MLAT

[Runway 31]

Re-installing the feeder will not help, the issue is the way MLAT works on RB and there is nothing support can do about that.  It need the developers to re-work how it is implemented

Alan

[DZpower]

i contacted support twice and got the same answer
Basically MLAT will not hold then 5 mts and keeps going into a loop of disconnect and reconnect and vanish ( have to reboot PI to get it to work)

Thanks for your email.

There is an outage and we are investigating.

Please accept our sincere apologies for this matter.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can be of any further assistance.

[Kirill]

My work rbfeeder.ini
[client]
network_mode=true
log_file=/var/log/rbfeeder.log
disable_log=0

key=*************************

sn=EXTRPI******
lat=**.******
lon=**.******
alt=***

sat_used=0

sat_visible=0

[network]
mode=beast
external_port=30005
external_host=127.0.0.1

[mlat]
autostart_mlat=true
mlat_cmd=/usr/bin/python3.7 /usr/bin/mlat-client --results beast,listen,30007

[dump978]
#dump978_enabled=true

Mlat WORK!

[bgaf]

Hello guys,
last couple of days I did tens, and maybe hundreds, of new installs of my Raspberry Pi 3B+ and the outcome is that I couldn't start MLAT service to Radarbox.
What do I do usually:
1. Install latest image of Raspbian OS Lite
2. Update it
3. Disable IPv6
4. Disable Power Management of my wlan0 because it's getting sleepy sometimes
5. Install Flightaware Piaware feeder
6. Install dump1090-fa
7. Enable Bias-T for my LNA on Piaware
8. Install Flightradar24 feeder
9. Install Radarbox feeder
10. Install MLAT client for Radarbox
11. Install Virtual Radar Server
12. Install Graphs1090

During last days I tried tons of combinations and different settings and everything else is working fine except MLAT service to Radarbox. All the other services start out of the box with minimal efforts and settings but Radarbox MLAT service didn't want to start, no matter what settings I put in the .ini file. I read a lot of forums, opinions and documentation but couldn't find solution for my problem. Finally I'm ready to think that this issue is server side problem.
Any help will be priceless, so please tell me what I'm doing wrong because today I wanted to throw away all my Cisco certificates, to punch with hammer my Raspberry and so on. Let's keep the Raspberry alive. Please, help me!

[abcd567]

@bgaf
Please post output of following 2 commands:

(1)  cat /etc/rbfeeder.ini
Replace feeder key by xxxxx when posting in forum.

(2) apt-cache policy mlat-client 


.

[bgaf]

@bgaf
Please post output of following 2 commands:

(1)  cat /etc/rbfeeder.ini
Replace feeder key by xxxxx when posting in forum.

(2) apt-cache policy mlat-client 


.

[client]
network_mode=true
log_file=/var/log/rbfeeder.log
disable_log=0

key=1234567890

sn=EXTRPIXXXXXX

lat=XX.423145

lon=XX.595999

alt=120

sat_used=0

sat_visible=0

[network]
mode=beast
external_port=30005
external_host=127.0.0.1

[mlat]
autostart_mlat=true
#mlat_cmd=/usr/bin/python3.5 /usr/bin/mlat-client

[dump978]
#dump978_enabled=true
____________________________________________

mlat-client:
  Installed: 0.2.11
  Candidate: 0.2.11
  Version table:
     0.2.11 500
        500 https://apt.rb24.com buster/main armhf Packages
 *** 0.2.11 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[abcd567]

@bgaf
The mlat-client supplied by RB24 repository has a bug that if rb24feed is started by following command, it wont start mlat-client:

sudo systemctl restart rbfeeder

However if RPi is rebooted, mlat-client gets started.

Reboot RPi, wait for 15 minutes and check your RB24 station site to see if mlat started.

Most likely mlat will start by reboot. However if not, then possibly mlat-client install is broken. In this case, reinstall mlat-client by following command:

Code: [Select]

sudo apt-get install --reinstall mlat-client 

sudo reboot 


Wait for 15 minutes, then check your RB24 station site to see if mlat has started working.


.

[bgaf]

Thank you for your advise. I already have done this a couple of times during all my installation attempts. Last night I installed your version of MLAT client on a fresh new install of the system. MLAT didn''t start properly too. The process itself is starting but it's doing nothing. On the stats page there is no indication that the MLAT service is working. I think there is some information flow error inside my Pi. Maybe some port is closed, some setting is wrong or something else. I will continue with my efforts to find out where the problem is and I hope to find it. If you have another ideas, please tell me. I will do everything to make it work.

[bgaf]

After all my today's experiments I'm pretty sure the problem is on the server side. There is no reason for a working system to get disconnected from MLAT calculations without changes on my side. One day the label "MLAT Active (XX stations synced)" just disappeared. Last install of my Pi before the problem occur was maybe one year ago and for this one year the station was not working only when there were power outages or internet problems. Flightaware feeder, Flightaware MLAT, Flightradar24 feeder, Flightradar24 MLAT and RB24 feeder are working properly. Even my VirtualRadarServer is working without any efforts. Just RB24 MLAT service is driving me crazy. And the biggest problem is that if you setup everything like it's written in their manual, it won't work...Because I follow their official procedure and the result is --results make me beast,don't listen, any port.

