aprsc - an APRS-IS server in C

aprsc (pronounced a-purrs-c) is a plain APRS-IS server intended to be used on the core and Tier2 APRS-IS servers. It is written in the C language, and it runs on Linux and Unix servers.

If you need igate or other radio-interfacing features, aprsc is not for you.

Status of the project

aprsc was released in 2012, and it has since been in continuous use on a large percentage of APRS-IS servers. It has been found to be easy to set up and stable in production use. Since it is pretty much feature complete by now, new major versions come out rarely, but smaller bugs get fixed at times.

Features (and lack of)

aprsc has been designed strictly for use within the APRS-IS core, hub and Tier2 servers. It includes only the basic functionality required by those servers:

  • Duplicate packet filtering
  • Q construct processing
  • Client-defined filters
  • APRS packet parsing as necessary to support filtering
  • i-gate client support
  • Messaging support
  • UDP client support
  • UDP core peer links
  • Uplink server support
  • Passcode validation
  • Web status page + Machine-readable JSON status on an HTTP server
  • Localisation support for status web
  • HTTP position upload using POST
  • Full IPv4 and IPv6 support
  • Configurable access lists on client ports
  • Logging to either syslog, file or stderr
  • Built-in log rotation when logging to a file
  • Runs in a chroot

A little additional feature sugar has been added on top:

  • Online reconfiguration of almost all settings without restarting
  • Live upgrade - software can usually be upgraded without disconnecting clients
  • Munin plugin for statistics graphs

It does not, and will not, have any additional functions such as igating, digipeating, interfacing to radios, D-PRS or other gateway functions, or object generation. The idea is to keep aprsc relatively simple and lean, and leave the more specialized features for more specialized software.

If you need a nice, compact igate software for Linux, please take a look at either aprx or aprs4r. If you need to run an APRS-IS server on Windows or some other platform not supported by aprsc, or if you need the features existing in javAPRSSrvr which are missing from aprsc, javAPRSSrvr is the right choice for you - it's got a lot of good features that many of you need, and it works on virtually all operating systems. If you need an igate for Windows, APRSIS32 should be good.

Licensing, environments and requirements

aprsc is open source, licensed under the BSD license. It has about 11000 lines of relatively clean C code, built using the usual ./configure && make && make install method. The embedded HTTP status server is powered by the libevent2 library, no other extra libraries are needed.

Linux and OS X are the main development environments and will receive premium support, but FreeBSD and Solaris 11 are known to work too. Packaged binaries for Debian and Ubuntu are available for super-easy installations and automatic upgrades using APT.

Quality control

aprsc comes with an APRS-IS server test suite, implemented using the Perl Test framework. A "make test" executed in the tests/ subdirectory will execute automated tests for all of the basic functions of the server in about 2 minutes. Individual test scripts run fake APRS-IS servers, clients and peers around the tested server, and pass various valid and invalid packets through the server, checking for expected output.

Test-driven development methods have been used during the development: a testing script has been implemented first, based on existing documentation and wisdom learned from the mailing lists and communication with other developers, the test case has been validated to match the functionality of javAPRSSrvr (by running javAPRSSrvr through the test suite), and only then the actual feature has been implemented in aprsc. This approach should ensure a good level of compatibility between the components and prevent old bugs from creeping back in.

Who's who, and how long did it take

aprsc has been developed since 2008 by Matti Aarnio, OH2MQK (aprx, zmailer, etc), and Heikki Hannikainen, OH7LZB (aprs.fi). Design phase and most of the core development happened during 2008, but the final sprint for feature completeness happened during the summer of 2012. Substantial code reuse happens between aprx, aprsc and other projects of the authors.

aprsc was inspired by the performance problems experienced on the core APRS-IS servers in early 2008, which were mitigated by moving CWOP clients to their dedicated servers. It has also been driven by the desire for a free, open-source server.

Discussion group

aprsc has it's own discussion group and mailing list. If you run aprsc, please subscribe to the list to keep updated on new versions.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/aprsc