Strange issue after upgrade to 3.8.1

technodevotee · May 8, 2020, 6:00pm

I have two identical receivers, which I upgraded to 3.8.1 yesterday using exactly the same procedure.

I expected that they would both continue to work exactly as they had been since the last update (a while back now) but that isn’t what happened. The first one, is working exactly as it always has and none of the settings was changed but the second one isn’t.

First issue was that the gain was set to -10, the lon and lat settings disappeared and --fix was added.

This obviously caused a few issues and I have had to put the settings back to how it was but it still wasn’t the same as it was.

This is the first one:

This is the second one:

Second issue is that I have had to increase the gain from how it was set to get it back to how it was.

Any thoughts gratefully received.

obj · May 9, 2020, 4:29am

What was the starting point before the upgrade? (sdcard image? package install? what config?)

technodevotee · May 9, 2020, 6:19am

They were both originally installed with Stretch then upgraded to Buster and I set up PiAware and other feeders using the method described by @abcd567.

I then added a few other packages from contributors. The last time I upgraded PiAware was a while back.

What I thought was weird was that I installed everything on each of them in the same way so in theory, they should have been identical except for their IDs.

I normally do an update using sudo apt update, sudo apt upgrade on each of them every couple of months but hadn’t done that for a while as everything was running smoothly.

abcd567 · May 9, 2020, 7:43am

You mean these ones?

Piaware Update Help

Yes, you have to reinstall all other feeders, but it is not a big deal.

Before you write fresh image, copy-paste feeder keys in Notepad on your desktop/laptop and save notepad:

Plane finder key:
The sharecode is in the file /etc/pfclient-config.json
Scroll right to see it in full. Your Planefinder sharecode is the last item in this long line.
{"tcp_address":"127.0.0.1","tcp_port":"30005","select_timeout":"10","data_upload_interval":"10","connection_type":"1","aircraft_timeout":"30","data_format":"1","latitude":"xx.xxxx","longitude":"yy.yyyy","sharecode":"zzzzzzzzzzzz"}    
Flightradar24 key:
The fr24key is in the file /etc/fr24feed.ini

Radarbox24 key:
The key is in the file /etc/rbfeeder.ini

Installation commands

Planefinder
wget http://client.planefinder.net/pfclient_4.1.1_armhf.deb  

sudo dpkg -i pfclient_4.1.1_armhf.deb  
Flightradar24
sudo bash -c "$(wget -O - https://repo-feed.flightradar24.com/install_fr24_rpi.sh)"  
Caution: , During configuration of fr24feed, never choose “Receiver DVBT”. Choose Receiver: ModeS Beast(TCP), host/port: 127.0.0.1:30005

Radarbox24:
sudo bash -c "$(wget -O - http://apt.rb24.com/inst_rbfeeder.sh)"  

sudo rbfeeder --setkey xxxxxxxxxx --no-start   
## Replace xxxxx by your actual key
## Press Ctrl+C to break log output.

sudo systemctl restart rbfeeder  

technodevotee · May 9, 2020, 7:56am

That looks similar to what I used.

They were working fine, thanks.

technodevotee · May 9, 2020, 1:04pm

OK. I gave you false information before: These two were originally Jessie and were upgraded to Stretch. I don’t know if that makes any difference but I mention for the sake of completeness.

Looking at the aircraft reported graph on the stats page it seems that Pi 2 has gradually been reporting fewer aircraft than Pi 1.

Obviously, that could be due to aging of the dongle or LNA but it could also be due to trees growing and blocking one antenna more than the other.

What I don’t understand is why one Pi upgraded and left the settings file in tact and the other Pi didn’t.

There is one other thing. I was certain that both copies of PiAware had auto and manual updates enabled but when I looked after the update Pi 2 (the one that didn’t upgrade cleanly) wasn’t set that way.

obj · May 9, 2020, 5:46pm

Generally piaware is never going to touch your config in /etc/default for a package install. however on sdcard images, the piaware-support package will modify things, updating config files to reflect the piaware config settings; it is only installed on sdcard images. My best guess is that you somehow installed that package by mistake.

FWIW upgrades of an existing install from jessie->stretch or stretch->buster via apt are unsupported both by upstream and by us (not clear if that’s what you did or not) - to upgrade you need to reimage.

technodevotee · May 9, 2020, 6:03pm

Is there a way of telling the source of the version of PiAware that is installed now?

And if I restore the backup I made before upgrading on a spare SD card can I find out the source of the version of PiAware I had before?

When I said they were upgraded, What I meant was that they came with Jessie and were reimaged with Stretch then all apps reinstalled. Sorry to confuse matters.

abcd567 · May 9, 2020, 6:14pm

Yes, this makes a big difference. Even if you succeed to upgrade piaware and dump1090-fa in current install, your distro will remain outdated Raspbian Stretch.

The easiest, cleanest, and long-term solution is to re-image your microSD card. This is already recommended by @obj in his post above.

ALTERNATIVE-1 :Piaware SD card image
The current Piaware SD card image (v 3.8.1) has:

Latest OS (Raspbian Buster Lite)
Latest versions of piaware & dump1090-fa (3.8.1)

Direct dwnload link (current image 3.8.1)
http://piaware.flightcdn.com/piaware-sd-card-3.8.1.img.zip

Download page:
https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/build

Reimage your microSD card with the downloaded image.

