Cumulus MX on Rpi 2B

[Vossenberg]

Hello Everybody,

I am currently experimenting to step over to CumulusMX from Cumulus running on a Windows Server Essentials server.
I have downloaded the package and now I do not know in which directory I should place the CumulusMX software.

Where did you place the software?

Somewhere in usr/local/bin?

As you can see on *nix I am very much a newbie Thank you for your responses in advance!

[jpsc]

When I first started with the same setup I put CumulusMX in ~/CMX (because I don't like typing much). Running from the boot OS SD card I got frequent corruptions, several times a month it would crash and then not reboot and I would have to reformat and reinstall, then restore the data from a backup. This is possibly because I like to log once a minute, but even with less frequent writes I think corruption is inevitable.

Accordingly I formatted a USB stick and moved CumulusMX there, just a 1GB SanDisk Cruzer micro, so I was running from /mnt/thumb/CMX. My idea was that if the OS got corrupted I could just slot in another card I had ready prepared and be running again immediately. With this setup I did not have any more corruption so never needed the standby SD card. The only problem I had was running Jans start/stop script which needed changing because it likes having CumulusMX in a subdirectory called CumulusMX.

At Christmas I got a shiny new solid state disk for my Plusberry Pi box and so moved everything to /mnt/SSD/CumulusMX. Jans script is happy. Apache is serving web pages from /mnt/SSD/www and I have a Pi camera taking two frames a minute, one low res for Weather Underground and one full res saved locally to be served by the webserver on http://weather.mountpleasanthouse.uk/webcam/latest.jpg.

Everything is rock solid now, I thoroughly recommend separating OS and data, and also Jans script.

[Vossenberg]

Thanks! For sure I have an USB stick lying around, so I will install it on a nice USB Stick.
The idea of separating OS and software is always nice! What I did as well on the Windows machines.

The only thing I do not know about is Jans Script, where is that the stop start script?

Thanks again!

[freddie]

Where did you place the software?

If you follow the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS - http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html) then you would probably place the software in /opt, and have symbolic links to the /etc filesystem for configuration data (namely Cumulus.ini), and symbolic links to the /var filesystem for those directories containing variable data - I have done this for web, data, backup and MXdiags. I should also do this for the .json files, but I'm hoping that Steve will move these to web whilst the application is still in beta.

If you are not following FHS, then you can place it anywhere you like.

[philpugh]

CumulusMX expects to run in a subdirectory CumulusMX (mine is /home/pi/CumulusMX) but I suppose you could change it if you like However as jpsc found some of the useful things provided by other forum members are more difficult to implement if you do change it.

FWIW - I (and others on this forum) run CumulusMX on headless Raspberry Pi systems. If you look around the Pi forums you will find intructions on how to run the pi from an external hard disk removing the potential failure of SD card (and USB sticks - similar technology not designed for consistent read/writes?) I ran mine from a 4Gb SD card for a year before changing - didn't have a problem with the card in this time - cheap cards probably are less reliable.

I use WINSCP on my W10 system to 'maintain' the system - although I haven't touched it since CMX 3036 was released - if it's working I leave alone! So you don't end up typing too much in any event.

[Vossenberg]

Where did you place the software?

If you follow the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS - http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html) then you would probably place the software in /opt, and have symbolic links to the /etc filesystem for configuration data (namely Cumulus.ini), and symbolic links to the /var filesystem for those directories containing variable data - I have done this for web, data, backup and MXdiags. I should also do this for the .json files, but I'm hoping that Steve will move these to web whilst the application is still in beta.

If you are not following FHS, then you can place it anywhere you like.

I will absolutely look in the FHS standard, since I am starting with this RPi and now it is a clean system it would be great to start following some kind of standards

[jank]

I will absolutely look in the FHS standard, since I am starting with this RPi and now it is a clean system it would be great to start following some kind of standards

Look, this RaspberryPi will be a system which is only hosting CumulusMX, right?
I also assume you are using the Raspbian Image and the user you are using a user: pi
Placing the complete CumulusMX folder into /home/pi/CumulusMX would be okay and the easiest way for you without bothering with rights etc.
On Linux, each user is having a home directory and pi's home directory would be a good place top start. Advantage: You are allowed to store,update and create files in you homedirectory.
Of course, Configuration files shoul be placed in /etc , Logfiles should be place in /var/log/ and data (variable files ) in /var but this iwll make it very complicated and also working with links might confuse you as a beginner.
Hint: copy the complete installation folder into /home/pi/CumulusMX and try to get everything running. Moving and seperating the Software and files can be done also later.
Once you can start CumulusMX without any errors and once you can access the Webpages via your Windows Webbrowser (I assume you prefer also a headless system) you can use the "Start|Stop Script" mentioned above, to get a little bit more comfort.

The only thing I do not know about is Jans Script, where is that the stop start script?

Let me explain it in short words.
CumulusMX on the RaspberryPi can be started and run with a GUI, double clicking etc like you did on windows.
CumulusMX can also be run on a command line without using a GUI.
Both methods need a Keyboard and monitor conected.
The 3rd and most advanced method is to connect with an SSH Session over TCP and run CumulusMX. Using this method, you need to stay connected because CumulusMX is running "interactively" In the moment you logoff with SSH, CumulusMX will stop. In this case, you can use "screen". With the Screen command, you can start CumulusMX and it will run in the background. You can login/logoff and it will still run. You don't need a Keyboard,Monitor to run CumulusMX in this so called headless mode (and of course this is less resource hungry).
My Start - Stop Script will help you to control CumulusMX. You can find an explanation here: https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=13767
But as I already mentioned: First install CumulusMX on your RaspberryPi, configure it and check if everythign is running. In step 2, you can use the Script.
Jan