really an error, this just says there's random data coming down the serial port, most probably our debug logging. The client will just discard it.

[krant]

I guess the "fix" would be to lower message severity to debug or trace.

[lukipuki]

If it's random data from debug logging which is expected, I don't think this should cause an ERROR log message. I'll look into it at some point.
I also don't think downgrading log message severity is the solution, it could hide important issues with user setup or bugs.

[lukipuki]

I reproduced this, it's not a cosmetic problem, it pollutes the logs if you log every error. For me it's hundreds of lines of logs every twenty seconds.
If I run meshtastic --port /dev/ttyACM0 --noproto, I get battery state every 20 seconds, it's probably that.

[lukipuki]

I tried to fix this in the same way the Python packages does it, see

• https://github.com/meshtastic/python/blob/213faa0cae0504ca5b49a03fa9a3c47c75ecca09/meshtastic/stream_interface.py#L173
• https://github.com/meshtastic/python/blob/213faa0cae0504ca5b49a03fa9a3c47c75ecca09/meshtastic/stream_interface.py#L132

However, I wasn't successful, I'll try again when I have more time.

As a workaround, you can ignore the logs of meshtastic::connections::stream_buffer.

• For env_logger, you can add .filter_module("meshtastic::connections::stream_buffer", log::LevelFilter::Off)
• For fern, you can add .level_for("meshtastic::connections::stream_buffer", log::LevelFilter::Off)

[lukipuki]

While developing my project I did some more tests. The crate also prints 3 log messages (WARN, ERROR and ERROR) when you unplug the serial device, when one would suffice.

The whole logging, at least for serial needs an overhaul.

[krant]

+1 for the overhaul. I had a gut feeling about that too and replicated python parser some time ago - https://github.com/krant/meshtastic-rs/blob/patch/src/connections/stream_buffer.rs#L45-L73. It was working fine for me, but one test was failing (I believe python implementation would fail that test too) so I did not bother to create a PR.