preston-peterson/aerodrome v3.4.40

on GitHub

Demo install detects port-8080 conflicts and tells you what's going on. install.sh --demo previously hardcoded the synthetic feeder to port 8080 and wrote that into config.yaml without checking whether 8080 was actually free. On a developer laptop where 8080 is one of the most-commonly-claimed ports (FastAPI defaults, dev servers, proxies, traceroute tools), the conflict could go undetected and produce a misleading symptom: the feeder service would crash-loop, the other service on 8080 would happily answer the collector's poll with HTML or non-ADS-B JSON, and the dashboard would show "Collector Stalled" with "ADS-B Receiver Reachable (2ms)" — accurate in isolation, confusing as a pair. v3.4.40 fixes that by resolving the feeder port before writing either file. A --feeder-port <n> flag is the explicit override; otherwise the script walks an 8080 → 8088 → 28080 fallback chain and picks the first port that isn't already listening. If a chosen alternative isn't the primary 8080, the script tells you (⚠ Port 8080 is in use; using port 8088 for the synthetic feeder). If all three are taken, the script fails with a clear message listing what's holding each port plus an explicit re-run example: ./install.sh --demo --feeder-port 38080.

• Upgrade-style re-runs preserve your existing port choice. If the feeder unit file already exists (you're re-running install.sh --demo on top of an already-installed system, possibly because of an update flow that touches the install scripts), the script reads --port out of the existing unit and reuses it rather than reverting to the default chain. So if you customized to --feeder-port 38080 once, you keep it across releases without re-passing the flag.

• The collector now distinguishes "URL is reachable but isn't ADS-B" from "URL is unreachable." The previous behavior fell through the generic exception handler with the error message Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0) — accurate (the response wasn't valid JSON) but unhelpful (it said nothing about WHY the response wasn't valid JSON, which is almost always "you're pointing at the wrong service"). v3.4.40 adds a content-type check + JSON shape check between resp.raise_for_status() and data = resp.json(). If the response is text/html, starts with <, or is JSON missing the aircraft key, the collector logs a specific error: Receiver URL returned text/html content — this URL is reachable but isn't an ADS-B feed. Check that the configured port matches the feed source (on demo installs, see 'systemctl status aerodrome-synthetic-feeder'). That message names the actual problem and points at the diagnostic command that confirms it.

• The offline-notification trigger learns the new failure mode too. After the existing consecutive_failed_polls threshold (default 5), the notifier fires with title "Receiver returning non-ADS-B data" rather than "Receiver offline" — same threshold, different message body so a user with phone notifications can tell at a glance whether their network is down or their config is pointing at the wrong service.

Behind the scenes

• The port-resolution block in install.sh lives BEFORE the config.yaml-write branch and the systemd-unit-write block. Both write sites consume the resolved FEEDER_PORT env var; the resolution happens once, in one place. The earlier nested structure (resolver inside the fresh-config-write branch) would have silently reverted custom ports on upgrade installs where config.yaml already existed — caught during this release's build and lifted out.
• The collector's new _NonAdsbResponse exception is module-level so the offline-threshold counter flows through the same path as ConnectionError (network down) and generic Exception (unexpected error). All three increment _consecutive_failed_polls and gate the notification on the same threshold; only the message and log text differ.
• The dashboard UI is unchanged in this release. The "Stalled" badge on the Collector card and the "Reachable" badge on the ADS-B Receiver card still display the same way as v3.4.39 — what improved is what the journal log says when both are in the misleading combination, and what the install-time error path does to prevent the combination from arising in the first place. A future release could surface "URL is reachable but isn't ADS-B" as a distinct Status-card state; the log + notification improvement is the substantive win for this one.

Operational notes

• Existing demo installs on port 8080 with a healthy feeder are unaffected — the upgrade-path branch reads --port 8080 out of the existing unit file and reuses it.
• Existing demo installs where the feeder is wedged on port 8080 because of a conflict (the laptop-install case that prompted this release) need recovery via the manual sed + restart sequence in the release HANDOFF before v3.4.40 helps with anything. v3.4.40 prevents the situation from recurring on the NEXT install, but doesn't auto-detect-and-fix an already-broken install.