PiAware stopped feeding, local site OK

FlightAware ADS-B Flight Tracking
1

Hello!

I’m having a weird issue. I had to force boot the pi last night and local site was showing OK so thought everything is good. Got a notification that I’m not feeding to FA.

/var/log/piaware.log stopped at the hard reboot time yesterday, no new logs

pi@adsb:/var/log $ sudo piaware-status
Illegal instruction

Dump1090-fa seems to be working as well
pi@adsb:/var/log $ sudo systemctl status dump1090-* Warning: The unit file, source configuration file or drop-ins of dump1090-fa.service changed on disk. Run 'systemctl daemon-reload' to reloa ● dump1090-fa.service - dump1090 ADS-B receiver (FlightAware customization) Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/dump1090-fa.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled) Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/dump1090-fa.service.d └─bias-t.conf Active: active (running) since Tue 2021-02-02 16:19:39 CST; 2min 33s ago Docs: https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/ Process: 5562 ExecStartPre=/home/pi/rtl_biast/build/src/rtl_biast -b 1 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Main PID: 5568 (dump1090-fa) Tasks: 3 (limit: 2063) CGroup: /system.slice/dump1090-fa.service └─5568 /usr/bin/dump1090-fa --device-index 0 --gain 30 --ppm 0 --max-range 360 --fix --net --net-heartbeat 60 --net-ro-size 1300

It seems there is an issue with piaware itself:
pi@adsb:/var/log $ sudo systemctl status piaware ● piaware.service - FlightAware ADS-B uploader Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/piaware.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled) Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: signal) since Tue 2021-02-02 16:37:47 CST; 15s ago Docs: https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/ Process: 5681 ExecStart=/usr/bin/piaware -p /run/piaware/piaware.pid -plainlog -statusfile /run/piaware/status.json (code=killed, signal=I Main PID: 5681 (code=killed, signal=ILL)

From syslog:
Feb 2 16:39:18 adsb systemd[1]: piaware.service: Service RestartSec=30s expired, scheduling restart. Feb 2 16:39:18 adsb systemd[1]: piaware.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 2713. Feb 2 16:39:18 adsb systemd[1]: Stopped FlightAware ADS-B uploader. Feb 2 16:39:18 adsb systemd[1]: Condition check resulted in Generate Pirehose certificate if missing being skipped. Feb 2 16:39:18 adsb systemd[1]: Started FlightAware ADS-B uploader. Feb 2 16:39:18 adsb systemd[1]: piaware.service: Main process exited, code=killed, status=4/ILL Feb 2 16:39:18 adsb systemd[1]: piaware.service: Failed with result 'signal'.

Also feeding to FR24, seems unaffected by the FA issue.

Any ideas?

Thank you!

2

I’d guess sdcard corruption.

3

I was assuming the same looking at the errors.

That is so frustrating, the card only lasted two months.

4

Is there a way to repair the sd card to repair the data?

Ie. mount it and do
e2fsck -y -c /dev/[sdXN]

5

Just reimage.

I mean you could just remove and reinstall piaware but no telling what else is bad.

sudo apt remove piaware
sudo apt install piaware

You mean you bought a new sd-card or you reimaged it?
The card itself as in the hardware might just be bad.

6

I created a clone of the bad sd card. I am seeing the same funky issues (i.e. piaware not starting on one boot and then works on another).

7

Why?
Reimage :slight_smile:

That seems strange … but starting with a fresh image will also be useful to exclude weirdness due to corruption.
If it continues after that i suppose you’d have to look at potential issues with power for the pi or the pi itself.

8

I have an image of the card from when I built it back on 11/29/20 so I will try that next. I cloned the bad one as I didn’t want to do the extra steps (bias tee) I guess I will have to :slight_smile:

Are you in US or EU?

9

First post eludes to a “forced reboot” of the Pi. My suspicion is that action is the source of the sd card corruption.

Quickest solution is to grab a fresh card and reload.

Using the resources provided by various contributors to the forum like ABCD, OP could have this pi up and running again in <20 minutes.

10

I think I would be pretty much set (would have to lookup feeder ids for both FR24 and PA). However, I would still have to do bias tee and the tuning.

I’m updating the image that I had from November which should have everything running already… I hope :slight_smile:

11

Some useful stuff here: https://github.com/wiedehopf/adsb-wiki/wiki/Raspbian-Lite:-ADS-B-receiver
For example: https://github.com/wiedehopf/adsb-wiki/wiki/RTL-Bias-Tee
That should get you going rather quickly for the biastee.

12

I think I am back online. Thank you both for your help.

I originally was hoping that I could resurrect the original load by fixing the OS issues but that proved to be futile. Then I copied over the image, which just perpetuated the same issue but to another disk.

I had an original load from a while back and just used that. Made some changes to gain and bias-tee and done.

@wiedehopf, the bias-tee scripts to enable / disable on github, will they install the whole bias-tee again and enable on boot?

13

Well if you already have something in place you could then have two things enabling the biastee.
The activation of the biastee occurs with the dump1090-fa or readsb service start.

But if you start from scratch … install dump1090-fa or readsb … then the script will take care of the whole deal.

14

I had installed biastee already from one of the rtlsdr forums. It is running just fine now so I will leave it status quo.

I think we are in shipshape now.

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15

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