Arduino "Ports" Suddenly grayed out

Same here, suddenly this morning after restarting the arduino IDE the ports section was greyed out on Ubuntu 16.04. Tried all kinds of stuff, no success. Finally found this thread and disconnected the network connection.
Boom, all ports are back. WTF is this?

uninstalled the modem manager, but no change.

Once arduino is started i can reenable the network connection ann everything works fine, even new ports are detected then.

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Exactly the same problem with ubuntu 16.04.
Just started doing this today.Annoying >:( >:(

Very strange, we experiment the same problem today with two different laptops running Windows 7 and Windows 10 and two different genuine Arduino Uno boards. It was working last week.

We tried to reboot, to reinstall the IDE and the CH340 drivers, without success. We can see the connexion in the Windows Device Manager, and which port is used (usually COM6), but the port does not appear in the IDE.

A solution (at least for Windows users): plug your Adruino AND WAIT!

On my laptop it takes exactly 3 minutes to let the COM port appearing in the menu. On a friend desktop, near to 5 minutes! But after it's working.

I guess the reason is a Windows update :frowning:

Same issues here (win10)!

Looks like a bug or update issue... Since other folks are also reporting problems on Linux builds, I'm going to guess some sort of odd bug...

Looks like we need an update to the IDE?

I just checked a couple of my other Win10 machines and then downloaded a few older versions of the IDE to test.

Looks like all versions of the IDE since 1.6.11 are suddenly having this problem... 1.6.11 continues to properly enumerate all the COM ports, but any newer version has suddenly stopped working!

I would chalk this up to some Microsoft update nonsense, but other folks (in this thread) are also reporting this same behavior on Linux platforms as well.

Paulo74:
A solution (at least for Windows users): plug your Adruino AND WAIT!

On my laptop it takes exactly 3 minutes to let the COM port appearing in the menu. On a friend desktop, near to 5 minutes! But after it's working.

I guess the reason is a Windows update :frowning:

This does not work for me. The only thing which is working is to downgrade to v1.6.11. (All later versions appear to have same issue)

Same problem here

with linux - Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS

suddenly as i was refreshing one library and restarted my arduino ide (1.8.1 x64) couldnt see the ports any more

i was searching almost 2 hours for a solution to this

i have noticed that when i am starting Arduino Ide with no board in the usb then the port is active with the /dev/ttys0 option

but when i have connected previously a uno board the port option is Grey

also i noticed that with some mega 2560 boards the arduino ide can see them if they are connected

after i read the previous posts here i can confirm that mine also after 3 minutes the port became active and can see the usb ports

caslor:
Same problem here

with linux - Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS

suddenly as i was refreshing one library and restarted my arduino ide (1.8.1 x64) couldnt see the ports any more

i was searching almost 2 hours for a solution to this

i have noticed that when i am starting Arduino Ide with no board in the usb then the port is active with the /dev/ttys0 option

but when i have connected previously a uno board the port option is Grey

also i noticed that with some mega 2560 boards the arduino ide can see them if they are connected

after i read the previous posts here i can confirm that mine also after 3 minutes the port became active and can see the usb ports

That's very interesting... "Board Connected BEFORE starting IDE = Greyed Ports Option"

The hub on my Win10 PC normally has an M5Stack device connected just for power/charging. (The M5Stack is an ESP32 device which is supported by the Arduino IDE).

So I tried disconnecting it BEFORE starting the IDE and now I can see the PORTS. If the IDE starts up with the MStack Connected, I can not see the PORTS.

So I have done some more testing testing (using an Arduino Mega2560 variant). It appears:

  1. Having ANY Arduino (compatible) device connected BEFORE starting the IDE will render the PORTS Option greyed out...

  2. Connecting ANY Arduino device AFTER starting the IDE will leave the PORTS Option Functional, but the recently added device will not be listed (just the non-Arduino ports)...

So... Still can't program any of my Arduino devices even if I connect them AFTER the IDE is started...

Something is really wrong here. And as a daily user of the Arduino IDE, this is something very new (and very painful).

(1.6.11 still seems to work OK regardless...)

After doing some more testing on Ubuntu 16.04.4 I can confirm several things:

  • Disconnecting from the network allows the ports to show up
  • Version 1.6.11 does not have these bugs
  • If you let another version (1.6.13) sit for a long time, it will eventually detect the ports
  • Interestingly, if you have the default port at ttyUSB0 (showing in the lower left of the IDE), even though the "ports" are not available, you can still successfully program the board. Weird.

