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Fixing RMS Issues

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Mark McIntyre edited this page Jun 27, 2026 · 19 revisions

What's The Problem?

Occasionally, RMS may develop an issue which causes updates to fail or the code to become corrupt. This can happen if there's a network or power glitch just as RMS is running its regular self-update, though it can also happen if the SD card is getting old or if there's a power outage while RMS is writing data to the card.

How Will I know?

Sometimes, RMS will stop working or will crash. However this isn't always the case because RMS is very fault tolerant and will try to keep working even with out of date, buggy or inefficient code. Often, the only indication is that RMS seems to be missing meteors, failing to filter out bad data, or if other tools such as the UKMON toolset are reporting errors.

If you suspect RMS is having an issue, a good way to check is to manually run the RMS_Update.sh script in a Terminal Window:

./Scripts/RMS_Update.sh --force

Pay close attention to the first 30 seconds or so. If you see any errors about damaged, zero-length, or missing files, then you have a problem. If RMs gets to the point where its compiling code, don't worry about any compiler warnings you will see - these are normal!
Note: even if you see an error, DO NOT interrupt this script - let it run to completion. Otherwise you may further corrupt RMS.

How to Fix It

The easiest way to fix this is to just reinstall RMS. Don't worry, it's very simple: just follow the steps below. It should take about 15 minutes or so., but only attempt this when RMS is not capturing or processing data.

First open a Terminal window on the Pi. The Terminal app can be found on the Pi's menu.
Now copy the following commands into the terminal window:

cd ..
mv RMS RMS.old
rm -Rf ~/vRMS/lib/python*/site-packages/RMS-*
git clone https://github.com/CroatianMeteorNetwork/RMS.git
cp RMS.old/.config ./RMS
cp RMS.old/platepar_cmn2010.cal ./RMS
cp RMS.old/mask.bmp ./RMS
cd RMS
./Scripts/RMS_Update.sh
../ukmon-pitools/refreshTools.sh

(if you're not a UKMON contributor, you don't need to run the last command).
If you get any errors running these commands, check carefully that you've copied them exactly as written and then retry the command. Don't worry about compilation warnings, these are normal.

Once you've completed these steps sucessfully you must reboot the Pi so that RMS restarts cleanly using the new code.

Allow RMS to operate for two or three days then if everything seems ok, you can delete the RMS.old folder.

What do these commands do?

  • change directory to the "source" folder
  • Rename the RMS folder to RMS.old
  • delete the old RMS install package from the python library folder
  • Download a new copy of RMS
  • Copy your config files to the new RMS folder
  • Run RMS's update script to compile and install the code.
  • Refresh UKMON's toolset.

Special Case: KHT errors

Sometimes, a crucial library KHT will be damaged. This requires special steps to repair it. So, if you look at the RMS log and see errors relating to kht_wrapper, try the following:

cd  ~/source/RMS
rm -Rf build
python setup.py install

This removes the folder in which RMS builds some libraries, then forces a rebuild.

What if this doesnt work?

You might also need to recreate the RMS python environment. This is quite fiddly and its usually easier just to backup your configuration then download a new RMS image and burn a new SD card. See here for instructions on how to backup and restore your config files.

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