Hi. Rather than purchasing a raspberry pi (and all associated hardware), I’d like to use a dedicated linux machine sitting around to install piware.
How do I do this on an i386?
A Raspberry pi costs about $1-3 a month to run. A PC could be ten to thirty times that amount, especially older inefficient PCs. An RPI would pay for itself in a short time and doesn’t take up much space.
You can run the software on other devices. A Intel Computstick or even a PC running linux.
You would need to compile and install the software yourself.
It is not hard but you need to know what you are doing. You would need to support it yourself.
I understand the reason for using a raspberry PI, but if I already have a debian machine set up, along with all the necessary hardware, I’m wondering why there isn’t readily available i386 software for it.
I’m having trouble finding a 1090dump and the flightaware software that isn’t armhf. And I don’t know how to compile it myself. I know that FR24, has a linux and mac software…I wish FA would have one as well.
This worked for me on an Intel Compute Stick running Ubuntu LTS 14.04.4. I think the procedure is also documented on the forums here, but this one was easier for my noob brain to understand and execute.
I see that piaware and dump1090 are both in the Ubuntu Software Center (version 14.04). I am running on a desktop machine but did not realize that route existed.
I used piaware-builder to compile from source. This is very straightforward but you will probably have it crash complaining of lack of a certain library. You will then need to track down and install library and repeat several times before it finally is able to complete the build. The needed libraries should all be available pre-compiled, but you must get the -dev version which includes header files.
Also be sure to blacklist the DVB drivers which are almost always included with a desktop Linux.
Much of the Unix world is built on volunteer work by people who are interested in doing so. Noone has decided to take on piaware etc for i386 yet. The Rpi brought me back into the general Unix milieu after 20 years absence and I feel like Rip Van Winkle for all the tools that have been developed in the interim. Some of the arcane processes have been masked by tools that have been written by volunteers. If you step away from the paths blazed by others, you get to blaze your own. If it isn’t there, invent it. Easy to say, but there is no way I could do so. Good luck!
I also had dump1090 and piaware running on a debian wheezy. Hardware was intel celeron system that I use as my NAS. I also compiled it from source.
I had it running on a Ubuntu 14.04 server virtual machine for a while and it worked great using Obj’s compilation for Debian but I eventually switched back to the Pi. If you search around the forums, you should find his posts about it.
You could try Joe’s scripts. I think they work on a computestick so should work on a std i386 system.
ads-b-flight-tracking-f21/ads-b-receiver-project-setup-scripts-t36532.html
Installed Joe’s scripts on Debian Jessie last night.
To ensure it worked ok (Debian does not expect sudo), I did the following, all as root:
Created the user pi (password is only important entry, everything else can be left blank):
adduser pi
Installed sudo:
apt-get install sudo
Added pi to sudo group:
adduser pi sudo
Added pi to /etc/sudoers file:
nano /etc/sudoers
Then press [enter]
Scroll down and look for the line “%sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL”
Below that line type in the following…
pi ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
Save and reboot, logging in as pi with password set as above.
Then simply ran the instructions to install dump1090, piaware and adsb-portal (reading instructions as you go 
):
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/jprochazka/adsb-receiver.git
cd ~/adsb-receiver
chmod +x install.sh
./install.sh
Just putting it out there 99% of the development on the ADS-B Receiver Project is done on Debian Jessie with the other 0.8% done on Raspbian and 0.2% done on Ubuntu. In fact I am testing the next release now on a Debian 8.2.0 Jessie Hyper-V VM getting it ready for release. That being said there should be no problem running this on “big” hardware as long as the Linux distribution installed is Debian based.
Also there is no need to add a “pi” user on any platform. Using any user already existing, as long as it can use sudo to execute commands, is acceptable.
Where are you seeing this? I’m running 14.04 and can’t find it anywhere in the u until software center.
Using any user already existing, as long as it can use sudo to execute commands, is acceptable.
Fair enough about the “pi” user. I just used it to create a user who had sudo capabilities and because I had a “pi” user when playing with an OrangePi PC several months ago when all this was new
Couldn’t get the script to run on Ubuntu 14.04 which as an obvious choice because of the sudo command. From memory a “virtualenv” error if that makes any sense??
EDIT:
Tried Ubuntu server 16.04.
“virtualenv” error is no longer a problem but installing “php5-cgi” is since it fails. Checking Ubuntu forums, this is now:
sudo apt-get install php7.0-cgi
That works but not sure what the status of the install is.
Sorry, I was mistaken there. The build from source ultimately produces and installs a local .deb package. This registers it in that machine’s apt database so then it looks like it exists in the repository when you search on that machine. But it actually does not; it is just showing the local install.
So you do need to use the third-party install script or otherwise download and build it yourself.