METEOPOLL(1)

NAME
meteopoll - retrieve meteo data from a station

SYNOPSIS
meteopoll [ -d ] [ -V ] [ -F ] [ -llogurl ] [ -ppidfile ] [ -fconffile ] [ -mmapfile ] -sstationname

DESCRIPTION
The meteopoll(1) programm connects to the weather station specified with the -s option and the configuration file conffile and starts reading data from it. It computes averages and extreme values for all the parameters it finds over a period of one minute, and constructs an SQL update query to write the information into the database. Depending on the database backend preferences set with the -b option, the query is either sent directly to the database (as specified in the configuration file), or to a message queue (unix domain socket for systems that don't have System V IPC), where it will later be picked up by the meteodequeue(1) program, or appended to the file specified in the <updatefile> tag in the configuration file.

OPTIONS

-d  increase the debug level by one. Debug messages are written to standard error.

-bdest
    set preference for database backend communication. The -b option may appear multiple times. When meteopoll connects to the database backend, it tries the different methods in the order of the corresponding -b options. It is usually best to use a message queue as the backend, and not to the database directly. Since the stationdata table may be locked during a long running query, meteopoll(1) may loose data from the weather station. The use of the message queue in conjunction with the meteodequeue(1) program thus improves reliabilty and performance by decreasing contention on the stationdata table. Possible values for this option are msgqueue for System V message queues (or Unix domain sockets on systems without System V IPC), mysql to write directly to the MySQL database, file to write queries to a file that can be later fed into the database and debug to simple send the queries to the debug log.

-fconffile
    Use conffile to read the configuration, see meteo.xml(5) for the configuration syntax.

-mmapfile
    map all data read from the station in XML form to the mapfile.

-F  stay in foreground. Useful during debugging.

-llogurl
    send log messages to the destination described by the logurl. Log URLs are of the form file:///path/to/logfile for logging to a file, or syslog:facility to send log records to syslog facility facility. See meteo(1) for details.

-ppidfile
    When running in daemon mode, write the process id of the meteopoll(1) process to this file. Defaults to /var/run/meteopoll-<station>.pid.

-sstationname
    Name of the station from which to read data. This argument is mandatory.

-V  print version information and exit.

SIGNALS
meteopoll(1) handles the following signals in a nontrivial way:

SIGINT and SIGTERM
    These signal not only kill the parent process, but also the currently running child.

SIGHUP
    This signal causes the parent to send a termination signal to the child. The parent then starts a new child. Note that this signal does not cause metepoll(1) to reread the configuration file.

FILES
meteopoll(1) writes its process id by default to a file /var/run/meteopoll-station.pid

NOTES
metepoll(1) replaces the program meteoloop(1) in earlier versions of the meteo packet.

SEE ALSO
meteo(1) meteo.xml(5), meteodraw(1), meteodequeue(1), meteojob(1), meteoavg(1).

AUTHOR
Dr. Andreas Mueller <afm@othello.ch>