The Radarbox24 feeder on first run sends information to Radarbox Server which identifies the computer / OS architecture, MAC address, and the CPU Serial.
The Radarbox24 server sends back the sharing key and station number which is saved in file /etc/rbfeeder.ini
For unknown and unfortunate reason, the key and station number supplied by Radarbox24 Server are INVALID if it is a non-RPi installation (i.e. the installed rbfeeder package does not have architecture armhf or arm64).
This problem is overcome by installing rbfeeder package for RPi (64-bit arm64) on amd64 / x86_64 machines on which QEMU user-mode support has been installed.
QEMU (Quick Emulator) is a fast machine emulator, and can be run in following modes:
- User Mode Emulation: Runs programs compiled for one CPU architecture (e.g., RPi's rbfeeder arm64 or armhf) on another (e.g., Linux amd64 i386 x86_64 machine)
- System Emulation: Emulates a complete machine, including a CPU, memory, and peripherals.
- Virtualization (KVM/Xen): When paired with a hypervisor like KVM, QEMU enables near-native performance by running the guest code directly on the host CPU.
The "User Mode Emulation" is simplest and lightweight and does not make any changes to the Linux PC except installing 3 qemu-user support packages from apt repository of Linux OS (e.g. Ubuntu / Debian)
I have prepared two scripts, one for Debian PC, other for Ubuntu PC, which use the simpler and lightweight "User Mode Emulution".These scrips automate the entire process of installation, and can be run by bash command given below.
The QEMU install is NOT a Docker install.Installation and use of any app using QEMU is simple. It uses same commands as normal install on RPi. The user is not required to learn anything new. On the other hand DOCKER has its own syntax and commands, and users are required to learn how to use it, and it is confusing and painful for those who have not used Docker before..Installation of rbfeeder package on x86_64 computer with QEMU support has a big advantage that
it does NOT require / use spoofing of any kind to get a Valid Sharing Key, such as spoofing cpu serial, spoofing mac address, etc.I have prepared two scripts (one for Ubuntu, one for Debian) which do following:- Installs QEMU support (simply by installing packages qemu-user, qemu-user-binfmt, and binfmt-support)
- Adds architecture ARM64 to system
- Ubuntu only: adds apt sources.list “ubuntu-ports-arm64.sources” for arm64 (debian does not require user to add separate sources list for arm64)
- Installs necessary ARM64 library (libc6:arm64)
- Adds rb24 repository by adding /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rb24.list and /etc/apt/keyrings/rb24.gpg
- Installs rbfeeder:arm64 using command sudo apt install rbfeeder. The QEMU emulates arm64 / aarch64 environment.
- Installs mlat-client.
Just run the following bash script on your Debian / Ubuntu amd64 / x86_64 machine, and the rbfeeder:arm64 will be installed, a valid Sharing-Key will be obtained, and rbfeeder will run successfully.
(1) For Debian 12 & 13 (bookworm & trixie)This script is very long, and it’s right-most part may not be visible directly.
Please scroll right to view and copy it in fullsudo bash -c "$(wget -O - https://github.com/abcd567a/temp/raw/main/install-rb24-qemu-debian.sh)"
(2) For Ubuntu 22 & 24 (jammy & noble)This script is very long, and it’s right-most part may not be visible directly.
Please scroll right to view and copy it in fullsudo bash -c "$(wget -O - https://github.com/abcd567a/temp/raw/main/install-rb24-qemu-ubuntu.sh)"
User can upgrade to any new version released by RB24 by issueing following commands:
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade rbfeeder:arm64
