Embedded maps tracking fixed

The embedded map broke with the upgrade on Saturday - it stopped tracking the configured station (he_track parameter). That's fixed now. Sorry about that, I need to focus a bit more on testing before releasing...

Statistics after the upgrade

On 31 Oct I switched from Apache to nginx. Here are some graphs from one frontend. Which would you prefer, based on these graphs?




I only added the temperature plugin yesterday (before the upgrade), but ... the CPU core temperatures did drop by 2°C. Now, does nginx reduce global warming?

Multiple targets on live map (and other small stuff)

On Saturday I did the planned upgrade. The big new user-visible feature is that you can now track multiple targets on the map. Just type in multiple callsigns separated with a comma: Rautauoma, OH2RDK, or click on 'start tracking' more than once. This code has been running on the beta site for a week now.

There are also some smaller improvements, like symbols being shown in the "other SSIDs" list, callsign links in APRS paths shown in the info balloons, fixed web search, and a JavaScript memory leak workaround for IE.

Oh yeah, referenced digipeaters and igates are now shown when you look up a day in the history. There is little bug in there, though - it shows their current positions, instead of their positions on the selected day. But hey, they rarely move.

There were also some rather large changes under the hood, causing a longer outage than usually. I replaced the Apache web server software with nginx, which allows me to run with HTTP keep-alive again (without running out of memory), and should generally handle larger amounts of users without that much trouble. It also helps with resource management - I'm now running separate web server processes for each service instead of a single Apache process pool for a large number of virtual servers. Now, if one service gets a beating, the others won't be affected so easily. Upgrades and configuration errors in one service won't break others, either. The downside is that name-based vhosts are out of the question.

Today's photo was taken on 11th of August at the summer cottage in Maaninka. EXIF says 9:39:17 PM. It's freezing and very dark in Helsinki today, so I'd rather go back a few months.

PS. I'll be in Bordeaux, France for the next 2 weeks or so.

Upgrades on Friday or Saturday

I'm planning to upgrade aprs.fi on either Friday evening (30 Oct 2009 around 1500z) or Saturday morning (31 Oct 2009 around 0700z). I'll be reconfiguring the service to use a completely different web server software than before, so there will be an outage of some sort. If everything goes well, it won't be more than a few minutes. There might be some surprises on the way, since I don't have a proper lab setup to run the new configuration with a simulated heavy load.

Beta test: Multiple target tracking on live map

I've done some rather heavy changes in the map code, which might well break some things. The big visible change is that you can now look up and track multiple targets (up to 20) in the real-time map. I'm mostly worried that it'll slow down things too much, but we'll see...

To try it out, surf to the beta site and enter a comma-separated list of callsigns (OH7LZB-9,OH2RDK,OH2RDS), or click 'start tracking' on multiple targets!

It's also running with a completely different web server software than before. We are still fixing bugs with the new setup, so the beta service might be unavailable at times. Please report any bugs as comments on this post, or send a private email to the address shown on the profile page.

Thank you!

- Hessu and the bug-eating cats

Multiple targets on static maps

The static map page can now display up to 20 targets at the same time! Just enter the calls, separated by a comma. It works with wildcards, too, letting you select multiple matches simultaneously. For example:

RAUTAUOMA, OH2RDK, oh2rd*

The exact matches (rautauoma and oh2rdk) are preselected, and the wildcard matches are not.

Implementing this on the live map will be slightly more complicated, but unavoidable. :)

PS. Got my OT2 running with my Garmin Nüvi 350 today. Details will be posted later. It's very cool indeed.

Password recovery fixed

Oops, forgot to mention yesterday that the password recovery functionality was broken since Thursday, and was fixed in yesterday's update.