Private server - local repository
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Kyle Phillipson
Dec 16, 2020, 1:19:56 PM12/16/20
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Hello all,
Long time user of this app. When looking through the settings I noticed there was an option for a private server. I looked into this and found this to be a perfect solution to updating multiple devices and minimizing the time my phone has to keep Avare open to update all the charts. You could even set this up as a lobby, flight school, or flying club local server so the downloads are fast and can be hosted on a closed network without internet access.
Geek talk:
I created thee docker containers. 1) The web front end running nginx ; 2) A weather updater that runs a python script to download every hour; 3) Initial download from the main source of all the charts. Again as a python script.
If there is any interest in this I can explain more.
Thank you,
Kyle
Peter Gustafson
Dec 16, 2020, 1:30:04 PM12/16/20
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Hi Kyle, great.
I've been hosting a private server for years and think it is great for exactly what you describe. (I gave an Avare talk a few years ago at OSH, setup a wifi router and my laptop as a server, and allowed people to download locally even though there was no general purpose wifi at the time (and cell data was overwhelmed and expensive).
My only ask is that when you mirror the primary servers (if you are mirroring everything) that you use rsync, wget, or similar so that you only download each cycle once (i.e., don't redownload the many gigs of files more than necessary). Bandwidth for downloading the whole thing adds up. Also, weather etc can be updated from primary sources (rather than our servers) with the scripts and cron so you don't introduce additional time lag. We can chat if you want to set that up. Please send me a private message if you'd like to talk on the phone.
I've been hosting a private server for years and think it is great for exactly what you describe. (I gave an Avare talk a few years ago at OSH, setup a wifi router and my laptop as a server, and allowed people to download locally even though there was no general purpose wifi at the time (and cell data was overwhelmed and expensive).
My only ask is that when you mirror the primary servers (if you are mirroring everything) that you use rsync, wget, or similar so that you only download each cycle once (i.e., don't redownload the many gigs of files more than necessary). Bandwidth for downloading the whole thing adds up. Also, weather etc can be updated from primary sources (rather than our servers) with the scripts and cron so you don't introduce additional time lag. We can chat if you want to set that up. Please send me a private message if you'd like to talk on the phone.
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Kyle Phillipson
Dec 16, 2020, 1:47:36 PM12/16/20
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Yes I have it only do an initial pull for the charts once. I haven't refined it to use something like rsync to only download the updated charts but plan to. If you have to source of the weather etc files I can change the script to use those instead.
I'd like to get an easy solution out there for end users to setup. Could be a docker container or maybe a
raspberry pi option. If enough of these are running we can use a torrent option so every private server is syncing charts to other private servers (brainstorming).
One thing that comes to mind about the private server option is if there was an option to use or fail back to the original source if the private server isn't reachable.
Peter Gustafson
Dec 16, 2020, 2:08:59 PM12/16/20
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Hi Kyle, believe me I've given a lot of
thought to it and we've (offline) trialed server "better"
approaches for distributing charts. Not so much having redundant
servers (as we lease space/bandwidth on enterprise grade hardware
and its been keeping up), but rather having distributed peer to
peer of the files themselves so that tiles could be "auto-updated"
on the cycle change. (No, not planning to force this on users...
completely optional)
If you wanted just redundancy of servers (i.e., zip files) and local servers then I would assess syncthing to be capable of doing it as P2P but it has an issue of requiring confirmation for each new server. So it isn't quite as scalable to anonymous large groups. Torrent is a bit problematic because each update requires seeding of a new torrent. Bittorrent sync would work well but is commercial now. Syncthing is the best I've found so far but has some issues.
There is a promising system called hyperdrive in nodejs but I've not spent the time to learn it yet. Lots to play around with. None are user friendly yet but if I find it, I'll be advertising it to this community with great excitement.
Honestly if this is something your geeked about then we should talk on the phone and we can brainstorm.
If you wanted just redundancy of servers (i.e., zip files) and local servers then I would assess syncthing to be capable of doing it as P2P but it has an issue of requiring confirmation for each new server. So it isn't quite as scalable to anonymous large groups. Torrent is a bit problematic because each update requires seeding of a new torrent. Bittorrent sync would work well but is commercial now. Syncthing is the best I've found so far but has some issues.
There is a promising system called hyperdrive in nodejs but I've not spent the time to learn it yet. Lots to play around with. None are user friendly yet but if I find it, I'll be advertising it to this community with great excitement.
Honestly if this is something your geeked about then we should talk on the phone and we can brainstorm.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/apps4av-forum/6546da09-8373-42b7-af95-e6dcca978835n%40googlegroups.com.
Bob Japundza
Dec 20, 2020, 11:41:52 AM12/20/20
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Interesting. Is this in a git repository somewhere?
Thanks,
Bob
Kyle Phillipson
Jan 13, 2022, 9:59:59 AM1/13/22
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Sorry for the delay on getting this put on github. I have put the version I run at home on there.
/Kyle
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