Troubleshooting
For trouble shooting and lower level nitty gritty details, the command line, configuration files and debuggers are your friends.
OpenCPN has a minimal command line interface (CLI)
Usage: opencpn [-h] [-p] [-fullscreen] [-no_opengl] [-rebuild_gl_raster_cache] [-parse_all_enc] [-l <str>] [-unit_test_1 <num>] [-unit_test_2] [--unit_test_2] [-safe_mode] [import GPX files...] -h, --help Show usage syntax. -p Run in portable mode. -fullscreen Switch to full screen mode on start. -no_opengl Disable OpenGL video acceleration. This setting will be remembered. -rebuild_gl_raster_cache Rebuild OpenGL raster cache on start. -parse_all_enc Convert all S-57 charts to OpenCPN's internal format on start. -l, --loglevel=<str> Amount of logging: error, warning, message, info, debug or trace -unit_test_1:<num> Display a slideshow of <num> charts and then exit. Zero or negative <num> specifies no limit. -unit_test_2 --unit_test_2 -safe_mode
-l, --loglevel=<str>
Set the amount of logged information. The source code contains
wxLogInfo(), wxLogDebug() and wxLogTrace() statements. Setting the loglevel
to info
, the default, only prints wxLogInfo() messages in the log.
Setting it to debug
makes the wxLogDebug() messages appear,
and likewise for trace
and wxLogTrace()
-unit_test_1
This command test cycles through all possible charts in the currently loaded chart database, adjusting the viewport to show the loaded chart automatically. The value of this test is clear: it provide an unattended stress test of OpenCPN, It is most fun to watch in quilt modeā¦
The test runs until all charts in the database have been visited once. Lets think of this as a Beta test tool.
A side-effect of this switch is that it can be used to process a set of ENC charts into SENC files. The first, time consuming processing of ENC charts, can this way be done unattended.
-p
The portable option is explained in. https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=opencpn:opencpn_user_manual:advanced_features:portable_opencpn_v2/ Basically, it allows OpenCPN to run just using local data directories for example on a USB stick.
Debugging Output Settings for Logfile
The config or ini file contains a lot of settings that are saved between sessions. Debug statements can be added to produce a lot of output when problems arises in certain areas. The following statement are recognized and can be added to the config file before a session starts.
[Settings] ... DebugNMEA=500 Writes 500 NMEA sentences to the log file\\ DebugCM93=1 Writes volumes of debug info relating to CM93 to the logfile.\\ DebugS57 Add logfile debug output for S57\\ DebugGDAL Add logfile debug output for GDAL\\
Using a FIFO for ais debugging.
See the code in ais.cpp:
A special test for a user defined FIFO To use this method, do the following: a. Create a fifo $mkfifo /tmp/aisfifo b. netcat into the fifo $nc $ip $port> /tmp/aisfifo sample ip port could be nc 82.182.117.51 6401 > /tmp/aisfifo c. hand edit opencpn.conf and make AIS data source like this: [Settings/AISPort] Port=Serial:/tmp/aisfifo
This also works if you have an ascii ais log for which you can simply $cat ais.log> /tmp/aisfifo
You may see that if the port name contains the string "fifo", then the requirement for the port to be a TTY is relaxed.
wxWidgets
OpenCPN uses wxWidgets, currently version 3.0.2 on Linux packages, and 3.1.2 for other platforms. See wxWidgets Reference Manuals
wxWidgets uses a tick-tock release schedule where even-numbered versions are stable including a stable ABI. Odd-numbered version are unstable, development versions.
On Linux platforms OpenCPN normally uses the current stable version, at the time of writing 3.0. This is partly a practical issue since conservative distributions like Debian don’t package unstable, odd versions.
One other platforms unstable, odd versions are occasionally used. At the time of writing pre-built 3.1.2 binaries for MacOS and Windows are distributed and used by OpenCPN builds.
Changing wxWidgets version leads to a ABI break for plugins, which must be re-compiled against the new version.
This PDF wxWidgets History document might help with wxWidgets issues.