Refclock cleanup

[Gary E. Miller]

Yo Hal!

On Thu, 05 May 2016 13:34:40 -0700
Hal Murray <hmurray at megapathdsl.net> wrote:

> I'm not sure I'd call it "cruft", but I'll be happy to use it as a
> test case if/when we come up with the great refclock cleanup.

Yes, reality can be a stern teacher.

> > In the very long term, I'd like to see the gpsd NMEA parser as a
> > module that can be standalone for use with ntpd.   
> 
> That's not good enough.  When you are trying to debug, tune, or
> monitor things, you need a lot of logging that isn't part of the gpsd
> culture.

I'd certainly be in favor of improving gpsd logging and tuning.

gpsd can generate a huge amout of raw logging.  Seeing the subsystem
you want take hacks like this:
	gpsd -nND 9 /dev/ttyS0 |& egrep '(PPS|NTP}'

Which of course perturbs the PPS timing you are looking at.

I would like to see sendmail style debug log selection:
	gpsd -nND 9,PPS -D 9,NTP /dev/ttyS0

That would only output the PPS and NTP logging, saving a lot of cycles.

Totally absent in gpsd is any long term stats gathering.  Like average number
of sats seen, long term min/max errors, etc.

Maybe push logging out as JSON streams?  So much to do, but way far down
on my todo list.

Patches welcome!  gpsd is the land of the itch scratchers, got an itch?

> > I see a trend in GPS to emit basic NMEA, and move the fun stuff into
> > proprietary and binary.  Since ntpd only needs the basic NMEA it
> > need not have the bulk of gpsd's drivers.   
> 
> Some of the fun stuff may be interesting to log/monitor.

The TAI to UTC offset is buried in proprietary odd places.  That would
be really nice to have.  But all the altitude, depth, heading and temp
stuff could go away.

RGDS
GARY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary E. Miller Rellim 109 NW Wilmington Ave., Suite E, Bend, OR 97703
	gem at rellim.com  Tel:+1 541 382 8588
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