Raspberry Pi

[Adrian Hudson]

Steve,

I am thinking about testing on a RPi - I have long wanted to close down my weather PC and save £60 or so a year on electricity!

I have the Davis VP2 with USB connection - no serial converter - which shows up in Windows (after Davis drivers installed) as a serial device.

Do I need to install any drivers or anything for the Davis on the Pi or will it just show up as a serial device?

Thanks

[steve]

As I understand it, it just shows up as a serial device when you plug it in - the OS has the required drivers.

[Adrian Hudson]

Thanks Steve

[Adrian Hudson]

Its all installed on my RPi and all working as far as I can see except the extra ftp files are not being sent.

I copied the folder from the windows machine to the RPi in its entirity and edited one thing - the ComportName= in the ini file to /dev/ttyUSB0 which is where the Davis ended up.

There are no entries at all regarding ftp errors in the diags and the receiving server is not reporting any attempts to send them - neither are the files being created on the Pi.

The json files ARE being created and sent, as is realtime.txt. The only files not being processed are the extra files.

I'm out of ideas I am afraid.

[steve]

Did you change the local names of the extra files to allow for the Linux filesystem?

[Adrian Hudson]

Did you change the local names of the extra files to allow for the Linux filesystem?

Oh blush!!
Blush! Blush!!!

[Adrian Hudson]

Well, its all working now except it is running the Pi flat out and takes over 5 minutes to generate the files. No idea why.

It seems to be something to do with my data (pure guess!). On Windows the PC uses a sizable chunk of CPU every update (60-70%) and the Pi just dies. Maybe the two are related.

Any idea where to look?

..in the meantime I am going back to the Windoze machine the Pi can't cope

[tumutbound]

I'm not running a Davis station (FO 1081) so it may not be relevant but my RPi runs a load average of around 0.62.
Nothing else running on the RPi except Cumulus.

[steve]

I did think that the high CPU usage you had observed must be something to do with the files you were processing at the realtime interval. If you want to zip them up and attach them, I'll try them out and see if I can see where the problem is.

[Adrian Hudson]

Thanks. Yes, most people report teeny amounts of CPU.

After a few seconds after cumulus starts the Pi runs at an an average of 100%!!

[Adrian Hudson]

Thanks Steve... but you are busy. If you think that's the issue, let me try to at least isolate the file that is causing the problem. I will remove them one by one till the CPU drops.

[mcrossley]

When I looked at my Pi this morning mono (MX b3004) was using about 30-40% CPU, no errors in the diags or console, but the memory usage had gone up from its usual 30MB to 170MB. MX shut down and restarted fine, no errors again, the CPU use then dropped it its usual 1.5% avg. Now updated to b3005 and mono is running about 1.5% again.

[Adrian Hudson]

There is a file cumulusxml.tpl which is processed to produce cumulusajax.xml that is uploaded to my web site. If I turn processing off, cpu drops to 1-2%. Its been in my uploads so long I can't even remember what it is but I have turned it off and deleted it from the website and it obviously wasn't used!

I have attached it here in case you are interested. I can't see anything wrong with it but its quite big and there may be something that cumulus doesn't like in it!

(this was tested on Windows. Will try it on the Pi later)

[Adrian Hudson]

Running back on the Pi. CPU use is minimal now for most of the time. CPU goes to 100% for nearly 2 minutes when the standard and extra files are generated.

Mark, do you see this too?

[mcrossley]

I'm not generating those files, I'll be generating a couple of files when I switch over the main instance to test it with the VP2, but again, not the standard set.