Fixing My UniFi Devices Showing As Offline

I had this issue for a while where a few of my Unifi devices are showing as OFFLINE intermittently or all the time. This blog post is about how I found out a solution to fixing my UniFi Devices showing as offline.

Credit must be given to Jacob Tomlinson whose’s excellent article gave me an “ah ha” moment to solve my own issue 🙂

Background of my Unifi Devices Offline issue

Whenever I check my Unifi console of my new Ubiquiti Cloud Gateway Ultra, I am seeing at least one devices offline. But in reality, it is actually working. If it was offline, then I know for sure the actual consumer equipment attached to it will not work.

For example, if my Ubiquiti Flex Mini 5 Port Switch is really offline, then the Hi Sense TV attached to it will not have internet and I cannot watch all my Youtube or Jellyfin movies on it

Today it got so much worst as I was just checking the console for some other issues….. many multiple devices were offline when I checked the Unifi Console of the Cloud Gateway Ultra.

These included my two Unifi FlexHD Access Points as well as the “forever offline yet working” Flex Mini.

Multiple Unifi Devices Offline

There are tons of error messages too in the console.

So of course, I had to resolve it. The virgo in me struck. I must be “fixing my UniFi Devices showing as offline”, else I cannot sleep !!

I did a lot of work including “resetting the devices“, “re-adopting the devices” and “restart the console” (like a 100 times), even to the extent of changing the network cables in the console etc. I also nearly SSH into the devices to do something called “set-informhttp://ip-of-controller:8080/inform” but it sounds so difficult to me.

Luckily, I read Jacob Tomlinson‘s article and it triggered me to look for a simple solution.

A while back, after I bought the new Ubiquiti Cloud Gateway, I also migrated from the Unifi Controller (as a Docker on my Synology NAS) to a Cloud Gateway Controller on the Ubiquiti Cloud Gateway Ultra. That way, I can stop using the Synology as a Unifi Controller.

Did I left out something in my migration ?

Migrating from Unifi Controller Docker to Cloud Gateway Controller

Of course, I did.

Fixing my UniFi Devices showing as offline

After I migrated over the devices from the old Unifi Controller Docker to the new Cloud Gateway Controller on my Ultra, I left out one important step. As a typical Kia Su Singaporean, I was wary of deleting any dockers in the Synology. I was worried I might need to “roll back” to the old Docker. So I left the original docker alone. I might have shut it down, I cannot remember. But I definitely did not delete it.

So when I logged onto my Synology and checked my Controller Manager, indeed I see not only the docker is still running, its was even updated regularly. You know, like the latest version of the image :p

So I did what I should have done a while ago. I deleted the container containing the “Unifi Controller” and for good measure, I also deleted the image for Unifi controller.

So here you see from my Synology log, I have deleted the Unifi Container and then the latest image of jacobalberty/unifi-docker.