Cumulus Support

I am having an issue lately with the dayfile.txt getting reset to a length of zero bytes. I can force a new copy of it, but after a bit it is back to zeros bytes. Why is this happening? I sure don't have any idea.

It is located at http://www.elgheko.us/data/dayfile.txt. If nothing shows, it is back to the zero byte length.

This is happening on your PC? And when you say you can force a new copy of it, you mean by recreating it in the dayfile.txt editor? That's something I've never seen before. Perhaps something is preventing Cumulus writing to it correctly, and somehow it becomes empty. Presumably this happens at the end of the day - that's the only time Cumulus would normally write to the file.

steve wrote:This is happening on your PC? And when you say you can force a new copy of it, you mean by recreating it in the dayfile.txt editor? That's something I've never seen before. Perhaps something is preventing Cumulus writing to it correctly, and somehow it becomes empty. Presumably this happens at the end of the day - that's the only time Cumulus would normally write to the file.

Steve,

No it is on the server. Guess I should have made that clearer. By a new copy, I mean that it is by forcing a new upload of the dayfile.txt file from my PC to the server.

Tom

Sorry, but you've lost me. Cumulus doesn't put the dayfile.txt on a server, it just updates it in its own data folder. I thought you were reporting an issue with the updating of dayfile.txt by Cumulus itself. Or are you saying that you have configured dayfile.txt as an 'extra' file on the files tab of the Cumulus internet settings? If so, you need to turn on ftp logging to see if there are any error messages when Cumulus tries to upload the file.

Perhaps you could explain exactly what it is that you are trying do, and how you are trying to do it?

steve wrote:Sorry, but you've lost me. Cumulus doesn't put the dayfile.txt on a server, it just updates it in its own data folder. I thought you were reporting an issue with the updating of dayfile.txt by Cumulus itself. Or are you saying that you have configured dayfile.txt as an 'extra' file on the files tab of the Cumulus internet settings? If so, you need to turn on ftp logging to see if there are any error messages when Cumulus tries to upload the file.

Perhaps you could explain exactly what it is that you are trying do, and how you are trying to do it?

It is part of the Betel Annual Weather Data script. My copy is at http://www.elgheko.us/wxbetel.php. I have found it useful just for myself as there were some entries that I needed to correct from as long as 15 months ago.

Tom

aznetcowboy wrote:I am having an issue lately with the dayfile.txt getting reset to a length of zero bytes. I can force a new copy of it, but after a bit it is back to zeros bytes. Why is this happening? I sure don't have any idea.

It is located at http://www.elgheko.us/data/dayfile.txt. If nothing shows, it is back to the zero byte length.

Tom, I had this issue when trying to use simultaneous logins to n ftp server, and or if the dayfile was in use at the time. I did a couple of things. but check this first https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10777

After trying the above I added several ftp users to my site eg cumulus, camera, weather (generic account for a windows login), grabber and another one.... i forget what it was for.

I aslo fiddled with both active and passive ftp mode, passive seems to work best on some hosts for upoads, whereas active works best for ftp programs like filezilla (in my experience)

When a user is already logged in, e.g. via windows - which you may do if troubleshooting the uploads, and that same user is the one detailed in cumulus, then one or the other may get booted off when the other becomes active. hence multiple users for each for each of the programs that uploads to the website. this solved quite a few problems

The next thing to do was to set my upload timing at a few minutes after the hour and offset other uploads by a few seconds, e.g. 65 seconds rather than 60 seconds in which means that simultaneous access to the same file would only occur every 20-40 minutes, if at all.

i also got cumulus to put a copy of the dayfile locally (not processed etc) and i used that specific version to ftp so I have dayfile 1, dayfile 2 etc locally in my /data. cumulus or the toolbox then takes a copy of dayfile1 rather than dayfile and uploads it as dayfile.txt to a dedicated directory for that program (e.g.grabber)

Hope that helps
Cheers Rob

I still don't know how the file is uploaded to your web site (Cumulus? Toolbox? Something else?), but Rob has some good suggestions, so I'll leave you to it.

I believe that the system routines which Cumulus uses to read dayfile.txt require exclusive access to the file, so if Cumulus was even just reading the file (e.g. at start up, or creating NOAA reports etc) it could lock out the file and potentially stop whatever it is that is trying to upload the file from accessing the contents. And of course writing to the file (as at the end of day) will lock the file while it's being updated.

steve wrote:I still don't know how the file is uploaded to your web site (Cumulus? Toolbox? Something else?), but Rob has some good suggestions, so I'll leave you to it.

I believe that the system routines which Cumulus uses to read dayfile.txt require exclusive access to the file, so if Cumulus was even just reading the file (e.g. at start up, or creating NOAA reports etc) it could lock out the file and potentially stop whatever it is that is trying to upload the file from accessing the contents. And of course writing to the file (as at the end of day) will lock the file while it's being updated.

Steve,

I have looked to see where I can create separate ftp log-ins where possible as suggested by Warrandyte, but they are hard to find. Right now I only have a new log-in for the Fire Weather Index.

I've also asked my ISP (who is a friend) if he sees anything going on that might cause a problem. Your idea will require some thinking (now where did I put that cap?). I'll post anything I find on my end.

Tom