WeeWX: Installation on Redhat-based systems

This is a guide to installing WeeWX from an RPM package on systems such as Redhat, CentOS or Fedora.

Install pre-requisites

Unfortunately, not everything that WeeWX uses is included in the standard Redhat 8 and Redhat 7 repositories. You will need to enable their respective EPEL ("Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux") repositories, then install some prerequisites manually.

For Redhat 8 and Centos 8, you will be using Python 3. Here are the pre-requisites:

sudo yum install epel-release
sudo yum install python3-cheetah

For Redhat 7 and Centos 7, you will be using Python 2. Here are the pre-requisites:

sudo yum install epel-release
sudo yum install pyserial pyusb
sudo yum install python2-pip      # (Optional)

Configure yum

Tell yum (or dnf) where to find the WeeWX releases. This only has to be done once - the first time you install WeeWX.

Tell your system to trust weewx.com:
sudo rpm --import http://weewx.com/keys.html
For Redhat 8, using Python 3:
curl -s http://weewx.com/yum/weewx-el8.repo | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/weewx.repo
For Redhat 7, using Python 2:
curl -s http://weewx.com/yum/weewx-el7.repo | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/weewx.repo

Install WeeWX

Install WeeWX using yum (or dnf). When you are done, WeeWX will be running the Simulator in the background as a daemon.

sudo yum install weewx

Status

Look in the system log for messages from WeeWX.

sudo tail -f /var/log/messages

Verify

After 5 minutes, open the station web page in a web browser. You should see generic station information and data. If your hardware supports hardware archiving, then how long you wait will depend on the archive interval set in your hardware.

file:///var/www/html/weewx/index.html

Configure

The default installation uses Simulator as the station_type. To use real hardware, stop WeeWX, change to the actual station type and station parameters, delete the simulation data, then restart WeeWX:

sudo /etc/init.d/weewx stop
sudo wee_config --reconfigure
sudo rm /var/lib/weewx/weewx.sdb
sudo /etc/init.d/weewx start

Start/Stop

To start/stop WeeWX:

sudo /etc/init.d/weewx start
sudo /etc/init.d/weewx stop

Customize

To enable uploads such as Weather Underground or to customize reports, modify the configuration file /etc/weewx/weewx.conf. See the User Guide and Customization Guide for details.

WeeWX must be restarted for configuration file changes to take effect.

Uninstall

To uninstall WeeWX, removing configuration files but retaining data:

sudo yum remove weewx

To remove data:

sudo rm -r /var/lib/weewx
sudo rm -r /var/www/html/weewx

Layout

The installation will result in the following layout:

executable: /usr/bin/weewxd
configuration file: /etc/weewx/weewx.conf
skins and templates: /etc/weewx/skins
sqlite databases: /var/lib/weewx/
generated web pages and images: /var/www/html/weewx/
documentation: /usr/share/doc/weewx-x.y.z/
examples: /usr/share/doc/weewx/examples/
utilities: /usr/bin/wee_*