Propagation Quality Doesn't Show if Running Pat as a Service on macOS

13 views
Skip to first unread message

Joel Black

unread,
Mar 16, 2026, 5:49:00 PM (2 days ago) Mar 16
to pat-users
I cannot figure out what's going on with my setup. I installed both Pat and VOACAP via Homebrew. If I start Pat as a service (brew services start pat), VOACAP percentages do not show in the web UI. If I don't start Pat as a service and just start the http server manually (pat http), VOACAP percentages *do* show in the web UI.

Can someone tell me why?

Thanks,
Joel - W4JBB

Martin Hebnes Pedersen

unread,
Mar 17, 2026, 11:35:23 AM (2 days ago) Mar 17
to Joel Black, pat-users
Hi,

I'm guessing this is because Pat is unable to find the voacapl executable due to some environment ($PATH) differences when launched as a system service. I will have to look into that.

In the mean time, you can set the executable path explicitly in Pat's config file. More details on that here: https://github.com/la5nta/pat/wiki/HF-Propagation-Prediction#advanced-configuration


-- 
73 de LA5NTA / Martin

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "pat-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to pat-users+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pat-users/9a8e5470-caec-4944-a87e-e196b8141183n%40googlegroups.com.

Joel Black

unread,
Mar 17, 2026, 5:14:16 PM (2 days ago) Mar 17
to pat-users
Martin,

I tried adding the path to my config file but I still am not getting the propagation predictions. Is my syntax (in red) correct?  Placed at the end of the file:

"schedule": {},
  "version_reporting_disabled": false,
  "prediction": {
  "engine": "voacap",
  "voacap": {
    "executable": "/opt/homebrew/bin/voacapl",
    "data_dir": "/opt/homebrew/share/voacapl/itshfbc"
  }
}
}

Regards,
Joel, W4JBB

Martin Hebnes Pedersen

unread,
Mar 18, 2026, 10:49:51 AM (18 hours ago) Mar 18
to Joel Black, pat-users
Hi again Joel,

Did you remember to restart Pat after your config changes?

I just copy-pasted your snippet into my config.json, and it works as expected on my mac.

By the way - When you configure the prediction engine explicitly like this, you should also see an error on startup if something is wrong, like this:
"Failed to initialize VOACAP: failed to find executable: stat /opt/homebrew/bin/voacapla: no such file or directory»
(In this case I deliberately added a typo to the executable path).

— 
73 de LA5NTA / Martin

Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages