I use Devuan 3.0 Beowulf across some 50+ machines to avoid systemd entanglement and gpsd 3.19.1 built from source plays nicely with ntpd out-of-the box.
Mike
I am trying to help a distribution maintainer (of an Ubuntu remix) set things up so that - install distribution - boot - plug in USB GPS mouse will lead to gpsd being used as a stratum 5 server with an assumed offset of 80ms, in support of having time to within 100ms while off the grid. I thus have a few questions, mostly systemd and the recommended avoidance path. 0) Obviously ntpd needs a server line for the shm refclock. That's clear and in the HOWTO. (Hence not a question.) 1) It seems systemd does not invoke gpsd with -n, and I'm guessing I can change a config file to add this. Can anyone report success with this? The troubleshooting page http://catb.org/gpsd/troubleshooting.html gives an example of how to have systemd start gpsd at boot rather than on a connection, but the example does not pass -n. 2) The example gives a chrony line for sequencing, but not ntpd. The ham remix at least uses ntpd, so it seems both should be present. Is this a correct conclusion? 3) The example in the troubleshooting page does not pass a tty pathname, so I'm guessing that the udev/hotplug scripts are separate from the systemd part, and arrange to call gpsdctl to add the tty on insert. Is this known/expected to work on Ubuntu? 4) Does the -n flag for the global gpsd become effective on individual serial ports added with gpsdctl? If gpsd is started with no devices, and hotplug does gpsdctl add, does gpsd start running on the new device? 5) I don't follow how the default setup works, in that the hotplug script should run on insert, and then gpsd only started when someone starts a client. So with the following sequence: 1) boot 2) systemd starts listening on 2947, no gpsd 3) USB GPS mouse inserted 4) user runs xgps 5) systemd receives connection, starts up gpsd I don't see how the gpsdctl from step 3 works, because when gpsdctl starts gpsd, it will fail because systemd is listening on 2947. Is this broken, or what did I get wrong above? 6) If the recommendation is to totally avoid systemd for gpsd, what should I do instead? (Keep in mind that my goal is reliable operation with minimal changes.) Should whatever that is be explained in the troubleshooting guide?
Michael J Tubby B.Sc. (Hons) MIET
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