Welcome to the Cumulus Support forum.

Latest Cumulus MX V4 release 4.4.2 (build 4085) - 12 March 2025

Latest Cumulus MX V3 release 3.28.6 (build 3283) - 21 March 2024

Legacy Cumulus 1 release 1.9.4 (build 1099) - 28 November 2014
(a patch is available for 1.9.4 build 1099 that extends the date range of drop-down menus to 2030)

Download the Software (Cumulus MX / Cumulus 1 and other related items) from the Wiki

If you are posting a new Topic about an error or if you need help PLEASE read this first viewtopic.php?p=164080#p164080

Is there a parameter to keep cumulus from writing to wxnow?

Discussion and questions about Cumulus weather station software version 1. This section is the main place to get help with Cumulus 1 software developed by Steve Loft that ceased development in November 2014.
Post Reply
visuel
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun 24 Jul 2011 10:30 am
Weather Station: Alecto WS4000
Operating System: WXP SP3
Location: Amsterdam

Is there a parameter to keep cumulus from writing to wxnow?

Post by visuel »

Hi all,

At the wiki I read:

Code: Select all

"The wxnow.txt file is created by Cumulus if you elect to generate and upload data to the APRS network."
Although I do not want to upload to the APRS network, cumulus.exe still writes every 10 seconds to the wxnow.txt file in the installation directory.

I use version 1.9.1 and the APRS/CWOP settings (not enabled) are empty in the Internet settings dialog.

Is there a parameter to keep cumulus.exe from writing to wxnow.txt.

:?:
User avatar
steve
Cumulus Author
Posts: 26672
Joined: Mon 02 Jun 2008 6:49 pm
Weather Station: None
Operating System: None
Location: Vienne, France
Contact:

Re: Is there a parameter to keep cumulus from writing to wxn

Post by steve »

The wiki was incorrect (I've amended it). Cumulus always recreates the wxnow.txt file once a minute (not every 10 seconds) and there is no option to disable this. Is it causing you a problem?
Steve
visuel
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun 24 Jul 2011 10:30 am
Weather Station: Alecto WS4000
Operating System: WXP SP3
Location: Amsterdam

Re: Is there a parameter to keep cumulus from writing to wxn

Post by visuel »

steve wrote:The wiki was incorrect (I've amended it). Cumulus always recreates the wxnow.txt file once a minute (not every 10 seconds) and there is no option to disable this. Is it causing you a problem?
Thanks.
My mistake, I thought cumulus was writing to this file every 10 seconds.

It is not causing any problem, except that cumulus.exe is doing (reading and/or writing) something every 10 seconds with my harddisk. It is keeping the disk form falling to sleep, that is all.

Since I am logging only once every hour I was wondering what happens every 10 seconds and then I only found the wxnow.txt file that had a recent timestamp.

8-)
User avatar
steve
Cumulus Author
Posts: 26672
Joined: Mon 02 Jun 2008 6:49 pm
Weather Station: None
Operating System: None
Location: Vienne, France
Contact:

Re: Is there a parameter to keep cumulus from writing to wxn

Post by steve »

Cumulus will write to the disk quite frequently just after it starts, but after a few minutes I can't think of anything that would cause it to write anything at less than one minute intervals (unless you were using realtime uploads etc, of course).
Steve
visuel
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun 24 Jul 2011 10:30 am
Weather Station: Alecto WS4000
Operating System: WXP SP3
Location: Amsterdam

Re: Is there a parameter to keep cumulus from writing to wxn

Post by visuel »

At the main window at the bottom at the right, you see "Last data read at: 14:29:50" for example.

This changes every ten seconds.

Every time cumulus reads the data (from the weather station?) it reads or writes my harddisk at that exact moment as well.

Maybe it reads the data from a buffered driver file?
User avatar
steve
Cumulus Author
Posts: 26672
Joined: Mon 02 Jun 2008 6:49 pm
Weather Station: None
Operating System: None
Location: Vienne, France
Contact:

Re: Is there a parameter to keep cumulus from writing to wxn

Post by steve »

If the reading means that a high or low is exceeded (for today, for example) then a disk write will occur. I can't think of any other reason for a disk write when the data is read.

I've put an ini-file option in the next build to turn off creating wxnow.txt, by the way.
Steve
visuel
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun 24 Jul 2011 10:30 am
Weather Station: Alecto WS4000
Operating System: WXP SP3
Location: Amsterdam

Re: Is there a parameter to keep cumulus from writing to wxn

Post by visuel »

I think you are right!

I supose it has something to do with the very bad weather currently here in the Netherlands.
:oops:

With Procmon from sysinternals I was able to see it was writing a lot (almost every ten seconds) to the today.ini file.
After a while cumulus.exe only wrote to the wxnow.txt once per minute and did something on the debug.log file:


15:38:00,9569490 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\wxnow.txt CreateFile
15:38:00,9574139 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\wxnow.txt WriteFile
15:38:00,9575334 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\wxnow.txt CloseFile
15:38:00,9582137 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\debug.log QueryOpen
15:38:00,9584872 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\debug.log CreateFile
15:38:00,9585316 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\debug.log QueryStandardInformationFile
15:38:00,9585517 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\debug.log QueryStandardInformationFile
15:38:00,9585791 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\debug.log CloseFile
15:39:01,0194055 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\wxnow.txt CreateFile
15:39:01,0197226 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\wxnow.txt WriteFile
15:39:01,0198358 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\wxnow.txt CloseFile
15:39:01,0205115 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\debug.log QueryOpen
15:39:01,0207864 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\debug.log CreateFile
15:39:01,0208314 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\debug.log QueryStandardInformationFile
15:39:01,0208515 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\debug.log QueryStandardInformationFile
15:39:01,0208778 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\debug.log CloseFile
15:40:01,0712479 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\wxnow.txt CreateFile
15:40:01,0715546 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\wxnow.txt WriteFile
15:40:01,0716549 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\wxnow.txt CloseFile
15:40:01,0723315 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\debug.log QueryOpen
15:40:01,0726050 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\debug.log CreateFile
15:40:01,0726494 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\debug.log QueryStandardInformationFile
15:40:01,0726698 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\debug.log QueryStandardInformationFile
15:40:01,0726967 cumulus.exe C:\VIX\CUMULUS\debug.log CloseFile

[/color]

Thanks for the extra option in the ini.file! :)

Maybe you can have a look at the debug.log, since I did not have the debug option on and still cumulus.exe is doing something on the debug.log as you can see in the log above.

Regards,

Victor
User avatar
steve
Cumulus Author
Posts: 26672
Joined: Mon 02 Jun 2008 6:49 pm
Weather Station: None
Operating System: None
Location: Vienne, France
Contact:

Re: Is there a parameter to keep cumulus from writing to wxn

Post by steve »

The debug log is beyond my control, I'm afraid. It's not supposed to do anything with the file when it's turned off, and it would require large-scale changes to Cumulus to use something else.
Steve
visuel
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun 24 Jul 2011 10:30 am
Weather Station: Alecto WS4000
Operating System: WXP SP3
Location: Amsterdam

Re: Is there a parameter to keep cumulus from writing to wxn

Post by visuel »

steve wrote:The debug log is beyond my control, I'm afraid. It's not supposed to do anything with the file when it's turned off, and it would require large-scale changes to Cumulus to use something else.

Ok, I understand.

Thanks anyway.
Post Reply