Temporary solution on Ubuntu 16.04:

  • Downgrade to version 1.6.11 of the Arduino IDE

Leaving all networking configured on the Ubuntu 16.04 PC, the 1.6.13 IDE does not work (as stated before).

If you disconnect the internet connection (unplug the router from the external internet), still leaving all networking configured on the PC so you have your local network still, THE IDE WORKS.

Are the IDEs attempting to connect to a server somewhere, and only working if they fail to connect? Anyone have any insight?

I can confirm EXACTLY the same experience on my Win10 PC!

  • If my ethernet cable is connected, my port option is greyed out.

  • If I disconnect my ethernet cable, I can see all my ports!

What kind of nonsense is this? This would indicate that some network service is required to be up and running if we are to do development on an online PC? Why would that be? Exactly what info is being exchanged?

Its also somewhat "comforting" that the Linux IDE is currently behaving the same as the Windows IDE...

Perhaps some online Arduino service is offline? If so, why do we have this dependency?

(Thanks for a very astute observation!)

evanevery:
I can confirm EXACTLY the same experience on my Win10 PC!

  • If my ethernet cable is connected, my port option is greyed out.

  • If I disconnect my ethernet cable, I can see all my ports!

What kind of nonsense is this? Why do we require network connectivity to see our Com Ports? This would indicate that online connectivity is required to use the IDE? Why would that be? Exactly what info is being exchanged?

Its also somewhat "comforting" that the Linux IDE is currently behaving the same as the Windows IDE...

Perhaps some online Arduino service is offline? If so, why do we have this dependency?

(Thanks for a very astute observation!)

You have contradicted yourself here. Network connectivity is resulting in the IDE NOT to work. The connectivity is therefore resulting in the loss of functionality.

Just checked back in with another Arduino developer in my company. I noted previously that he did NOT see this issue but he also did NOT have ny Arduino connected at that time. Once we introduce an Arduino into the equation he can replicate all these same observations!

So, currently, we can't do any Arduino programming or development unless our machines are disconnected from the Internet? WTF?

I guess its time to fire up Wireshark to see exactly who the Arduino IDE is trying to talk with and what info its requesting/exchanging...

JP2222:
You have contradicted yourself here. Network connectivity is resulting in the IDE NOT to work. The connectivity is therefore resulting in the loss of functionality.

(You are correct - I was editing my post as you posted)

Running wireshark while starting the IDE, I can see a load of network traffic coming from arduino.
Notably contacting amazon webservices, must be the host for arduino.cc. Trying to compare the network traffic from 1.6.13 and 1.6.11 to see the difference.

Strange that if there is no response from the servers the IDE works.

We are not alone.

@JP2222 Thanks for making the discovery about disconnecting the network!

I noticed the IDE accesses api-builder.arduino.cc on startup (thank you wireshark) so I blocked access to this host. I added an entry to /etc/hosts like this to blacklist the host.

127.0.0.1       api-builder.arduino.cc

Now the IDE starts up with the serial ports listed immediately without having to disconnect the network cable.

Perhaps something has changed on api-builder.arduino.cc.

I'm also seeing traffic to AWS just before the IDE "stabilizes"...

Notably a HTTP 301 "Moved Permanently" reply just before the IDE settles down:

1074 15.998826 184.73.237.236 10.100.1.1 HTTP 532 HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently (text/html)

Perhaps something is broken at AWS? The IDE needs to be fixed to remove this dependency!

Why is our IDE contacting the api-builder web site anyway? Someone vacuuming up a lot of code? Grrr?

(Nice workaround hijacking api-builder.arduino.cc!!)

gdsports:
I noticed the IDE accesses api-builder.arduino.cc on startup (thank you wireshark) so I blocked access to this host. I added an entry to /etc/hosts like this to blacklist the host.

127.0.0.1       api-builder.arduino.cc

Now the IDE starts up with the serial ports listed immediately without having to disconnect the network cable.

Perhaps something has changed on api-builder.arduino.cc.

Thank you very much for this, gets me going on a new IDE again. Hopefully someone gets to the bottom of what is happening, and takes away this unnecessary communication as well.

It will be interesting to see exactly what info is being exchanged AFTER they get the AWS side up and running properly again...

A paranoid person (ahem), might think they could be:

  • Collecting code?

  • Using our machines for Crypto Mining?

:wink: