I switched over to a Pi last night, but wanted to document my failure in hopes of helping others.
I am using Virtual Box running on a Debian server. AMD processor with 8 cores and AMD-V active.
I did try a couple of other things without success:
Changed from 1 processor to 4.
Enabled “High Precision Event Timer”.
My results were a little different than the OP in that I wasnt seeing this in the logs:
mlat-client(745): Server status: clock unstable
The mlat messages looked good, but it would always say not synchronized with any servers.
Hooked up the Pi, ran the exact same scripts that I did on my VM, and now I am seeing mlat synchronization:
mlat-client(858): Server status: synchronized with 50 nearby receivers
Went back and looked at my previous notes. while I was testing with VirtualBox I eneded up with
mlat-client(835): Server status: not synchronized with any nearby receivers
I loaded a Windows native version of dump-1090 and configured the piaware running
on the VM (with dump-1090 disabled) to use the windows dump-1090.
This configuration worked. Hence, using the flightaware radio on Windows bare metal
per se seemed to make a difference.
The only reference to it working in a VM is VMware (I believe) - which I never had time to test.
It appears the issue is related to USB VM implementation. Waiting for a couple
more people to post working VMware experiences.
Yeah as I stated in a previous reply, I had to move away from VirtualBox since I noticed it dropping USB packets like crazy while working with it in another project. VMWare did not suffer the same fate. So far I’m seeing a common theme with failed attempts and that appears to be VirtualBox.
I too had been struggling to get my newly deployed piaware working with mlat. The trick for me was what @AirZwolle suggests above. I am not a vmware/esxi expert but did figure out that I had to reboot the esxi host after making that change and then also had to re-add the USB device as well.
After doing all that, my piaware has finally synced for mlat and I am expecting/hoping it will stay that way.
I am running esxi 6.7 with Ubuntu 18.04 server…
$ uname -a
Linux ads-b01 4.15.0-74-generic #84-Ubuntu SMP Thu Dec 19 08:06:28 UTC 2019 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
********@ads-b01:~$ tail -f /var/log/piaware.log
Jan 20 07:27:25 ads-b01 piaware[1182]: piaware has successfully sent several msgs to FlightAware!
Jan 20 07:27:56 ads-b01 piaware[1182]: 94 msgs recv’d from dump1090-fa; 94 msgs sent to FlightAware
Jan 20 07:32:56 ads-b01 piaware[1182]: 703 msgs recv’d from dump1090-fa (609 in last 5m); 703 msgs sent to FlightAware
Jan 20 07:37:56 ads-b01 piaware[1182]: 1228 msgs recv’d from dump1090-fa (525 in last 5m); 1228 msgs sent to FlightAware
Jan 20 07:42:24 ads-b01 piaware[1182]: mlat-client(1380): Receiver status: connected Jan 20 07:42:24 ads-b01 piaware[1182]: mlat-client(1380): Server status: synchronized with 225 nearby receivers
Jan 20 07:42:24 ads-b01 piaware[1182]: mlat-client(1380): Receiver: 122.8 msg/s received 67.0 msg/s processed (55%)
Jan 20 07:42:24 ads-b01 piaware[1182]: mlat-client(1380): Server: 0.0 kB/s from server 0.0kB/s TCP to server 0.8kB/s UDP to server
Jan 20 07:42:24 ads-b01 piaware[1182]: mlat-client(1380): Aircraft: 1 of 1 Mode S, 20 of 29 ADS-B used
Jan 20 07:42:56 ads-b01 piaware[1182]: 1801 msgs recv’d from dump1090-fa (573 in last 5m); 1801 msgs sent to FlightAware
Hey folks, I realise this is an old post but I am suffering the same issue with MLAT. Running Proxmox here. I do reall seeing it working when I first set things up but MLAT is not reporting anything, other than the message about incorrect location, which its not, just telling me there may be a timing issue.
Wondering if anybody has solved this with proxmox and a Linux VM.
Thanks!
