If the internet is not working, the first thing to check is that
the black WiFi antennae are
still upright and have not been knocked sideways.
Since 2018 we now have proper internet access in the tatty hut so the set-up on expo is exactly the same as the rest of the year. One or two Expo laptops are provided, but you should be able to use your own computer in exactly the same way (if you brought one) as you do at home.
We have our own WiFi ("tattyhut" and usual cavey:beery password) which is connected (deviously) to the Gasthof campsite WiFi. So please don't stream video or do a lot of operating system updates using it as the Gasthof is probably paying per GB to their supplier.
Our own Wifi only works very close to the tatty hut. If you are camped over the road near the Gasthof you will need to use the Gasthof WiFi 'staudnwirt'. This takes you to a login page on a web browser and it will log you out if you stop using it or whenever it thinks you have been on too long. Get instructions from the Gasthof campsite reception.
Expo now requires so much nerding that it is part of the pre-expo training.
The primary Expo laptop in the tatty hut is a 2011 Dell Latitude E4200 laptop (on loan from Philip Sargent) which is connected to the router by a cable (but not by WiFi as it needs an updated driver fix). It also has an external numberpad as a couple of vital keys are dead (e.g. down-arrow, del - it has a new keyboard in 2023 but the contacts on the ribbon cable need cleaning).
The Expo laptop runs Linux [Cinnamon/Debian] and is configured as both an Expo survey laptop with Tunnel and Therion and as an Expo bulk update laptop.
It is mostly used for:
Any laptop or phone can connect to the server via the "tattyhut" WiFi and, with some configuration, can be set up to do all those things too. New expoers are advised to use the Expo laptop first to see how it all works.
The laptop is usually connected to an extra LCD screen so that you can see surveys more easily as the laptop itself is small.
Through the miracle of the distributed version control system, everyone can edit the data on multiple laptops at the same time and it should all get merged.
At the end of expo we don't need to bring the Expo laptop back back to the UK (though we will, as we will want to do operating system updates during the year and maybe fix that keyboard) as all the caving data updates are continuously synchronised with the public server expo.survex.com during the expo.
For experienced expo surveyers the Expo laptop is also set up as an Expo bulk update laptop with file-transfer and version control capability to the expo server. New expoers should use the web forms, which work from any browser on any laptop.
You can configure your own laptop to do bulk upload of many files and manage the version control yourself, but initially it is easier to use the Expo laptop as the software is already set up (cryptographic key exchange etc. is pre-configured).
The expo laptop is called "Crowley". Crowley was rather too ill to be useful during the 2022 expo (being left in the potato hut for 3 years was not a healthy experience) but is now feeling much better... apart from the WiFi which died in typical fashion just 10 minutes before a training session (a software driver update issue, but Crowley is connected to the ethernet cable so this is not vital).
In 2023 we will have another general-use laptop (it was also on expo in 2019). This is not connected by any cabling and just uses WiFi. Like the expo laptop it is running Debian and has the same set of software installed (survex/aven, tunnelx, therion, git etc.) and you login to it using the username "expo" and the usual cavey:beery password. It has the identical[Cinnamon/Debian] configuration and survey software installed as Crowley. It is a big, heavy R61 14-inch Thinkpad on loan from Michael Sargent and it is called "Aziraphale". Azirophale has a big enough solid-state drive (128GB, new for 2023) to hold /expofiles/ (but note that Azirophale's SD code slot doesn't work).
Both laptops have had RAM upgrades and solid-state disc upgrades over winter 2022/23. They each hold a local complete copy of expofiles and the expoweb, loser, drawings and troggle repositories but do not have the troggle software configured to run locally, though this could be enabled if necessary.
The networking hardware is an Acer Aspire One netbook which keeps us logged in to the Gasthof and does firewalling to provide local connectivity and local WiFi. The antenna which we use to connect to the Staudnwirt WiFi is a dual antenna WiFi tiny black box on a small shelf high above the sink/stove area and connected via a usb cable to the tiny dark-blue Acer netbook 'tclaspire3'. In 2023 there may be no separate router: routing may all be done by this Acer notebook [PENDING UPDATE - correct as of 20 March 2023].
The potato hut WiFi is running DHCP and allocating IP addresses of the form 192.168.1.x where x is a number between 11 and 99 .
The Expo laptops have a dynamic local address of this form, as does any other laptop connecting to this WiFi.
The Gasthof WiFi - which you can still use - is "StaudnGast" and has no WiFi password but there is a login webpage. It allocates IP addresses in the range 192.168.2.x etc. The antenna is now on the first-floor balcony within sight of the tatty hut window.
The Acer Aspire One ("tclaspire3") is on a static address 192.168.1.100 on WiFi but 192.168.200.100 on the ethernet cable. This is the address to use for configuring it using ssh when everything else has failed. So to manage the connection to the Gasthof WiFi you would use
ssh expo@192.168.200.100to run Mark Shinwell's script (re-edited by Sam 2019)
/root/fakenet/runfakenetThis used to need running once or twice a day when the internet stops working, but it was radically fettled in 2022 and so should be much more reliable. Sometimes you may have to walk over to the blue Acer Aspire netbook and run this script directly by typing on its keyboard as the network has collapsed so badly that ssh doesn't work.
The netbook needs to have its persistent networking set up correctly in addition to the script. This is the wicd gui program that has an icon in the top-right of the sceen in the system panel. (Or search in all applications in the Internet section for the wicd application). Set the checkboxes so that the netbook does connect to any network except the Staudingast wifi network, and also tick the 'automatica;lly reconnect' checkbox for the "StaudnGast" network.
Prior to 2018 we used to run an unconnected local network with our own DNS domain name "potato.hut", our own server holding all the website and survey data, and published WiFi as SSID "tattyhut". Updates to the rest of the world were done by taking an up-to-date laptop which had been in the tatty hut to a real internet connection and pushing the changes to the distributed version control system on expo.survex.com to be merged.
In 2017 the hard-drive on our server died which triggered the general reconfiguration to connect the tattyhut to the internet continuously and not to have our own local server. This coincided with a much-improved WiFi service at the Gasthof.
In 2018 and 2019 we had good Internet access at basecamp, but the router was returned to its owner during Covid and in 2022 Wifi reception from the gasthaus was poor. A new Wifi device (not a router, just a dual-antennae receiver) is to be used in 2023, pending configuration with the acer aspire netbook, which we hope will improve everything to how it was in 2019.