jks

Please read this post if you see the error message "Git clone damaged!" as the result of using the "check now" button on the admin update tab. Or if this error appears in the admin log tab when the Kiwi tries to do an update. Or if in general your updates are failing to complete.

With increasing frequency we've seen some Kiwis running Debian 8 unable to update. The step that copies files from Github.com fails. This problems seems to occur with slower Internet connections. And by that I don't mean a slow "last mile" connection but a slow data transfer path between the Kiwi and whatever Github.com mirror server you happen to end up with when updating.

This problem started in Europe but has now spread to the USA. Even people with 50 Mbps fiber connections see it if their transfer speeds to the Github mirror during the update is less than roughly 1 MB/s (8 Mbps). Google offers many suggestions on various git/cURL parameters to change to prevent these problems. And for a while these worked and we incorporated them into the latest releases. But now even those don't seem to work anymore.

If your clone is legitimately damaged then on the admin console tab you can try the "re-clone sources" button. But if that fails then you probably have this transfer fail issue.

Re-flashing your Kiwi with the Debian 11 Kiwi image seems to solve the problem. Why this is true is unknown. The problem is that creating a microSD card with the image to re-flash with is not trivial. And you will lose all of your customizations unless you follow a more complicated procedure to move them from the Debian 8 environment to Debian 11.

Here are your options:

• You haven't made changes to the dx labels you care about and don't mind re-entering all the admin page customizations. That is, you don't care about saving any of the configuration on your Debian 8 based system. In that case just create an SD card with the Kiwi Debian 11 image and re-flash your Kiwi as described here: http://kiwisdr.com/info/#id-net-reflash
• The above instructions mention that if you are unable to make the procedure work then as a last resort we can send you a microSD card through the mail. But please only ask us for this as a last resort.
• If you only care about saving changes you've made to the dx labels then save them first by using the "export" function on the admin dx tab to download a JSON or CSV file to your computer running the browser. You can "import" them later once you're running Debian 11.
• To save the full admin configuration, including dx labels, follow the more complicated procedure described in this post: https://forum.kiwisdr.com/index.php?p=/discussion/3096/debian-11-upgrade-for-kiwis-using-beaglebone-green-black/p1

Believe it or not, this was probably a power supply problem. We've seen over the years that writing SD cards requires a substantial amount of extra peak current. So a power supply that operates a Beagle + Kiwi board normally may not also be able to power an SD write operation on top of that.

This explains why running a Beagle + SD write alone (without the Kiwi board) worked. The current saved from not having the Kiwi board was enough to handle the SD write peak currents.

I have updated the operating guide instructions to mention this issue.

Please make sure your Kiwi is adequately grounded. So the antenna input protection circuitry has a path to drain any charge it is intercepting. Ideally this would be on the antenna coax near the RF in SMA connector. Or from the Kiwi metal case.

The ground connection from a switch mode power supply is likely not earth grounded and the Ethernet cable is transformer coupled with capacitive bypass.

http://www.kiwisdr.com/ks/troubleshooting.pdf

Seeed has been forced to raise Kiwi prices on their website by 15% due to the ongoing semiconductor supply issues.

But there are still plenty of units at old the old prices from distributors. So do some shopping around. Remember that Mouser offers free international shipping to many locations for orders over $50. And be careful to consider shipping, tariff/import, VAT/GST and other costs which these days is a large fraction of the device cost (and the latest sign of our failure as a society/species -- but I digress).

From the new OpenWebRX fork developer I think: https://rx-tx.info

Hi Kevin. When the BBG is running alone, and Ethernet cable hooked up, do you get green and yellow LEDs lit on the Ethernet RJ45 jack? What are the 4 blue status LEDs on the BBG doing?

On the Kiwi board by itself, can you measure the resistance of the round jack power center pin to ground? Except for an inline choke and 4 caps the power trace goes straight to two pins on the P9 header which feeds the BBG. So when not connected to the BBG it should measure open, more or less. Schematic: http://kiwisdr.com/docs/KiwiSDR/kiwi.schematic.pdf

Changing the external SMPS is fine. But there is another issue that is more difficult to deal with. The use of internal DC-to-DC converters (that are also SMPS) directly on the PCB of the device.

These days it seems a lot more devices, including PC motherboards, are powered with higher voltage from the primary supply. Then high-efficiency "point of load" DC-to-DC converters are used right at the consuming load. In the case of your router the external SMPS is now 12V instead of 5V and there is almost certainly a 12V-to-3.3V (or even less) converter internally (chips don't run on 5V these days and in many cases don't run on 3.3V either except maybe for I/O).

mu is an alias for make users And doing make -n users reveals that it does a:

zcat /var/log/user.log.4.gz > /tmp/kiwi.log;
zcat /var/log/user.log.3.gz >> /tmp/kiwi.log;
zcat /var/log/user.log.2.gz >> /tmp/kiwi.log;
cat /var/log/user.log.1 >> /tmp/kiwi.log;
cat /var/log/user.log >> /tmp/kiwi.log;
cat /tmp/kiwi.log | grep -i leaving | grep -vi kf6vo | grep -vi 192.168.1
rm -f /tmp/kiwi.log

So /var/log/user.* are the log files you'd want to search and copy information from. As usual with Unix there are a dozen different ways of doing this sort of thing depending on the result you want.

Okay, after way too much effort I think attachment links are working again. There were 584 such attachments in the database and I have been spot checking the comments containing them. If you notice anything amiss please let me know.