[Xastir] aprsd logout/in every 10 minutes?

[Tony Hunt]

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