Flight Aware Data Feeding Problem

I got one of those emails saying my station had not been heard from.

I checked the device and via port 8080 over my wired network I can connect to PiAware Skyview. I see 167 aircraft right now.

I am typing this on the machine that I connected to PiAware Skyview. In fact I am still connected and I see 189 aircraft. Flightaware’s logging for my user id shows no activity.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Give following command.
sudo piaware-config -show feeder-id

Compare the output of above command (feeder-id) with Unique Identifer on your stats page https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/kurt1000

Are both identical or different?
.

Flightaware Station UUID

sudo piaware-config -show feeder-id

returns nothing.

What is the name of the piAware process? And can I see the piAware program on the disk somewhere?

I do see the piaware-config file on the disk.

  1. Copy Unique Identifier from your Flightaware stats page https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/kurt1000

  2. Give command
    sudo piaware-config feeder-id xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

    where xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx is the Unique Identifier you have copied from your Flightaware stats page.

    If the command is executed successfully, it will rerturn following

    Set feeder-id to xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx in /etc/piaware.conf:9
    .

  3. Restart piaware for implementing feeder id
    sudo systemctl restart piaware
    .

  4. Wait 10 minutes, then give following command to check status
    sudo systemctl status piaware -l

    If it is feeding Flightaware, last few lines will be like following:

    Dec 06 06:29:33 chip piaware[23698]: 9 msgs recv'd from dump1090-fa; 9 msgs sent to FlightAware
    Dec 06 06:34:33 chip piaware[23698]: 63 msgs recv'd from dump1090-fa (54 in last 5m); 63 msgs sent to FlightAware
    Dec 06 06:39:33 chip piaware[23698]: 69 msgs recv'd from dump1090-fa (6 in last 5m); 69 msgs sent to FlightAware
    Dec 06 06:44:33 chip piaware[23698]: 73 msgs recv'd from dump1090-fa (4 in last 5m); 73 msgs sent to FlightAware
    Dec 06 06:49:33 chip piaware[23698]: 83 msgs recv'd from dump1090-fa (10 in last 5m); 83 msgs sent to FlightAware
    

    .

  5. Check Status on your Flightaware stats page https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/kurt1000

I added the unique identifier without a problem.

When I try the restart command:

pi@piaware ~ $ sudo systemctl restart piaware
sudo: systemctl: command not found

When I cd /usr/bin
ls
I can see

piaware
piaware-config
piaware-status

What version of Operating System you have?

The systemctl command is part of systemd, and was introduced in recent versions of OS. In older versions, the command service was used.

Try following

sudo service piaware restart

#OR

sudo /etc/init.d/piaware restart

.
EDIT
To find your OS verison, use command cat /etc/os-release

See below the output generated when this command was issued on Raspbian Jessie.

cat /etc/os-release

PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 8 (jessie)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="8"
VERSION="8 (jessie)"
ID=debian
HOME_URL="http://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="http://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"

We recommend reflashing the SD card to PiAware 3.x. Follow from step 2 onwards.

Systemctl was added into new Raspbian OS sometime late last year. If your SD image was an older PiAware 2.x is running the old OS it will be running the older OS “version 7 wheezy”.

The new PiAware 3.x images are made with the the new OS “version 8 jessie”. So if you reimage the SD card you get both the new OS and the piaware software.

I did a check and your system is actually running piaware 3.5 so you do have the latest piaware software. You did an upgrade on the old PiAware 2.x software to PiAware 3.x but it will not upgrade the OS. So you are basically running the lastest PiAware software on the older OS. That is why you don’t have systemd. There is a way to upgrade the OS but we don’t support it since there is a slight chance of bricking your system.

You should be able to run “sudo reboot” and piaware will run fine. The piaware program are started in the older init system and will still work.

You actually created a new site with your system running piaware 3.5.3.
https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/site/69596#stats-69596

There are two possible solutions from here.

  1. Add the old feeder-id into your new site. This will continue your old site stats.

  2. Claim the new site as your own.
    PiAware - Claim and Link a Brand New PiAware Ground Station - FlightAware

Not sure what happened to take the site down. But it now looks like the site is back up and running under the new OS.

Thanks to both of you for your help.

Great! Happy to know that your site is now back up.

Just out of curiocity:

  1. Does new OS mean you have written latest Piaware image to your microSD card?

  2. Did you issue command cat /etc/os-release on the old OS? If yes, did it return wheezy?

I got a new SD card as the old one had been running for 2 years. I downloaded the latest stuff from the Flightaware website, flashed it and put the old site id in like you showed me.

That command returns

RETTY_NAME=“Raspbian GNU/Linux 8 (jessie)”

@kurt1000: Thanks for the info.

Will this assign my old feeder-id to my new unique identifier?

(I just posted my problem to Aviation by mistake… I had to re-install the OS, and now i have two feeder-IDs.)

Will this method then get rid of the new feeder-ID ? Thanks

Are you changing your hardware or upgrading by flashing the latest SD card image?

If so, you must explicitly configure the unique “feeder ID” that your feeder will use so that your existing site is preserved and you continue adding to the same site statistics on the My ADS-B page. (If you do not configure your feeder ID, then a completely new site will be created.) If you can move the existing SD card to the new device then you do not need to do anything special.

If you want to move your feeder ID to a new installation of PiAware:

  1. Your new installation must be on the latest PiAware software. If it is not, upgrade it first (or flash the latest SD card image).
  2. Find the existing feeder ID that you want to use. You can find this either as the “Site Identifier” on the site’s 3. statistics page (My ADS-B) or from the PiAware logs in /var/log/piaware.log on your existing install. The identifier looks like a series of dash-separated hex digits, e.g., 12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789abc.
  3. Configure the feeder ID on the new system by running this command on the Pi:
    piaware-config feeder-id 12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789abc
    Or, edit the piaware-config.txt file to add the feeder-id configuration row:
    feeder-id 12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789abc
  4. Restart the device or restart piaware by running this command on the Pi:
    sudo systemctl restart piaware