I have been delving into the logs produced by the Alta Labs network devices, just for the fun of it. Done so by setting up a syslog server on a separate SBC, and outputting from Alta devices through adding IP and port for this server at the Settings → Wrench icon → Advanced settings section.
One log that puzzles me is a recurring report on PoE-error. See below.
swd: poe: Error -1 on L167
swd: poe: Error -1 on L176
Full log output for POE from swd.log for a few minutes...
2025-03-19T13:12:17+01:00 192.168.1.4 swd: poe: Error -1 on L176
2025-03-19T13:16:19+01:00 192.168.1.3 swd: poe: Error -1 on L167
2025-03-19T13:16:24+01:00 192.168.1.3 swd: poe: Error -1 on L167
2025-03-19T13:16:29+01:00 192.168.1.3 swd: poe: Error -1 on L167
2025-03-19T13:17:42+01:00 192.168.1.4 swd: poe: Error -1 on L176
2025-03-19T13:18:27+01:00 192.168.1.4 swd: poe: Error -1 on L176
2025-03-19T13:18:34+01:00 192.168.1.3 swd: poe: Error -1 on L176
2025-03-19T13:19:49+01:00 192.168.1.3 swd: poe: Error -1 on L176
This occurs on both S8 switches (on IPs 192.168.1.3 & .4). The switch on .3 has active devices attached to all four POE-ports. The switch on .4 has no devices (or cables) attached to the POE-ports. All POE-ports are currently turned off through the UI, and confirmed being disabled with poe -p X (where X is 0, 1, 2 and 3, respectively):
Port=0
Voltage(V) = 0.0000
Current(mA) = 0.0000
Temperature(c) = 40.0000
PortConsumptionPower(W) = 0.0000
Enabled=0
Function Mode=auto (0)
Detection Type=std+legacy PD (1)
Disconnection Type=Enable MPS (2)
Pair type=Alternative A
In-rush mode=802.3at (3)
Limit Type=Class-based
User-defined power limit=30
Priority=Low (0)
What does this indicate? Is it a proper PoE hardware error or just a indication that POE is not active or that probing is not indicating power draw? Is it some low level probing unintentionally going on even though POE is intended to be switched off?
While running the command poe -p X I happened to check for port 4 as poe -p 4, which is wrong because it should be typed as poe -p 3 (i.e. port nr. - 1). Anyhow, this produced the rather sensible output
Port=4
Voltage(V) = 0.0000
Current(mA) = 0.0000
Temperature(c) = 45.0000
PortConsumptionPower(W) = 0.0000
Enabled=1
Function Mode=auto (0)
Detection Type=std+legacy PD (1)
Disconnection Type=Enable MPS (2)
Pair type=Alternative A
In-rush mode=802.3at (3)
Limit Type=Class-based
User-defined power limit=30
Priority=Low (0)
which indicates POE attributes and POE enabled for non POE-ports. Surely, that must be wrong?!