Cumulus temporarily freezes when uploading to CWOP

[alexstaar]

Cumulus (v. 1.9.4) temporarily freezes (Windows says "the program is not responding") every time is uploads to CWOP. I have the interval set to 5 mins, but it occurs no matter what interval it is set to. I am also uploading to WU (rapid fire) and PWS Weather (every minute). Those both upload with no issues or freezing. Even when I stop uploading to the others, it still freezes while uploading to CWOP. Because of the freezing, it sometimes fails to upload data successfully (I would say it is successful about 75% of the time). Is this an issue that has been reported before? I recently switched computers and the problem existed on both computers with different processors. Cumulus is running on a Dell desktop PC running Windows 7.

[steve]

There are some things which Cumulus does on the main thread which ideally it would do on a separate thread. The establishing of the connection to CWOP (but not the update itself) is one of these, so the UI does not get updated while the attempt to connect is in progress. Normally this is very quick, so it's not an issue. It sounds like you have a connectivity problem with CWOP- the freezing of the UI is a symptom, not the cause of the update failure.

Delete any existing debug.log file in the Cumulus folder, then turn on debug logging while a few CWOP updates take place. Then zip up the diags folder and the debug.log file and attach them to a reply in this thread, and I'll take a look.

What APRS server do you have configured? What build of Cumulus are you using?

[alexstaar]

Here are the files. I ran the debug for about 30 mins I think. I am running the latest version of Cumulus (build 1099). I am uploading to the server at cwop.aprs.net on port 14580 every 5 mins. My CWOP ID is EW6360 if you would like to see which uploads were successful and which were not. I think only 1 was unsuccessful while debugging was on.

[steve]

I can't see any problems in the logs, Cumulus is connecting quickly to the server, and sending the data. It isn't getting any errors back, and the uploads do not time out. There are nine uploads to CWOP in the debug log, over a period of 40 minutes, from 2005 UTC to 2045 UTC:

EW6360>APRS,TCPIP*:@152005z3443.77N/08637.82W_190/001g004t060r000p000P000h37b10269eCumulusDsVP
EW6360>APRS,TCPIP*:@152010z3443.77N/08637.82W_178/001g005t060r000p000P000h36b10270eCumulusDsVP
EW6360>APRS,TCPIP*:@152015z3443.77N/08637.82W_175/002g005t060r000p000P000h37b10270eCumulusDsVP
EW6360>APRS,TCPIP*:@152020z3443.77N/08637.82W_172/001g005t060r000p000P000h38b10271eCumulusDsVP
EW6360>APRS,TCPIP*:@152025z3443.77N/08637.82W_178/001g005t060r000p000P000h37b10272eCumulusDsVP
EW6360>APRS,TCPIP*:@152030z3443.77N/08637.82W_192/001g004t060r000p000P000h37b10271eCumulusDsVP
EW6360>APRS,TCPIP*:@152035z3443.77N/08637.82W_191/001g004t060r000p000P000h39b10272eCumulusDsVP
EW6360>APRS,TCPIP*:@152040z3443.77N/08637.82W_179/001g004t060r000p000P000h37b10271eCumulusDsVP
EW6360>APRS,TCPIP*:@152045z3443.77N/08637.82W_166/002g006t060r000p000P000h34b10272eCumulusDsVP

All but two of these have worked, here is your raw CWOP log for the same period:

EW6360>APRS,TCPXX*,qAX,CWOP-5:@152005z3443.77N/08637.82W_190/001g004t060r000p000P000h37b10269eCumulusDsVP
EW6360>APRS,TCPXX*,qAX,CWOP-5:@152015z3443.77N/08637.82W_175/002g005t060r000p000P000h37b10270eCumulusDsVP
EW6360>APRS,TCPXX*,qAX,CWOP-5:@152020z3443.77N/08637.82W_172/001g005t060r000p000P000h38b10271eCumulusDsVP
EW6360>APRS,TCPXX*,qAX,CWOP-5:@152025z3443.77N/08637.82W_178/001g005t060r000p000P000h37b10272eCumulusDsVP
EW6360>APRS,TCPXX*,qAX,CWOP-4:@152030z3443.77N/08637.82W_192/001g004t060r000p000P000h37b10271eCumulusDsVP
EW6360>APRS,TCPXX*,qAX,CWOP-4:@152040z3443.77N/08637.82W_179/001g004t060r000p000P000h37b10271eCumulusDsVP
EW6360>APRS,TCPXX*,qAX,CWOP-7:@152045z3443.77N/08637.82W_166/002g006t060r000p000P000h34b10272eCumulusDsVP

Only the 2010z and 2035z uploads do not appear in the CWOP log. Perhaps one of the servers is having problems - but their status page would seem to discount this. The missing packets aren't listed on the 'bad packets' page.

Over the last 24 hours, 47% of your uploads are not recorded at CWOP, but the missing packets seem to be mainly bunched together, e.g. between 1000z and 1200z, only 4 packets out of 24 are recorded.

I'm afraid I have no idea what the problem is, as Cumulus appears to be working correctly (as far as the logs show), and I can't see any difference between the uploads which do appear at CWOP and those which do not.

[alexstaar]

Is there another CWOP server or port that I could upload to? That does seem strange that all of the packets are being created and sent successfully according to Cumulus.

[steve]

cwop.aprs.net rotates through the available servers. It could be that sometimes it is resolving to a server which is busy (or doesn't accept your upload for some other reason). The information on the CWOP site about the servers they use appears to be out of date, it only mentions CWOP-1 to CWOP-4, but this page lists 7 - http://www.wxqa.com/checkservers2.html

cwop.aprs.net does resolve to 7 addresses, so presumably those correspond to CWOP-1 to CWOP-7:

C:\Users\steve>nslookup cwop.aprs.net
Server: UnKnown
Address: 192.168.1.254

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: cwop.aprs.net
Addresses: 85.188.1.27
129.15.108.117
63.251.153.99
66.151.32.203
129.15.108.116
193.1.208.229
70.57.237.99

Looking through your raw data page, it appears that you only ever have successful uploads to 3,4,5 and 7, so you could try just using one of those. I think an IP address will work in Cumulus, so you could try putting the address of one of those in. They appear to be:

CWOP-3: 193.1.208.229 (Ireland)
CWOP-4: 129.15.108.117 (Oklahoma)
CWOP-5: 85.188.1.27 (Finland)
CWOP-7: 66.151.32.203 (Utah)

[mcrossley]

The FQDNs seem to be in the format cwop1.aprs.net etc.

[alexstaar]

Alright, it's worth a shot! Should I replace the server or port with one of the IP Addresses?

[steve]

You can't change the port, but you could try using the IP address of a server near you. If the IP address doesn't work with Cumulus for some reason, then use the FQDN (e.g CWOP-4 would be cwop4.aprs.net). But I think it will accept an IP address.