Dump 978 not listening

happened to be looking at my adsb site on the website and noticed this

[2019-07-04 05:57 MDT] no ADS-B data program seen listening on port 30978 for 371 seconds, trying to start it…
[2019-07-04 05:57 MDT] attempting to start dump978-fa using ‘systemctl --no-block restart dump978-fa.service < /dev/null’…
[2019-07-04 05:58 MDT] no ADS-B data program seen listening on port 30978 for 10 seconds, next check in 60s
[2019-07-04 05:59 MDT] no ADS-B data program seen listening on port 30978 for 70 seconds, next check in 60s
[2019-07-04 06:00 MDT] no ADS-B data program seen listening on port 30978 for 130 seconds, next check in 60s
[2019-07-04 06:01 MDT] no ADS-B data program seen listening on port 30978 for 191 seconds, next check in 60s

it appears that dump 978 is intermittent for some reason.

here’s the output of piaware-status

pi@piaware:~ $ sudo piaware-status
PiAware master process (piaware) is running with pid 377.
PiAware ADS-B client (faup1090) is running with pid 1420.
PiAware ADS-B UAT client (faup978) is not running.
PiAware mlat client (fa-mlat-client) is running with pid 23430.
Local ADS-B receiver (dump1090-fa) is running with pid 1012.
Local ADS-B UAT receiver (dump978) is not running.

dump1090-fa (pid 1012) is listening for connections on port 30005.
no program appears to be listening for connections on port 30978.
faup1090 is connected to the ADS-B receiver.
faup978 is NOT connected to the ADS-B UAT receiver.
piaware is connected to FlightAware.

got ‘couldn’t open socket: connection refused’
dump978 is NOT producing data on localhost:30978.
dump1090 is producing data on localhost:30005.

after a reboot

pi@piaware:~ $ sudo piaware-status
PiAware master process (piaware) is running with pid 371.
PiAware ADS-B client (faup1090) is running with pid 519.
PiAware ADS-B UAT client (faup978) is running with pid 528.
PiAware mlat client (fa-mlat-client) is not running.
Local ADS-B receiver (dump1090-fa) is running with pid 362.
Local ADS-B UAT receiver (dump978-fa) is running with pid 361.

dump1090-fa (pid 362) is listening for connections on port 30005.
dump978-fa (pid 361) is listening for connections on port 30978.
faup1090 is connected to the ADS-B receiver.
faup978 is connected to the ADS-B UAT receiver.
piaware is connected to FlightAware.

it looks to me like the 978 dongle isn’t working reliably. I didn’t get a screengrab but rtl_test didn’t show the 978 dongle before the reboot, it does now

pi@piaware:~ $ sudo rtl_test
Found 2 device(s):
0: Realtek, RTL2832U, SN: 00001090
1: Realtek, RTL2838UHIDIR, SN: 00000978

Using device 0: Generic RTL2832U
usb_claim_interface error -6
Failed to open rtlsdr device #0.

would you concur that it’s time to replace the 978 dongle?

More likely it’s time to get the Official Raspberry Pi power supply.

But let’s check the dongle:

sudo systemctl stop piaware
sudo systemctl stop dump978-fa
rtl_test -d 1 -s 2400000

And let’s also check the output of this

sudo /usr/share/dump978-fa/start-dump978-fa 

And let’s also check this output:

sudo vcgencmd get_throttled

To restart everything we stopped, just reboot the RPi now, it’s something you should try in such a situation anyway.

sudo reboot

I’m running power over ethernet to an attic, I seem to remember the power supply puts out 5v and I soldered a charge cable to power the PI, so not a lot of options for power.

pi@piaware:~ $ rtl_test -d 1 -s 2400000
Found 2 device(s):
0: Realtek, RTL2832U, SN: 00001090
1: Realtek, RTL2838UHIDIR, SN: 00000978

Using device 1: Generic RTL2832U OEM
Detached kernel driver
Found Rafael Micro R820T tuner
Supported gain values (29): 0.0 0.9 1.4 2.7 3.7 7.7 8.7 12.5 14.4 15.7 16.6 19.7 20.7 22.9 25.4 28.0 29.7 32.8 33.8 36.4 37.2 38.6 40.2 42.1 43.4 43.9 44.5 48.0 49.6
[R82XX] PLL not locked!
Sampling at 2400000 S/s.

Info: This tool will continuously read from the device, and report if
samples get lost. If you observe no further output, everything is fine.

Reading samples in async mode…

Then no further output

pi@piaware:~ $ sudo /usr/share/dump978-fa/start-dump978-fa
raw-port: listening for connections on 0.0.0.0:30978
raw-port: listening for connections on [::]:30978
json-port: listening for connections on 0.0.0.0:30979
json-port: listening for connections on [::]:30979
usb_claim_interface error -6
Detached kernel driver
Found Rafael Micro R820T tuner
Reattached kernel driver
Detached kernel driver
Found Rafael Micro R820T tuner
Exact sample rate is: 2083333.135571 Hz
[R82XX] PLL not locked!
SoapySDR: using maximum manual gain 49.6 dB
SoapySDR: using stream setting buffsize=262144
[::]:30978: accepted a connection from [::1]:47140

pi@piaware:~ $ sudo vcgencmd get_throttled
throttled=0x0

It seems since I rebooted yesterday or so that it has been OK, maybe it was just a one time anomaly, as it appears to still be up. Maybe it simply overheated. Maybe I’ll set up a nightly reboot.

Then nothing further.

pi@piaware:~ $ sudo vcgencmd get_throttled
throttled=0x0

The outputs all look like they should, all working, no power shortage reported.

It seems dump978 crashed and piaware wasn’t able to properly restart it.
That sometimes happened with dump1090-fa when the power wasn’t stable.

I’m pretty sure you just saw that part of the log and it was actually automatically restart by piaware.

So no benefit in adding an automatic reboot, piaware should be able to restart dump978-fa.

If you see this again just check the logs if the restart worked:

sudo journalctl -e -u dump978-fa
sudo journalctl -e -u piaware

Maybe last time you just caught it before it was properly restarted.
Without the logs it’s hard to say what was goin on.

thanks!

it’s pretty warm in the attic, surprisingly the PI is happy but maybe the SDR wasn’t or some other anomaly. I’ll keep an eye out and see if it’s just bad timing on my part.