New version of TicketsCAD - TicketsCAD v4.1.0 - automatic backups, a restore tool, and a fix for the Teams screen

[Eric Osterberg]

Subject: TicketsCAD v4.1.0 - automatic backups, a restore tool, and a fix for the Teams screen

Hi all,

v4.1.0 is out. Almost everything in it came from problems you ran into this

week, so thank you - the reports were specific enough to fix properly rather

than paper over.

WHAT'S NEW

Automatic backups, on by default. A daily backup now runs on its own. No setup

and no scheduler needed, though it works fine from cron or Windows Task

Scheduler if you prefer. You can change how often it runs, how many to keep,

and where they go.

Backups are verified, not assumed. Every archive is reopened and checked to

contain a real database dump before it counts as a success. A backup that

silently produced an empty file is not a backup, and TicketsCAD will now tell

you if there hasn't been a good one recently.

There is finally a restore tool. Run "php tools/restore.php <file>" and it

shows you what it would do without changing anything. Add --yes when you mean

it. It verifies the archive first and takes a safety backup of your current

database before it writes, so restoring the wrong file is itself undoable.

You can now prove a backup actually restores. "php tools/restore.php <file>

--drill" restores that backup into a temporary throwaway database, tells you

how many tables and rows came back compared to what you have live, then deletes

the temporary copy. Your real database is only read, never touched. If you do

one thing after upgrading, do this - untested backups are the ones that fail

when you need them.

The DMR bridge now runs in Docker. If your CAD is in a container there was no

supported way to run the radio bridge, because it assumed systemd. There is now

a container that runs the bridge and its AMBE vocoder together, configured

entirely with environment variables. See docs/RADIO-DMR-DOCKER.md. It refuses

to start if the vocoder isn't answering, because a bridge with a dead vocoder

otherwise connects normally and transmits silence, which is miserable to

diagnose from the receiving end.

There's a getting-started guide for people who aren't developers, at

docs/GETTING-STARTED-FOR-BEGINNERS.md - what TicketsCAD is, how to open it, the

"is it an address or a folder" confusion, and free links for learning the

command line, Docker and git.

WHAT'S FIXED

A damaged database table no longer looks like an empty list. After a power loss

or an unclean shutdown, one unreadable table could blank an entire screen -

which looks exactly like "all my data is gone" even though the records are fine

on disk. Those screens now name the damaged table, say the data is likely

recoverable, and link to the repair steps.

The Teams screen is fixed. Teams could exist with no name, and on some installs

Teams wouldn't load or save at all. The underlying cause was that the teams

table was defined in two different places with different columns, so which

version you ended up with depended on the order the setup scripts happened to

run. There is one definition now, and the upgrade brings any install onto it.

Four other tables had the same hazard and were consolidated too, and there's a

test that fails the build if it ever happens again.

Troubleshooting for MySQL not starting or not staying running, and for

recovering a crashed table after a power loss.

HOW TO UPDATE

If you cloned the repository with git, updating is one command:

Step 1 - git pull

Step 2 - php sql/run_migrations.php

If you're running Docker, you need the rebuild step as well, because pulling

alone does not update a container that's already running:

Step 1 - git pull

Step 2 - docker compose up -d --build

The migrations are safe to run more than once and don't delete anything. Take a

backup first anyway - and after this release, that's one command.

A word on git, since it keeps coming up. TicketsCAD is developed in the open and

fixes land continuously, often the same day someone reports them. If you're

tracking the repository with git, "git pull" gets you those fixes and

documentation corrections as they happen, instead of waiting for me to bundle

them into a numbered release. That's genuinely the best way to stay current,

and it's why I'm not going to cut a release every time a document gets

corrected. If git is new to you, there are two short walkthroughs:

Windows: https://youtu.be/uZl3teJMMHM

Linux and macOS: https://youtu.be/Zczb4ypmDc8

Release notes: https://github.com/openises/TicketsCAD/releases/tag/v4.1.0

As always, tell me what breaks.

Eric