Best way to run several copies of WeeWx

[DR]

Matthew Wall has a nice article on how to run several instances of WeeWx
in a Pi environment.


Have one which is stable and doing pretty much what I want it to now, I
am hoping to set  up, on the same Rasp Pi 5, another being fed with data
from a different station.

It came to mind that with virtual environments being championed as easy
to blow away and start fresh without interfering with other stuff
running on the Pi, to  set up another virtual environment, install WeeWx
again in there and be able to play around without endangering the
original setup I've got running.


Does this work OK?  Is there an advantage to running one install of
WeeWx and several configurations as Mr. Wall outlines in his Wiki
discussion on Github?  It was posted late in 2025 so I assume the
virtual environments were up and running at the time and the method of 
using multiple configurations was optimal?

Dale

[Vince Skahan]

I’ve run as many as 4 easily on a pi5.  Just set up different x.conf y.conf z.conf files each pointing to different db names and public_html trees. Then enable/start weewx@x weewx@y weewx@z and so on.

I use pip here for other reasons but no reason it shouldn’t work for a packaged installation.

Systemd logging will be annoying by default so you might want to use rsyslogd and edit that utility’s conf file and uncomment the lines that make each instance log to its own file. Much easier to work out issues in one instance only.

If you go the multi route personally I’d not enable/default weewx.conf so you’ll remember that you’ll always need to specify which .conf file to run against but there aren’t any hard and fast rules.

[Tom Keffer]

You can use multiple virtual environments if you want, but there is no reason to.

The important thing is that each instance should have its own copy of weewx.conf, as well as the things it points to, particularly the database, and the HTML directory.

Skins, and extensions can be shared. You may or may not want to share the log --- it's up to you.

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[DR]

Thanks for the insight.  Knowing that one install of the Weewx stuff and
then individual files as noted for each station is important for me to know.


Thanks guys.  Dale

[DR]

Having gotten some success with the multistation features of WeeWx 5.2,
I began to get brave and customize the outputs.

I discovered that, since both stations use the same code, to a great
degree, that modifying the output, say the current conditions or the
plots that are specified in the Seasons skin, BOTH the resulting
postings to my web server get modified.


I don't see anything in the wiki on how to modify one (say plot the
indoor temp for the station which has that, or an extra temperature
sensor) or remove sensor listings below the celestial notifications
along the left side without doing both.


Perhaps I've missed something, but have thought about a possible
solution, which I'll ask if it is the right way to proceed or I'll break
something.  I was thinking of copying the entire Seasons folder in the
skins area, and giving it another name (it seems that there can be some 
unused ones like Standard but would choose something both more
descriptive and  unlikely to be confused.

Then I could assign a different skin for each conf file from the
examples and modify that weewx.conf version so the SeasonsReport selects
this new version where I have modified the current.inc and skins.conf
files to display what I want in the order I want.

Can I foul things up by fiddling around?  Is this the best way to
proceed if I wish to embark on fine tuning the installation as I would
like it to generate an output to my liking?

Thanks for any guidance on this.  Dale

[Vince Skahan]

I'd do it the simple way:

• copy Seasons to 'Seasons1' for instance 1 and edit to taste, enable that in your instance1.conf file (or whatever you call it)
  
• copy Seasons to 'Seasons2' for instance 2 and edit to taste, enable that in your instance2.conf file similarly
  
• use the original Seasons as your CYA starting point, disable that in both your .conf files
• and set each of your skins to write to a different HTML directory so they don't step on each other

I'd also save the weewx-data tree occasionally, or at least the .conf files and skins trees as a second CYA in case of edit mistakes.

You can't break anything re: how weewx saves data from your gear.  The worst you can do is break the individual skin by mistakes in editing.

[DR]

Thank  you very much.

And thanks for the CYA reminders, it would save  having to reload from
scratch.  Dale