Cumulus Support

Hi all

Forgive me if this question has been asked and answered before - I did some searching and couldn't find the answer to it. I'm relatively new to the whole Cumulus thing, and learning as I go.

I have a Fine Offset station and have been struggling with the issue of the console stops communicating with Cumulus. I'm trying to add a new rule to Cumulus Toolbox to email me if it detects a problem, so I can get the station reset sooner. Otherwise, I don't know unless I see my web pages aren't updating as expected, and I'm not looking at them constantly. My goal is to reduce the amount of lost data I will have with this communication error.

So, I've done some experimenting with the webtags stuff, and finally figured out that I had to fix a couple of things in CT (Cumulus Toolbox) first. I got those fixed, and have successfully emailed myself for a dummy condition (day not equal to 99). I've seen reference to new web tags in the beta versions ( on this page: http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/BETA_webtags) called DataStopped, LatestError, LatestErrorDate and LatestErrorTime to name a few interesting ones. All of these are present in my cumuluswebtags.txt file that is being used by Cumulus and CT. I've turned on debug in CT, and find this error in the log:

12/23/2012 3:02:43 PM : Reading Tag file.C:\Cumulus\data\cumuluswebtags.txt
12/23/2012 3:02:43 PM : Could not read value of webtag 'currcond'
12/23/2012 3:02:43 PM : Could not read value of webtag 'longlocation'
12/23/2012 3:02:43 PM : Could not read value of webtag 'LatestError'

In addition, when I get my email, a couple of the tags are not populating:

ErrorLight: 0 Latest Error: *unknown* Latest Error Date: ------ Latest Error Time: ---- - Data Stopped: <#DataStopped> - Last data Read: <#LastDataReadT>

This is how the text is set in the rule:

ErrorLight: <#ErrorLight> Latest Error: <#LatestError> Latest Error Date: <#LatestErrorDate> Latest Error Time: <#LatestErrorTime> - Data Stopped: <#DataStopped> - Last data Read: <#LastDataReadT>

I'm currently running Cumulus 1.9.3 build 1057 - the latest as of today.

Here are the entries in my cumuluswebtags.txt file for those tags:

$currcond = "<#currcond>"; // The current condition as set within Cumulus
$longlocation = "<#longlocation>"; // longer description of the station location
$LatestError = "<#LatestError>"; // The latest error logged to the error log window. Cleared to an empty string when the error light is clicked, and when Cumulus is restarted
$DataStopped = "<#DataStopped>"; // 1 if the station has apparently stopped sending data to Cumulus, otherwise 0
$LastDataReadT = "<#LastDataReadT>"; //The date/time data was last read from the station

So, my question is twofold:
- How do I fix those errors in the debug log
- How do I fix it so I can use these new web tags?

Thanks for any help you can provide. I'm pretty sure it is something stupid, but I can't see it....

Rob

Can you attach your cumuluswebtags.txt? Someone might be able to spot the problem.

Here is my cumuluswebtags.txt file

I think I may have figured this out on my own after a bunch of fiddling. I started looking at various settings, etc, and realized on the Configuration/Internet/Files screen the cumuluswebtags.txt file did not have the "Process?" box checked. I checked it and ran the web update, and I saw a cumuluswebtags.txttmp file get created that had the new tags and values populated in it. The next time my rule ran in CT, it processed the tags and populated the data in them. When I restarted Cumulus Toolbox, the new tags were present in the dropdown and the proper descriptions were present next to it.

I'm still a little confused as to exactly how those tags were populated before, since I wasn't processing the cumuluswebtags.txt file.

Is there a description one one of the wikis of exactly how these tags are processed? In what order, etc? It is still a little fuzzy to me and I'd like to understand it better.

Sorry to be so dense, but maybe it will help someone else down the road.

Rob

rwilliam99 wrote:Is there a description one one of the wikis of exactly how these tags are processed? In what order, etc?

The order of processing of web tags is undefined. But they are probably processed in the order they appear in the file. I'm not sure why it matters?

Edit: I assumed you were talking about Cumulus, but it occurs to me now that you probably aren't.

I wasn't actually referring to the order in which the individual tags are processed, I was thinking more details, something like this (and I don't think my understanding is correct):

When doing a web update, the following happens:

• If the "include standard files" option is checked, all of the standard files will be proceeded and uploaded (what exactly are the "standard files"? index.htm, gauges.htm, monthlyrecord.htm, record.htm, thismonth.htm, thisyear.htm, today.htm, trends.htm, yesterday.htm????)
• If the "include standard images" option is checked, all of the standard images would be processed and uploaded (what are the "standard images"?)
• If the "solar" option is checked, the xxxx.png file will be generated and uploaded
• If the "UV" option is checked, the xxxx.png file will be generated and uploaded
• If the "Sunshine" option is checked, the xxxx.png file will be generated and uploaded
• For each of the files listed under "local filenames", any web tags will be replaced with the actual values if the "Process?" option is checked, and if the "FTP?" option is checked will be uploaded with the "remote filenames" name. If the FTP option is not checked, it will be created on the local system with the same name. (I think this is pretty well documented)
• For integration with external tools like Cumulus Toolbox, a cumuluswebtags.txttmp file will be created at each processing run which will populate all of the web tags with the current information. External tools can read this file to substitute the correct data values.

I don't know if I'm making myself very clear or not, but I guess it would be good to just have some sort of overview of how the process functions (what things need to be in place, etc). The existing documentation is pretty good, but it didn't answer all the questions I had. I don't know if something like the above would help, but I certainly don't think it could hurt. I just think more information is good.

Thanks

Rob

I'm sorry but I don't have time to provide full documentation on how Cumulus operates. I'm not really sure how knowing the order that Cumulus does things helps, as it there's nothing you can do between each stage of the process anyway.

Basically:

The standard files are those that make up the web site provided with Cumulus; the templates are in the Cumulus web folder. The standard images are all of the images that appear on those web pages; they are created in the web/images folder at each update.

At each update, the 'standard' files are processed, followed by the 'extra' files, and then the image files are created. Then ftp starts: the 'extra' files are uploaded first, then the 'standard' files, and then the 'standard' images.

I completely understand you don't have time to create documentation in addition to maintaining Cumulus. I'd be happy to write something up if I understood it more completely. I guess the order of things isn't as important as what all the steps are that it goes through. For my own experience, I was obviously missing some setup steps which caused things not to work as I expected them. As I have things working now, I guess I'll just forget about it. Maybe these notes in this posting might help someone else down the road.

I really appreciate all the time and effort that has gone into building Cumulus. It is an awesome piece of software.

rwilliam99 wrote:I completely understand you don't have time to create documentation in addition to maintaining Cumulus.

Well, actually, I've created quite a lot of documentation, and continue to do so

I was obviously missing some setup steps which caused things not to work as I expected them.

I don't really understand what this has got to do with Cumulus and how any detailed documentation of how Cumulus works would make any difference. The file that the Toolbox uses is just another file to be processed as far as Cumulus is concerned. You add it to the files list, configuring it according to your requirements using the documentation, and on the next update it gets processed. That's it, as far as Cumulus is concerned. One step.

Are you sure it's not the Toolbox for which you want extra documentation?

steve wrote:Well, actually, I've created quite a lot of documentation, and continue to do so

Sorry, I didn't mean to insinuate there is no documentation - there is quite a bit of documentation out there for Cumulus, and what is there is really good. But I think documentation can always be clearer or more complete.

I don't really understand what this has got to do with Cumulus and how any detailed documentation of how Cumulus works would make any difference. The file that the Toolbox uses is just another file to be processed as far as Cumulus is concerned. You add it to the files list, configuring it according to your requirements using the documentation, and on the next update it gets processed. That's it, as far as Cumulus is concerned. One step.

Are you sure it's not the Toolbox for which you want extra documentation?

Well, I guess this is where I'm fuzzy on where exactly the problem was. I'm kind of assuming since it was a configuration change in Cumulus that appears to have fixed things for me (clicking the "Process" box on the cumuluswebtags.txt file), that is where the problem was. My assumption is that because I wasn't processing that file each time, it was somehow using what was there before, not adding the "new" tags in it. But not understanding exactly how this whole process works, I'm just making guesses, making changes and then seeing how those changes affects the output. I had assumed that if I added the new tags to the cumuluswebtags.txt file they would be automatically picked up at the next process, but that is not what happened. They were not picked up until I enabled processing on that file.

Because it manifested itself in the Cumulus Toolbox program, that is why I posted it in the 3rd party tools forum.

I still see the following lines in the CT debug log file:

12/24/2012 12:16:50 PM : Reading Tag file.C:\Cumulus\data\cumuluswebtags.txt
12/24/2012 12:16:50 PM : Could not read value of webtag 'currcond'
12/24/2012 12:16:50 PM : Could not read value of webtag 'battery'
12/24/2012 12:16:50 PM : Could not read value of webtag 'txbattery'
12/24/2012 12:16:50 PM : Could not read value of webtag 'LatestError'

I think these are caused because these 4 values have no value for them (blank) in the cumuluswebtags.txttmp file that is created at each processing:

$currcond = ""; // The current condition as set within Cumulus
$battery = ""; // the console battery condition for Davis (only) weather stations
$txbattery = ""; // the transmitter ISS battery condition for Davis (only) weather stations
$LatestError = ""; // The latest error logged to the error log window. Cleared to an empty string when the error light is clicked, and when Cumulus is restarted

So, I'm not sure exactly where the issue was, but it does seem to be fixed for me now. I would assume I would stop seeing the LatestError "error" in the debug log if I had a loss of communication with the outside station (which occurs infrequently) or some other error.

I hope my explanations are hoping to clarify where I am/was having trouble understanding how things work.

I think the problem is that I don't use the Toolbox and know very little about it, or the issues involved in getting it working. I shouldn't have got involved in the first place