The "Polaric Server" is mainly a web based service to present (APRS) tracking information on maps and where the information is updated in real- time. It is originally targeted for use by radio amateurs in voluntary search and rescue service in Norway. It consists of a web application and a server program (APRS daemon).
This is a plugin that provides database storage using PostgreSQL (With PostGIS extension). It is optional and was primarily meant for online servers having sufficient memory and storage. It is used on aprs.no.
It can actually also be useful on more portable servers, for instance on a Raspberry PI.
It stores APRS positions (spatiotemporal data) and APRS packets for later analysis. It is configurable what callsigns are stored and for how long. Queries include movement trails, positions covered by digipeaters, etc. with this plugin you can go to a speficic time in history and generate a map-overlay showing the situation at that time (for data that is stored).
Client/user-owned data like trackers, static position objects, map-extents, map-layer setups, etc through a REST API. Also, the drawing tool uses it to store features.
It also supports replication (between server-instances) with eventual consistency (CRDT) for some data objects. This is work in progress.
Linux/Java platform (tested on Debian/Ubuntu platforms - current stable version is 'Bookworm') with
- Java Runtime environment version 17 or later.
- polaric-aprsd installed.
A deb package is available. For information on getting started on a Debian based platform please see: https://polaricserver.readthedocs.io/en/latest/gettingstarted.html. It has scripts that can help install and configure the database. It depends on PostgreSQL and PostGIS packages.
apt-get install polaric-db-plugin
When installed for the first time, run the script 'polaric-dbsetup' It will install database software and the PostGIS extension, it will create the necessary tables and it will configure polaric-aprsd to use the plugin.
When upgrading, run the script 'polaric-dbupgrade' to make necessary updates to the database schema and setup.
Please edit the plugin configuration to suit your needs: /etc/polaric-aprsd/config.d/database.ini It is fairly self-explained. Database name is 'polaric' and is owned by a database user 'polaric'. Remember to run polaric-restart after installing the plugin or making changes to the config file. Database password is auto-generated by the setup-script.
You may use 'psql' to inspect and maintain the database.
You may also build it yourself. To do this, install the source code for polaric-aprsd and make a symlink to its 'lib' subdirectory and polaric-aprsd.jar. To build a deb package run the command:
debuild -uc -us -b