ALTERNATIVE-2: Raspbian image
Download latest Raspbian Lite image (currently Buster) from:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/

Reimage your microSD card with it and install piaware and dump1090-fa latest versions from this page:

https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/install

technodevotee · May 9, 2020, 6:23pm

Yeah, sorry I used the wrong term - i.e. upgraded instead of reimaged.

Strictly speaking, as far as the Pi is concerned, it was an upgrade of the OS from how I purchased it, but from the standpoint of the content of the SD Card, not so much.

FWIW, I’ve never had any joy upgrading any OS of any flavour from one version to another. It always ends in tears.

abcd567 · May 9, 2020, 7:22pm

Dont upgrade an existing micoSD card. Write latest OS image to a spare microSD card, slip it into Pi and power up. In case of failure of freshly written spare card, simply slip out the spare card, slip in the existing card, and power up.

technodevotee · May 9, 2020, 9:39pm

Can we get back to my problem now?

I am certain that the package I installed on both receivers was the same because I followed the same instructions for both of them.

So how do I find out the exact version of dump1090-fa and PiAware that is installed?

abcd567 · May 9, 2020, 9:54pm

apt-cache policy piaware   

apt-cache policy dump1090-fa

technodevotee · May 9, 2020, 10:02pm

thanks very much for that

technodevotee · May 10, 2020, 6:16am

So I restored the backup to a spare SD card and booted it up but I don’t know how this helps know the source of the installed version.

pi@raspberrypi-3BP2:~ $ sudo apt policy piaware
piaware:
  Installed: 3.7.2
  Candidate: 3.8.1~bpo9+1
  Version table:
     3.8.1~bpo9+1 500
        500 http://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/files/packages stretch/piaware armhf Packages
 *** 3.7.2 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
pi@raspberrypi-3BP2:~ $ sudo apt policy dump1090-fa
dump1090-fa:
  Installed: 3.7.2
  Candidate: 3.8.1~bpo9+1
  Version table:
     3.8.1~bpo9+1 500
        500 http://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/files/packages stretch/piaware armhf Packages
 *** 3.7.2 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
pi@raspberrypi-3BP2:~ $

Maybe this helps

pi@raspberrypi-3BP2:~ $ dpkg -s dump1090-fa
Package: dump1090-fa
Status: install ok installed
Priority: extra
Section: embedded
Installed-Size: 10441
Maintainer: Oliver Jowett <oliver@mutability.co.uk>
Architecture: armhf
Version: 3.7.2
Replaces: dump1090 (<< 3.0)
Depends: libbladerf1 (>= 0.2016.06), libc6 (>= 2.7), libncurses5 (>= 6), librtlsdr0, libtinfo5 (>= 6), init-system-helpers (>= 1.18~), adduser, lighttpd
Breaks: dump1090 (<< 3.0)
Conffiles:
 /etc/default/dump1090-fa 7d0018802beb80af3762dd6dd56e1d25
 /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/88-dump1090-fa-statcache.conf 49ee407afe8966c8bd1254ab1998831b
 /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/89-dump1090-fa.conf 99031bbb4c5b39168ed9765b33663a2a
Description: ADS-B Ground Station System for RTL-SDR
 Networked Aviation Mode S / ADS-B decoder/translator with RTL-SDR software
 defined radio USB device support.
 .
 This is FlightAware's fork of dump1090-mutability, customized for use
 in the PiAware sdcard images.
Homepage: http://www.flightaware.com/
pi@raspberrypi-3BP2:~ $

no idea how that happened.

abcd567 · May 10, 2020, 7:46am

Both commands are telling the same thing: Your installed version is 3.7.2

Your OS is Stretch

Best solution: reimage.

technodevotee · May 10, 2020, 8:15am

This was using the backup I took before I upgraded - it was 3.7.2 but it is now 3.8.1.

The salient information is that I had somehow installed the PiAware SD card version on this one exactly as @obj suggested I had and that explains the difference in the results when I upgraded.

I’m going to upgrade both of them to Buster using a bigger SD card when I get a chance.

technodevotee · May 11, 2020, 9:49am

Not so fast.

Just discovered that the first one says the same:

Package: dump1090-fa
Status: install ok installed
Priority: extra
Section: embedded
Installed-Size: 10410
Maintainer: Oliver Jowett <oliver@mutability.co.uk>
Architecture: armhf
Version: 3.8.1~bpo9+1
Replaces: dump1090 (<< 3.0)
Depends: libbladerf1 (>= 0.2016.06), libc6 (>= 2.7), libncurses5 (>= 6), librtlsdr0, libtinfo5 (>= 6), init-system-helpers (>= 1.18~), adduser, lighttpd
Breaks: dump1090 (<< 3.0)
Conffiles:
 /etc/default/dump1090-fa 3aeeda54ce7d74ef723b27c8caee490c
 /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/88-dump1090-fa-statcache.conf 49ee407afe8966c8bd1254ab1998831b
 /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/89-dump1090-fa.conf 99031bbb4c5b39168ed9765b33663a2a
Description: ADS-B Ground Station System for RTL-SDR
 Networked Aviation Mode S / ADS-B decoder/translator with RTL-SDR software
 defined radio USB device support.
 .
 This is FlightAware's fork of dump1090-mutability, customized for use
 in the PiAware sdcard images.
Homepage: http://www.flightaware.com/
pi@raspberrypi-3BP1:~ $

Now I’m really confused.

obj · May 11, 2020, 11:48am

Does either have the piaware-support package installed?

technodevotee · May 11, 2020, 12:04pm

no, just piaware and piaware-repository.

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Strange issue after upgrade to 3.8.1

You mean these ones?

Best solution: reimage.

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