Weather Display running on Linux

Software Weather Display for Linux
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1

I’d love to hear from those of you that are successfully running WD on Linux please share what your setup is. I’m trying to narrow down if it’s a hardware compatibly issue or the Linux distro I’m using or???

I’m using Ubuntu 20.04 on a Xeon CPU E5-2650 2.00GHz server with 16G of RAM. My frustration is getting the best of me getting everything running stably. Also, if you are successfully running WD on Linux please share any issues you had to overcome and what the solution was. I’m betting I’m not the only one that is having issues.

TIA

2

There are quite a lot of people running it on Linux on Raspberry Pi’s but that’s a bit different.

Searching the forum has identified at least one person who seems to be suggesting that they are successfully running WD on Ubuntu 20.04 (see http://discourse.weather-watch.com/p/555371 )

There are also people who have had problems with 20.04 but no posts about if/how they fixed the installs.

3

Hi!

I’ve been working on this for a little while. I was not able to get WD to run on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, so eventually tried Xubuntu 21.10 and got WD to run. See WD on fresh Ubuntu 20.4.3 "Runtime error 217" issuee

However, my problem wasn’t stability, but actually getting the program to run!

4

Hi nzwrx - I was able to get it to start up running 20.04.3 LTS, Weather Display 10.37linux build 332 with a Davis VP2 Wireless behind a WeatherLink USB Data Logger. I initially couldn’t get the data to come across from the data logger to WD. That was resolved by installing libindi v1.2+

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get install libindi1

Now I’m still stuck getting data to send to APRS/CWOP. If I select test or run croncwop, from the command line, it updates the time or sends data but the data is stale. When I run croncwop from the command line it posts the following.

• program execute location /home/wx/wdisplay/
• location of ini files via location.txt /home/wx/Documents/wdisplay/
• status  0
• connected to CWOP server Ok
• status  0
• cwop sending user EW1566 pass -1 vers wxdisplay 10.37linux332
• status  0
• cwop sending EW1566>APRS,TCPIP*:@081532z4025.26N/09815.74W_185/010g017t012r000p000P000b10240h35.WD 31
• status  0

I really don’t want to go back to Windows 10 as it has it’s own problems, mainly stability. I’m lucky if I can get Windows 10 to run a month. I have many Linux machines that I don’t reboot more than every six months if that. And then only as a preventative measure.

5

Yeah, that’s the same reason I want to move from Windows - I had 7 running, but it would crash fairly often.

I would have switched to Linux earlier but for these problems in getting WD to run!

Good luck!!

6
• program execute location /home/wx/wdisplay/ • location of ini files via location.txt /home/wx/Documents/wdisplay/

Just checking, are those two directories correct and do they have the correct (and updating) data files in them?

7

I have had some success getting WD to start on openSUSE Tumbleweed, my issue is that neither linux version (GUI or console) will run and obtain valid data from my GW1n00. If the crongw1000 runs it gets bad data or it crashes. I can see the crongw1000 (when it does work) is not pulling the correct data and so needs to be recompiled from the current windows source code to work properly. So if you have an Ecowitt station I’m afraid you are out of luck.

Stuart

8

This is strange. Windows 10 has never crashed on me since 2015 when, after lots of BSODs, I discovered by accident that a Hauppauge WinTV IR control module was responsible. Not Win 10. Once Hauppauge updated that I’ve never looked back.

Of course you may need to restart Win 10 for monthly updates, but that’s not the same as instability.

9

• program execute location /home/wx/wdisplay/
• location of ini files via location.txt /home/wx/Documents/wdisplay/

The program execute path is the correct path and the location.txt file points to /home/wx/Documents/wdisplay/.

Until I retired I was an IT Systems Analyst for a hospital that had 1800+/- Windows 10 computers and the number one fix when they called our support desk was to reboot. We could see when the last time they rebooted and most had not for more than a week or two. On my dedicated Windows 10 WD computer I had updates shut off and I would manually update them and reboot at that time. With that said I had a scheduled task to reboot once a month and it would still lockup on occasion and I wouldn’t realizes it until I looked at my web site and the data was stale.

10

Does /home/wx/Documents/wdisplay/ have data/web files in it that update?

Before I retired I worked on a site with over 1000 Windows 10 devices across two networks. For security reasons we updated every month which pretty much required a reboot. We had no stability issues other than the occasional hardware failure. I was the IT architect responsible for one of the networks and in discussions with the support people pretty much daily so I’d have been made aware had there been any significant issues. My home laptop ran Win10 (now Win11) and it runs without problems with no reboots needed between updates. Win10 (and now Win11) have been the most stable MS operating systems I’ve known (my first major deployment was a 1300 seat Win3.1 network back in the 1990’s).

11

@ broadstairs

So if you have an Ecowitt station I'm afraid you are out of luck.

steady on, why be so negative?
all that needs to happen is a more gentle attitude and suggestion that the linux version of the GW1000 needs updating etc
this sort of poor attitude is one of the reasons I had to take a break

re the croncwop
it reads the wdconsole.ini
and the
[Aprs data send]
data=

is that updating?