Advanced Portal Installation Guide (PHP Portal)
This guide was written to walk users through the installation process for the soon to be legacy ADS-B Portal with advanced features. The portal was designed to work with any image or custom installation as long as a supported ADS-B decoder is installed and port 80 is not currently in use. This being said you are not required to use the ADS-B Project installation scripts to set up your device in order to install the portal in either mode.
The portal was designed to adapt to and be configured to fit your installation. Very little is needed as far as prerequisites are concerned. The following items are required in order to utilize the portal's advanced features.
Due to the amount of data being written to the storage media it is highly recommended that those using an SD card or USB thumb drive be aware that choosing to utilize this set of features may result in a shortened life expectancy for said storage device. I recommend using a more durable storage medium when installing these features such as an HDD, SSD or NVMe drive.
At minimum you will need to have an ADS-B decoder installed. Any of those offered for installation by the scripts should work.
Start by using the steps outlined in the README.md file to begin ADS-B Receiver Project installation scripts.
You will need to supply various settings and options when installing the portals advanced features depending on the software you would like the portal to use. In this section I will guide you through the different data points you will be asked to supply in order to complete the setup process. In order to execute the portal setup scripts you will need to answer yes when presented the option to install the portal which is displayed after the feeder installation options.
During the portal setup process, you will be asked to select whether or not you wish to install the portal's advanced features. If you are reading this it is safe to say you will want to select yes to enable these features.
This menu will ask you to choose the database engine which you would like to use to store data which will be used by the portal. At this time there are two choices, MySQL and SQLite. Depending on how much flight data you wish to retain may affect your decision. I would recommend using MySQL if you plan on retaining multiple months' worth of data due to the fact MySQL will perform better than SQLite as the data stored by the engine grows in size. Depending on the database engine you wish to use the following will be displayed.
The MySQL database you choose to store your data in can be hosted locally on your device or on a remote MySQL server.
Be sure to note the users, passwords and names supplied. You will need these to complete the installation later on.
In order to setup MySQL and create the database and user the scripts will ask you for the following information.
- A MySQL user with administrative privileges generally root.
- The password for the root MySQL user.
- The name of the database which will be used.
- A user which the portal will use to interact with the database.
- The password for the MySQL user which will interact with the database.
After being asked for the above information the installation process will begin. At some point during the automated installation process a script named mysql_secure_installation will be executed. You will be asked to supply the root password after which it is up to you to answer the remaining questions as you see fit. Generally excepting all the default answers is fine.
If your database is going to be hosted remotely you will be asked for the following information.
- The address of the MySQL database engine which hosts the database.
- The name of the database to be used.
- The MySQL user which is able to interact with the database.
- The password for the above MySQL user.
Once this information has been supplied installation will continue.
Setting up SQLite requires no further interaction on your part to complete setup.
After the database engine and database is setup an email MTA will be installed. By default, Postfix is used to email users when specified flights are seen by the receiver. When asked to set the configuration to use go ahead and select the default "Internet Site". For the mail system name feel free to change it to one that represents your receiver such as adsb-receiver.
Once the installation scripts have completed their task a URL will be given which will need to be visited in order to complete the setup process. This URL should look something like http://192.168.120.199/install/.
To complete setup enter the data which you supplied during the setup process into the webpage at the link provided being sure to select the proper data storage option along with the information you supplied during setup and you are all set!
