v1.464: Workaround for Kiwis using Unicode (UTF-8) in configuration description fields

v1.464 September 15, 2021

v1.463 introduced a bug whereby if a Kiwi has been configured with Unicode UTF-8 character

sequences in the various description fields (e.g. receiver name, location, antenna or the

additional HTML field) then those UTF-8 sequences may have become corrupted in the

configuration files (kiwi.config/{kiwi,dx}.json)

  There are several consequences of this bug in v1.463:

  1) The admin page may only show the title tabs and nothing else

(i.e. remainder of page fails to load).

  2) The Unicode replacement character

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specials_(Unicode_block)#Replacement_character

    (the '?' character inside a black diamond) will appear in place of the broken UTF-8 sequences.

    These replacements will appear on the page when connecting normally to the Kiwi and also

on the various listing site (e.g. rx.kiwisdr.com) where the description fields are used.

  v1.464 has a workaround for this problem. The broken UTF-8 sequences in the configuration files

  will be replaced with the ASCII '?' character at Kiwi server startup time. This should allow the

  admin page to load. However, the Kiwi owner/admin will have to manually re-enter the desired

Unicode characters as the bug caused the original Unicode to be lost.

We apologize for this inconvenience. 

  If the Kiwi has automatic updates disabled there is obviously going to be a problem since the

  admin page may not load so that an update may be started. An alternative is to ssh/PuTTY directly

into the Kiwi Beagle and update via Debian shell commands. If this is not possible there is also a

hack to force an update even from the partially loaded admin page.

Please email support@kiwisdr.com or ask on forum.kiwisdr.com for details about this method.

  Use floats instead of doubles in the ALE 2G extension.