[Runway 31]

Did you contact [email protected]

Alan

[bgaf]

Did you contact [email protected]

Alan

Yes, their advices were read from forums. I can do it by myself without their intervention. Change that port number, try with this setting, try with that option...My little daughter can provide me better support. I'm glad they are not doctors. Finally they stopped answering to my questions. And this is my second time to contact them. I'll never do it again. They even don't care about receivers that they provide for free. I host such kind of XRange receiver and for them it's normal the range to be less then 100 nm. They don't see any problem with this receiver. So I stopped asking for help. Two days ago I sent them log file with some words play - there is a handshake with the server but actually it's just shaking hands. Too many talking but there's no communication. I asked why there's no connection after handshaking? And they just stopped answering to my e-mails. Anyway, I'll survive with or without their help.

[bgaf]

@abcd567
Today I did again fresh install with your MLAT packages. Neither with them, nor with the original package MLAT service is running. The process itself is starting, I can see it in htop, but nothing else happens. I saw that the original package has before mentioned bug and it's not starting normally, so I can confirm that. And again my lovely questions - how can they provide officially packages that are not working? Don't they test them before publishing them? And I don't have answers. Even more - I don't have words...

P.S./ If you still want to investigate my case, feel free to ask for whatever information you need.

[abcd567]

@bgaf

(1) The official mlat-client works OK if it is started by rebooting the RPi. It fails to start only if you try to start it by restarting rbfeedr by manual command.

(2) More than one program use mlat-client, each one uses its own installation of mlat-client. The top / htop will show all of them as follows:

- fa-mlat-client (user Flightaware Piaware)
- mlat-client (user Adsbexchange)
- mlat-client (user rbfeeder)

(3)Please post the output of following command (increase the width of SSH/PuTYY window to avoid cutting-off long lines).

Code: [Select]


sudo systemctl status rbfeeder 



[bgaf]

This is the output:

Code: [Select]

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo systemctl status rbfeeder
● rbfeeder.service - RBFeeder Service
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/rbfeeder.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Thu 2021-11-04 19:13:08 EET; 8h ago
 Main PID: 561 (rbfeeder)
    Tasks: 11 (limit: 2059)
   CGroup: /system.slice/rbfeeder.service
           ├─561 /usr/bin/rbfeeder
           └─616 /usr/bin/python3.7 /usr/bin/mlat-client --input-type dump1090 --input-connect 127.0.0.1:32457 --server mlat1.rb24.com:40900 --lat 43.423145 --lon 24.59

Nov 05 03:26:42 raspberrypi rbfeeder[561]: Fri Nov  5 03:26:42 2021 Disconnecting from mlat1.rb24.com:40900: No data (not even keepalives) received for 60 seconds
Nov 05 03:26:42 raspberrypi rbfeeder[561]: Fri Nov  5 03:26:42 2021 Connected to multilateration server at mlat1.rb24.com:40900, handshaking
Nov 05 03:26:49 raspberrypi rbfeeder[561]: [2021-11-05 03:26:49]  ******** Statistics updated every 30 seconds ********
Nov 05 03:26:49 raspberrypi rbfeeder[561]: [2021-11-05 03:26:49]  Packets sent in the last 30 seconds: 290, Total packets sent since startup: 597607
Nov 05 03:26:49 raspberrypi rbfeeder[561]: [2021-11-05 03:26:49]  Data sent: 19.7 MB
Nov 05 03:26:49 raspberrypi rbfeeder[561]: [2021-11-05 03:26:49]  Data received: 14.2 KB
Nov 05 03:27:20 raspberrypi rbfeeder[561]: [2021-11-05 03:27:20]  ******** Statistics updated every 30 seconds ********
Nov 05 03:27:20 raspberrypi rbfeeder[561]: [2021-11-05 03:27:20]  Packets sent in the last 30 seconds: 259, Total packets sent since startup: 597866
Nov 05 03:27:20 raspberrypi rbfeeder[561]: [2021-11-05 03:27:20]  Data sent: 19.7 MB
Nov 05 03:27:20 raspberrypi rbfeeder[561]: [2021-11-05 03:27:20]  Data received: 14.2 KB
lines 1-19/19 (END)


[abcd567]

Code: [Select]

   CGroup: /system.slice/rbfeeder.service
           ├─561 /usr/bin/rbfeeder
           └─616 /usr/bin/python3.7 /usr/bin/mlat-client --input-type dump1090 --input-connect 127.0.0.1:32457 --server mlat1.rb24.com:40900 --lat 43.xxxx --lon 24.xxx

Above is perfectly OK, no issues with rbfeeder or mlat-client

Code: [Select]

Nov 05 03:26:42 raspberrypi rbfeeder[561]: Fri Nov  5 03:26:42 2021 Disconnecting from mlat1.rb24.com:40900: No data (not even keepalives) received for 60 seconds
Nov 05 03:26:42 raspberrypi rbfeeder[561]: Fri Nov  5 03:26:42 2021 Connected to multilateration server at mlat1.rb24.com:40900, handshaking


Above is the problem. No mlat data, i.e. either no mlat plane picked by your Antenna, OR not enough (minimum 4) receivers nearby to synchronize, resulting in disconnection-reconnection cycle.

However this may also be due to problem in RB24 Mlat Server


.