Amateur Radio (xastir) unable to display maps(solved!)

[paulie]

Hi All,
An update to my previous posts concerning APRS project:

John Hansen (W2FS,Coastal Chipworks) has now released the TNC-Pi , based on his TNC-X design.
I am a happy customer.

However, I still have a software problem:
running xastir v2.0.0 and imagemagick 6.7.7-10 2012-11-24 q16. on a early model B

I have downloaded uk_aprs_maps.zip from Cross Country Wireless website extracted them , ran the inf2geo script & indexed the maps in xastir, but the maps only display as black/tinted garbage.

Can see the maps in all their glory when loaded into imagemagick.
I saw some xastir helpfile references to 'imagemagic support needs to be compiled in' so tried converting the jpeg to xpm (which is an X pixmap?) but they still refuse to display.
Also references to ''maps fail to display' problem have been fixed in version 1.9.x'
years ago I had problems with maps failing under windows because of displaying too few bpp 16/32 .
is this too related to colour depth of the Xserver? and how can I change this easily on the Pi?

And is it too early to ask for an Amateur Radio projects category on the forum?

[paulie]

Further to my attempts to get Xastir displaying raster maps, I decided to compile from source.

A previous verson of xastir (2.0.0) was installed in / sr/bin/ directory: I decided to leave it there.
These notes are written some 12 hours after the event, so I hope my memory (& examination of history)
is accurate enough.

First step was to add

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deb-src http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy main contrib non-free

to /etc/apt/sources.list, perform apt-get update, cd to /usr/local/src/ then we are ready to begin.

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sudo apt-get source xastir

This should get you a .tar.gz file which when extracted with

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tar -xvf <filename>.tar.gz

gets you a directory of the same name (in this case xastir-2.0.4) with all the relevant files within.
cd to this directory : you will see a scriptfile called 'configure' which is the file we are about to run.
but before this you will need to install some other packages/headers to avoid your pre-compile failing.

I discovered that on my system i needed to do the following before 'configure' would run

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sudo apt-get install graphicsmagick libx11-dev festival gpsman lesstif2-dev libgraphicsmagick1-dev

From what I can work out, Festival provides optional speech output, gpsman optional gps support,
graphicsmagick is for displaying raster maps, libx11-dev and libgraphicsmagick1-dev provides header files,
and lesstif2-dev provides Motif support.

Now we are ready to run our pre-compile script:

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./configure

this then runs our configure script, checking for problems in our environment and generating two files,
summary.log & config.log one of which handily summarises at the end what options are possible e.g. a minimum and maximum
finished install - unfortunately I do not yet know how to choose from these options.
Each time you run this script it appends data to the two logs ( as i found out, fixing each stage in turn!).

With no major problems withe the configure, we can proceed to compilation proper:

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./make

this appeared to take about 30 minutes or so, and didn't seem to throw up any serious errors so the next step is

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./make install

Finally to get a Desktop shortcut

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cd /home/pi/Desktop
ln -s /usr/local/bin/xastir xastir_2.0.4

Hopefully this will get you an up-to-date xastir compiled from source.
Unfortunately I still have my problem in that raster maps fail to display.

[paulie]

Managed to get completely hosed, to the point of not booting after an upgrade.
However, did a fresh install of latest raspbian onto new card, installed xastir, and it just works!
Maps display properly, so i'm a happy bunny.

[KE4LWT]

Paulie,

Did you have to install any of the dependencies when you did the new set-up? And did you use a NOOBS install for raspbian or did you compile it up again? I'm having a heck of a time getting the downloaded maps to work.

Jack KE4LWT

[paulie]

From what I remember, I downloaded the latest (at that time)version of the Raspbian image,
Then did an apt-get install of Xastir. I didn't need to compile from source.
I think there are some dependencies for graphical display ( Imagemagick or graphicsmagick).
The Image version was before Noobs was released.
From the drop down menus in Xastir, the help/about selection will give you a pop-up dialogue showing version & what was compiled in.


Let me know which online maps you are trying to use & what sort of problem you face.

73

[KE4LWT]

Paulie,

I'm using the libraries from cloudmade with the .shp and supporting files in them. I have the directory properly set up, and have been installing all the dependencies I can find. I did have the graphicsmagick on there, but am in the process of removing that and installing imagemagick to see if that makes a difference. I have the pcre and shapelib installed as well.

The darned thing works beautifully with the TNC-PI, but the downloaded maps are the one thing I can't to work properly. I've installed everything I can see on http://www.xastir.org/wiki/HowTo:MAPS, with the exception of the lcms, which I can't find.

73
Jack KE4LWT