No data on Debian 11/x86_64

[derchris]

Hi there,

I have a working RTL-SDR setup with Piaware on a x86_64 Debian 11.
It is providing data for Flightaware, FR24, ADBS-Exchange and Radarbox.

I tried to also add PF, and installed the current deb file, pfclient_5.0.162_amd64.deb
Setup and share code retrieval was working ok so far.
But I never received data.

At the begin it was just constantly restarting:

2021-09-05 15:47:12.759512 [V] Low-traffic detected, restarting client (this is standard behaviour and is safe to ignore)
2021-09-05 15:47:12.759657 [-] Closed TCP connection: 127.0.0.1:30005
2021-09-05 15:47:12.759680 [-] Client restarted successfully

And then shutsdown after a while.
Now, when trying to run it from CLI for debug, I get this:

2021-09-06 09:16:47.850396 [V] Invalid AVR packet size: 176
2021-09-06 09:16:47.850491 [V] Invalid AVR packet size: 70
2021-09-06 09:16:47.850530 [V] Attempted to exceed maximum Mode-S AVR-TCP packet buffer size

Here are the importend bits from the config:

"tcp_address":"127.0.0.1","tcp_port":"30005","select_timeout":"10","data_upload_interval":"10","connection_type":"1","aircraft_timeout":"30","data_format":"4"

All others can get data from 30005 no problem.
Any idea what could be the problem?

Thanks,
derchris

 

[Lee Armstrong]

Port 30005 is usually the "Beast Binary" format and not AVR. Perhaps change it to that.

 

[ab cd]

@derchris:
The situation is caused because you have set port to 30005 and data format to AVR ("data_format":"4").
The dump1090's port 30005 outputs data in Beast format. Your setting therefore causes a mismatch.

As advised by Lee, with port 30005, it should be set to Beast ("data_format":"1").

Below is my pfclient's config file on Debian 11 (Bullseye) amd64. It has "tcp_port":"30005" and "data_format":"1", which is a perfect match.
Note: the default config file consists of one long line. This makes it difficult to read. I have broken it into one-item-per-line to make it easy to read. This one-item-per-line format also works perfectly well without any issues.

abcd@debian11:~$ sudo nano /etc/pfclient-config.json

{
"tcp_address":"127.0.0.1",
"tcp_port":"30005",
"select_timeout":"10",
"data_upload_interval":"10",
"connection_type":"1",
"aircraft_timeout":"30",
"data_format":"1",
"latitude":"43.5xxxxx",
"longitude":"-79.6xxxx",
"sharecode":"xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
}

abcd@debian11:~$ apt-cache policy pfclient
pfclient:
  Installed: 5.0.162
  Candidate: 5.0.162
  Version table:
 *** 5.0.162 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

abcd@debian11:~$ cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="11"
VERSION="11 (bullseye)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bullseye
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"

 

[derchris]

Thanks, changing the data_format did it.
I used AVR because it is used in everything else, at least it is mentioned there as AVR-NET