Running Airtrack

This guide explains how setup and run airtrack and view a project’s map in the browser.

Configuration

If you haven’t already, create a configuration file. Throughout this guide, we’ll assume the main configuration file is called airtrack.yml located in our current working directory.

A database section is mandatory, and you’ll need either a local dump1090 instance, or an ADSB Exchange API key. Use the following configuration to use a local sqlite3 database. This project has no filter defined, so it will track every aircraft it hears about. It doesn’t enable extra tracking features so shouldn’t consume storage too quickly.

database:
  driver: sqlite3
  database: airtrack.sqlite3
projects:
  - name: global

If you run a dump1090 or readsb instance, you can receive messages from its BEAST output port. Add the following to your config file:

beast:
 - name: home
   host: 10.10.10.92
#   port: 30005   # port is optional, defaults to 30005

If you have an ADSB Exchange API key, you can configure that to receive information about aircraft worldwide from the ADSB Exchange community feeders.

adsbx:
  apikey: 42424242-4242-4242-4242-424242424242

Migrations

When setting up airtrack for the first time, we’ll need to create a database.

For MySQL and Postgres servers, you’ll need to create a new database and user with permissions to access the same.

For SQLite3, no action is required as the migration tool will create the database file on disk for you.

To run migrations for the first time, or while upgrading from one version to another, the following command will bring our database schema up to date.

airtrack migrate up --config=airtrack.yml

Run Airtrack

Now that we have a configuration file, and a fully initialized database, we can start airtrack via our shell.

airtrack track --config=airtrack.yml

Airtrack if there are any problems, airtrack will exit with an error.

Run Airtrack - systemd

TODO

Access the map

By default, airtracks map server listens on ‘0.0.0.0:8080’, and enables the map for all projects. It supports two browser-based map frontends: dump1090 and tar1090 both of which enabled by default.

The URL for a map takes the following convention:

http://localhost:8080/FRONTEND/PROJECT/index.html

For the tar1090 frontend, the URL for our global project http://localhost:8080/tar1090/global/index.html

For the dump1090 frontend, the URL is http://localhost:8080/dump1090/global/index.html

Reloading configuration

airtrack track command responds to the SIGHUP signal by closing all sessions, reloading configuration and starting up again.

Shutdown

The airtrack track command responds to the SIGTERM and SIGINT by initiating shutdown.