Well Ive solved this one. I am suprised nobody replied or worked this out.
Trust me to show up with a query just when the group gets frantic and
obsessed on some other subject subject. Seems to happen to me on here.
Sorry I am not going to make any comment on the "pos file" thread.
Ive learned a bit about the Internet servers and clients and the way
they intereact.
The problem was that the client (xastir) was actually initiating the
disconnect every 10 mins. I found that other clients like Uiview were
worse with the same issues.
I Telneted into aprsd and found that it did not do any disconnect and
would just sit there eternally. I Telnetted into a Javaserver here in VK
and watched that also. Interestingly the Javsservers seem to beacon a
line of Java blah every 15-30 seconds as a rule. This appears to act as
a keep alive mechanism for the clients. Herein lies the key.
Ive got Aprsd logging into a National Javaserver using the User
defianble port. I am not sending a filter command so I dont see any
traffic comming back off the server. Thats not a problem as I only want
to pass traffic onto the Javaserver from HF via Aprsd. This however
creates a severe lack of traffic on the interface especially at night as
there are no posits comming in for hours off HF.
Xastir appears to have some internally set timer at 10 mins. So that
after 10 mins of no activity xastir assumes the Internet server
connection has failed. This is actually much longer than the Uiview
default value (5mins) for the same timer. In fact 10 minutes is a
lifetime in real terms. I am suprised that xastir has it set at 10 mins.
In reality it seems to realise its lost the socket much quicker than
that most of the time when a failure occors.
The problem was that I had aprsd NetBeacon running at 20 mins. Ive now
dropped it to 4 mins and the problem seems to have been resolved.
Fortuately Aprsd Netbeacons have a Q construct such that they wont be
gated to RF (this version does anyway) .
A couple of things come out of this.
1: An option to vary this timer in xastir say down to a smaller value
would be good. 10 mins is a long time to wait to realise you have lost
the Internet feed. I just pulled the plug on the router to this machine
and it took 10 mins for xastir to notice the interface was missing in
action. It went into hard failure and then I reconnected the router. It
took yet another 10 mins before getting back onto the server.
2: This is probably the most problematic issue. I noticed while testing
xastir and repeatedly starting and stopping aprsd alot that if I didnt
restart aprsd pretty quickly within a couple of mins then I would end up
with a failed interface in error stuck for long periods in xastir. This
generally needs manual user intervention if your impatient.
What appears to happen with xastir is this. After a Internet interface
connection failure it retries within some given time frame. Then after
that failure it gives up and marks the interface in Error. I hate to get
on here and compare xastir with other clients but I am about to do just
that. Theres a feature in xastir called "reconnect on net faiure". But
why is it soooooo unforgiving throwing the towel in so soon? I looked in
the xastir config file and found DEVICE0_RECONN:1 .. If its set to 1
then it retries. If its set to 0 then it does not. It would be good if
we could set this value to something higher like 10 and then let that
govern the number of retry attempts. Or even have a timer value we could
set between retry attempts. Uiview just sits there all day retrying
every 2 minutes.
If the Javaserver goes down or is unreachable for a while due to DNS
issues on the Internet then the whole interface scrams and sits in La La
land for a considerable time. Thats not very robust for a system that
should self heal and rectify issues.
Example : Ive seen folks driving around using UMTS connections with APRS
clients allready in VK. Now mobile networks being what they are will
give loss of service at times. Driving around trying to use xastir like
this would prove frustrating just because you lost the intenet
connection once for 2-3 mins till you got back into a coverage area.
Xastir would likely toss it in until you interviened and forced it to
reconect or waitied 20 mins perahps. Ive seen folks are interested in
running xastir on different platforms like Symbian and other mobile
devices so its not so crazy.
Thats my 2 bits worth.
Tony vk5ah
I am playing about with aprsd and xastir. Ive got a single TNC native mode
on aprsd using it as a HF gate . Its logged into the IS and seems to keep
the connection and pass packets fine.
Xastir is vk5ah-10 and aprsd is vk5ah-4 . xasir is displaying the posits
from aprsd on the map ok as well.
Ive logged xastir into aprsd 127.0.0.1 10151 on the same machine. This
seems to work but every 10 minutes and 2 seconds it seems to login to aprsd
again. So in the view incomming data window I see the aprsd welcome text pop
up.
Why is this happening ? Anyone any ideas ? It looks like xastir is
disconnecting and reconnecting. I should be able to stop this somehow.
The aprsd.log is filling up fast. I can see the login count is also climbing
on the http status page for aprsd.
Here are some log file extracts.
aprsd-log
Fri May 22 06:42:38 2009 127.0.0.1 connected on 10151
Fri May 22 06:42:38 2009 127.0.0.1 VK5AH-10 disconnected 0:10:02
Fri May 22 06:42:39 2009 127.0.0.1 VK5AH-10 XASTIR 1.9.2 Verified
Fri May 22 06:52:40 2009 127.0.0.1 connected on 10151
Fri May 22 06:52:40 2009 127.0.0.1 VK5AH-10 disconnected 0:10:02
Fri May 22 06:52:41 2009 127.0.0.1 VK5AH-10 XASTIR 1.9.2 Verified
Fri May 22 07:02:42 2009 127.0.0.1 connected on 10151
Fri May 22 07:02:42 2009 127.0.0.1 VK5AH-10 disconnected 0:10:02
Fri May 22 07:02:43 2009 127.0.0.1 VK5AH-10 XASTIR 1.9.2 Verified
>Tony Hunt vk5ah
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