Here’s what I’ve attempted to fix (please let me know if I did!):
A user in Estonia encountered a problem with wxsimate/euromix resulting from particular regional Windows settings. I think this was due to use of commas as decimal separators. The odd thing is that it HAD been working for him! I wonder if a Windows update did this (??). Anyway, I now have wxsimate writing latitude and longitude multiplied by 100, so there’s no decimal point OR comma. I had to change euromix to accommodate this, too. Hoping I didn’t break anything for anybody else! It does seem to work for me, still, and hopefully prevents problems of this sort.
Thanks to some investigations by a user (thanks, Kevin!), I may have found a way to get Windows 7 to get the temis ozone data (and perhaps other sites that might develop problems) to respond. It seems the issue is sites upgrading their security protocols to TLS1.2. I’d already tried changing this on the computer itself (as did some of you), and that worked for other sites, but for some reason not for temis. I’m now declaring use of TLS1.2 in wxsimate’s code, and am hoping that fixes it. I’ll try it myself tomorrow at school (where I run in on Win 7), but maybe you can beat me to it!
It doers work here on this Win 10 machine. I do have a concern, and wonder if anybody knows an answer: if there’s another upgrade (like some TLS1.3 or whatever), does declaring TLS1.2 then cause a problem? Or is it one of those “at least” things (like “TLS 1.2 or later”)?
Just did a quick test on Windows 7 but it did not download Ozone data. I will do a bit more later just to check settings in Windows but not looking good.
TLS (Transport Layer Security) replaced SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) although many people still talk about SSL when they mean TLS. There have been four versions of TLS so far, TLS 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3. Given the size of the ‘web’ it’s impossible to get all web servers to change over from one version to another at exactly the same time and to co-ordinate that with all web users changing their browser at the same time. So, web servers and browsers normally support multiple versions at the same time.
When a web (HTTPS) connection is made to a server, there’s a handshake along the lines of (simplistically)…
Browser - I need a secure connection and I have TLS 1.1 and 1.2 available
Server - OK (thinking to itself - I have TLS 1.2 and 1.3). We can use TLS 1.2
Over time TLS versions are deprecated, usually because someone finds a security problem with them. So, you will find that web servers (usually) stop using the insecure versions. At the moment TLS1.0 and TLS1.1 (as well as SSL1, SSL2 and SSL3) have been deprecated and most web servers won’t allow you to use them. A lot (probably most) web servers are currently happy talking using TLS1.2 or TLS1.3. That will continue until TLS1.4 (or whatever follows TLS1.3) appears when servers may offer support for TLS1.2, 1.3 and 1.4. As people upgrade browsers they will begin to use 1.3 and eventually 1.4. At some point it may be decided that TLS1.2 is too insecure and it will be deprecated.
So, to summarise, WxSimate is OK to use TLS1.2 at the moment. If the compiler allows either TLS1.2 or 1.3 to be used then that would be even better because it can negotiate the best one to use with each server it connects to. There’s usually plenty of advanced notice before a TLS version is deprecated so it shouldn’t suddenly stop working, but there will probably come a time when we’ll need to stop using TLS1.2.
Currently Internet Options on Windows 7 shows SSL3 SSL2 TLS1.0 TLS1.1 TLS1.2 only. I have tried various combinations enabled but nothing seems to work. Having investigated the certificate for Temis it is an Amazon one and I’m wondering if it somehow the server only allows TLS 1.3 which is not available on Windows 7 as far as I can find out. Is there any way to determine what protocol is required by Temis? I tried TLS1.2 only enabled but it still fails.
I have answered my own question see screenshot from Firefox on Windows 7 for details of the certificate for Temis. I should add from my testing that everything works in WXSimate except for Ozone with this latest beta.
On my Windows 7 system running under Virtualbox I find that IE8 will not open Temis. So I installed Edge and now it does open the Temis website with no problem at all. I must add that I have not updated the certificates of this Windows 7 system at all so I guess Edge has its own certificates somehow. Now I can try installing Edge on my native Windows 7 system but without knowing exactly how Tom’s code works I don’t know if it is worth a try?
I did mention that my description was simplistic…the bit about TLS_ECDHE… is one of a number of encryption methods available in TLS1.2. TLS is the transport ‘mechanism’ and there are a set of encryption methods within it for various parts of the client-server interaction. So, it’s possible that not all encryption methods are available in Windows 7 when you only have IE installed. It’s possible that MS Edge brings a more complete set of methods with it when it’s installed and once made available on the PC, other software using TLS1.2 can make use of them as well.
I guess I’m saying that it’s worth trying installing Edge.
Yes I will probably give it a go but it did not remove IE8 and I did not try that so I might try IE8 again first on my virtual W7 just to see before I mess with my live WD PC.
Stuart
Just tried IE8 after Edge worked and it still fails. Any way I’ll try Edge on my native PC and see. I’ll also make it default browser in case Tom calls that from WXSimate.
Well after installing two updates to W7 and Edge it was all in vain as yes Edge will open Temis just fine but WXSimate still fails to download the ozone data. I did make Edge default browser and allowed IE to open any incompatible websites in Edge. Everything else downloads just fine in WXSimate.
So for now I will leave my curl/PHP combination running to download the data.
I think that means that WxSimate is using it’s own code rather than anything installed by the browser. Unfortunately the original idea of DLLs being shared by lots of apps never properly materialised
I think Tom might be doing that, maybe a switch to curl might work but that is not available as standard on Windows 7 - don’t know about other later releases. It is open source and easy to install on Windows and it comes with its own certificates so I’m guessing it might be better to require it rather than include it.
cURL is only provided by default on Windows 10/11 but WxSimate works OK on those OS. Tom would need to modify his code for the relatively few remaining Win XP/Win7 users.
As a personal preference I’d always rather use something with fully self-contained code. When you use third-party code you can end up with Program A uses Program B but Program B changed in v2.1 which means that it no longer works with Program A until the author of Program A modifies his code. The program is written by one man and his dog and a busy sheep season has just started so he might get round to it in 6 or 9 months unless he needs to train a new dog this year in which case it might be fixed in a couple of years…if you’re lucky.
Beta 5 installed and had a successful first run, but then again beta 4 was working fine too. It flew by whilst I wasn’t paying much attention but I think I spotted the text box not running out of space before the end of a 9 day forecast.
Yes I know it is probably a big ask Chris. If only it worked under Linux using Mono like CumulusMX does with the same executable I’d be a very happy man
Downloaded and installed. Running a manual forecast was OK.
Probably not related, but the WXSIM convective forecast for tomorrow is the highest I have ever seen it. 78% chance of storms “Numerous thundershowers likely, some possibly heavy”
I’ve had a skim through the model data myself, and I certainly cannot give the same assessment.
