Quick Start Guide for Debian (Ubuntu) Users

This guide is to get you quickly started using weewx on Debian systems, particularly Ubuntu.

Assumptions

Prerequisites

Install the required libraries:

sudo apt-get install python-configobj
sudo apt-get install python-serial
sudo apt-get install python-usb        # Not required for Davis Vantage users
sudo apt-get install python-cheetah
sudo apt-get install python-imaging

If you wish to install the optional package pyephem for extended almanac information, then add:

sudo apt-get install python-dev
sudo apt-get install python-pip
sudo pip install pyephem

Installing weewx

Download the tar ball from the weewx homepage on Sourceforge, then unpack (substitute your version for X.Y.Z) into any convenient directory where you have write permission

tar xvf weewx-X.Y.Z

Change directory into it:

cd weewx-X.Y.Z

Then build and install:

./setup.py build
sudo ./setup.py install

This will install weewx into its default directory /home/weewx.

Configure

Edit the configuration file /home/weewx/weewx.conf. Pay particular attention to which serial port your weather station uses (option port).

Davis Vantage users: If you have a weather station from the Davis Vantage series, all other data will be downloaded from your hardware, including altitude, archive interval, and the start of your rain year. If you have not set these, you can either do so by following the instructions in the manual that came with your weather station, or by using the configuration utility config_vp.py, which is included with weewx. To see how to run config_vp.py:

# This works only for Davis Vantage weather stations!
cd /home/weewx
./bin/config_vp.py weewx.conf --help

Running

Now you can either run the main program from the command line:

cd /home/weewx
./bin/weewxd.py weewx.conf

Or, if you prefer to run as a daemon, then do the following:

sudo cp /home/weewx/start_scripts/Debian/weewx /etc/init.d
sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/weewx
sudo update-rc.d weewx defaults 98
sudo /etc/init.d/weewx start