PiAware start on PiZeroW running Bookworm fails

FlightAware General
1

I’ve updated one of my feeders to run the latest PI OS, and the sequence of startup often has piaware failing to start on the PiZeroW. If I remember to log into the machine and start the service, it starts just fine.

Jan 31 12:16:59 WimPiZeroW systemd[1]: Started piaware.service - FlightAware ADS-B uploader.
Jan 31 12:17:16 WimPiZeroW piaware[468]: software failed to determine MAC address of the device.  cannot proceed without it.
Jan 31 12:17:16 WimPiZeroW systemd[1]: piaware.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=6/NOTCONFIGURED
Jan 31 12:17:16 WimPiZeroW systemd[1]: piaware.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jan 31 12:17:16 WimPiZeroW systemd[1]: piaware.service: Consumed 2.069s CPU time.

I’ve noticed that the systemd unit file explicitly won’t restart piaware based on return code 6, described as missing MAC.

# piaware uploader service for systemd
# install in /etc/systemd/system

[Unit]
Description=FlightAware ADS-B uploader
Documentation=https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/
Wants=network-online.target
After=dump1090-fa.service network-online.target time-sync.target

[Service]
User=piaware
RuntimeDirectory=piaware
ExecStart=/usr/bin/piaware -p %t/piaware/piaware.pid -plainlog -statusfile %t/piaware/status.json
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
Type=simple
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=30
# exit code 4 means login failed
# exit code 6 means startup failed (bad args or missing MAC)
RestartPreventExitStatus=4 6
WatchdogSec=120
WatchdogSignal=SIGKILL
NotifyAccess=all

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Will removing the 6 from the RestartPreventExitStatus line likely fix my problems, and what are the implications doing so?

If I do that I’ll probably also increase the RestartSec value from 30 to 60.

2

It will mean that piaware might keep restarting in a loop indefinitely if there is some problem that prevents it working correctly (e.g. login failure).

We should probably relax the requirement of finding a MAC address, it’s mostly a legacy thing.
I guess in your case it’s something like the wireless interface isn’t present yet at the point that piaware first starts.

3

Thanks for the information. I at least got this system working correctly by removing the 6. With my changes it tries to start a second time a minute later and works properly.

I might also try adding StartLimitBurst to the unit section, but I need to remember more details of exactly how it works.

StartLimitBurst=5
StartLimitIntervalSec=33
4

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