LRGS Installation and Setup

This Document is part of the OpenDCS Software Suite for environmental data acquisition and processing. The project home is: https://github.com/opendcs/opendcs

See INTENT.md at the project home for information on licensing.

What is the LRGS?

The letters LRGS stand for Local Readout Ground Station. The primary purpose of this component is to get data from satellite sources, a DRGS (Direct Readout Ground Station) or an HRIT (High Rate Information Transfer).

See The legacy lrgs user guide for additional information <./legacy-lrgs-userguide.rst>

While this is still a reasonable description the LRGS can take data from Satellites (HRIT, DRGS, NOAAport), Irridium, , HRIT files, or another LRGS (DDS Protocol), and any network device that implements the DAMS-NT protocol as built-in sources.

Users can also provide custom sources to the LRGS.

What each LRGS data source has in common is that it acquires a unit of data, for example a GOES transmission, and saves it to an archive as a DcpMsg. DECODES can then search for and further process these individual messages.

The remainder of this guide will focus on setting up the LRGS component of OpenDCS for Linux. However, LRGS also works on a windows computer.

Installation - Linux

This will guide a user through manual setup on a linux system using systemd for service control For a guide on hardware requirements the LRGS is known to work for at least a single HRIT source on the old Raspberry Pi 3B hardware and was used to create this documentation and verify examples.

This example will use commands appropriate to Rocky Linux 9 on a Raspberry Pi. It is assumed the reader has gotten all networking setup as needed. The instructions would be appropriate to Rocky Linux 9, RHEL 8/9, or any other RHEL based distribution given appropriate changes in usernames.

These instructions will assume a fresh system without any OpenDCS components installed.

Install Java

The minimum Java is 8. However, we recommend a Java 11 Runtime to take advantage of performance improvements to java.

The following example uses the “main-nightly” release. This release will include any new features but may be unstable. Substitute for a specific release, such as 7.0.14 in any environments that require stability

sudo dnf install java-11-openjdk-headless

Download and extract OpenDCS

mkdir -p /opt/opendcs/main-nightly
cd /opt/opendcs/main-nightly
curl -O -L https://github.com/opendcs/opendcs/releases/download/main-nightly/opendcs-main-nightly.tar
tar -xf opendcs-main-nightly.tar

Initial Setup

Newer versions of OpenDCS (7.0.13 or higher) will automatically create a $HOME/.opendcs directory for you the first time any of applications are started. However, as this guide is for a specific server setup we will manually create the appropriate directories.

cd /home/rocky
mkdir -p .opendcs/lrgs
# Now copy the initial configuration
cd .opendcs/lrgs
cp /opt/opendcs/main-nightly/lrgs.conf .
cp /opt/opendcs/main-nightly/ddsrecv.conf .
cp /opt/opendcs/main-nightly/drgsconf.xml .
cp -r /opt/opendcs/main-nightly/netlist .
cp -r /opt/opendcs/main-nightly/users .
# The Rocky Linux 9 Raspberry Pi image has a firewall on by default.
# OpenDCS does not recommend turning the firewall off. Allow Port 16003
# to be used.
sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=16003/tcp --permanent

You will need to set your environment. Add the following to .bashrc, if using bash. Otherwise adjust to your choosen shell.

export PATH=$PATH:/opt/opendcs/main-nightly/bin
export DCSTOOL_USERDIR=$HOME/.opendcs
export LRGSHOME=$DCSTOOL_USERDIR/lrgs

# For the current shell. If you add the above to .bashrc the commands
# will be available by default.
source ~/.bashrc

Now set the LRGS Admin Password:

#For random Generation:
if [ "$LRGS_ADMIN_PASSWORD" == "" ]; then
    LRGS_ADMIN_PASSWORD=`tr -cd '[:alnum:]' < /dev/urandom | fold -w30 | head -n1`
    echo "Admin Password is $LRGS_ADMIN_PASSWORD"
    echo "This will not be printed on subsequent runs"
fi
cat `<<EOF | editPasswd
    adduser lrgsadmin
    $LRGS_ADMIN_PASSWORD
    $LRGS_ADMIN_PASSWORD
    addrole lrgsadmin dds
    addrole lrgsadmin admin
    write
    quit
EOF

# To set manually
editPasswd
adduser lrgsadmin
# provide desired password
addrole lrgsadmin dds
addrole lrgsadmin admin
write
quit

Run LRGS

# To run in the background using the normal start process .. code-block:: bash

startLRGS cd ~/.opendcs/lrgs # Use tail -f lrgslog # to see if there are any errors in the initial setup

If you would like to run the LRGS in the foreground use the following:

decj -DLRGSHOME=$LRGSHOME lrgs.lrgsmain.LrgsMain -d3 -l /dev/stdout -F -k -

Run LRGS as a service

Installation - docker

docker pull ghcr.io/opendcs/opendcs/lrgs:main-nightly

docker volume create lrgs_home
# A default password will be generated and in the logs
docker run -d --name lrgs -p 16003:16003 -v lrgs_home:/lrgs_home ghcr.io/opendcs/opendcs/lrgs:main-nightly
# or if you wish to manually set the password
docker run -d --name lrgs -p 16003:16003 -v lrgs_home:/lrgs_home -e LRGS_ADMIN_PASSWORD="<password>" ghcr.io/opendcs/opendcs/lrgs:main-nightly

Connecting

Now that you have an initial LRGS you can use the RtStat program (LRGS Status in the launcher) to connect to your LRGS at the host and port 16003.