1GPSFAKE(1)                    GPSD Documentation                    GPSFAKE(1)
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NAME

6       gpsfake - test harness for gpsd, simulating a GNSS receiver
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SYNOPSIS

9       gpsfake [OPTIONS] infile
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11       gpsfake -h
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13       gpsfake -V
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DESCRIPTION

16       gpsfake is a test harness for gpsd and its clients. It opens a pty
17       (pseudo-TTY), launches a gpsd instance that thinks the slave side of
18       the pty is its GNSS device, and repeatedly feeds the contents of one or
19       more test logfiles through the master side to the GNSS receiver. If
20       there are multiple logfiles, sentences from them are interleaved in the
21       order the files are specified.
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23       gpsfake does not require root privileges, but will run fine as root. It
24       can be run concurrently with a production gpsd instance without causing
25       problems, as long as you use the -P option. Runing under sudo will
26       cause minor loss of functionality.
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28       The logfiles may contain packets in any supported format, including in
29       particular NMEA, SiRF, TSIP, or Zodiac. Leading lines beginning with #
30       will be treated as comments and ignored, except in the following
31       special cases.
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33       Thse are interpreted directly by gpsfake:
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35       •   a comment of the form #Serial: [0-9] [78][NOE][12] may be used to
36           set serial parameters for the log - baud rate, word length, stop
37           bits.
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39       •   a comment of the form #Transport: UDP may be used to fake a UDP
40           source rather than the normal pty.
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42       •   a comment of the form #Transport: TCP may be used to fake a TCP
43           source rather than the normal pty.
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45       Thse are interpreted directly by gpsd:
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47       •   a comment of the form # Date: yyyy-mm-dd (ISO8601 date format) may
48           be used to set the initial date for the log.
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50       The gpsd instance is run in foreground. The thread sending fake GNSS
51       data to the daemon is run in background.
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OPTIONS

54       -?, -h, --help
55           Print a usage message and exit.
56
57       -1, --singleshot
58           The logfile is interpreted once only rather than repeatedly. This
59           option is intended to facilitate regression testing.
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61       -b, --baton
62           Enable a twirling-baton progress indicator on standard error. At
63           termination, it reports elapsed time.
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65       -c COUNT, --cycle COUNT
66           Sets the delay between sentences in seconds. Fractional values of
67           seconds are legal. The default is zero (no delay).
68
69       -d LVL, --debug LVL
70           Pass a -D option to the daemon: thus -D 4 is shorthand for -o="-D
71           4".
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73       -g, -G, --gdb, --lldb
74           Use the monitor facility to run the gpsd instance within gpsfake
75           under control of gdb or lldb, respectively. They also disable the
76           timeout on daemon inactivity, to allow for breakpointing. If
77           necessary, the timeout can be reenabled by a subsequent -W or
78           --wait . If xterm and $DISPLAY are available, these options launch
79           the debugger in a separate xterm window, to separate the debugger
80           dialog from the program output, but otherwise run it directly. In
81           the gdb case, -tui is used with xterm but not otherwise, since
82           curses and program output don’t play nicely together. Although lldb
83           lacks an equivalent option, some versions have a 'gui' command.
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85       -i, --promptme
86           Single-step through logfiles. It dumps the line or packet number
87           (and the sentence if the protocol is textual) followed by "? ".
88           Only when the user keys Enter is the line actually fed to gpsd.
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90       -l, --linedump
91           Print a line or packet number just before each sentence is fed to
92           the daemon. If the sentence is textual (e.g. NMEA), the text is
93           printed as well. If not, the packet will be printed in hexadecimal
94           (except for RTCM packets, which aren’t dumped at all). This option
95           is useful for checking that gpsfake is getting packet boundaries
96           right.
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98       -m PROG, --monitor PROG
99           Specify a monitor program (PROG) inside which the daemon should be
100           run. This option is intended to be used with valgrind(1) , gdb(1)
101           and similar programs.
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103       -n, --nowait
104           Pass -n to the daemon to start the daemon reading the GNSS receiver
105           without waiting for a client (equivalent to -o="-n").
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107       -o="OPTS", --option="OPTS"
108           Specify options to pass to the daemon. The equal sign (=) and
109           quotes are required so that gpsd options are not confused with
110           gpsfake options. To start the daemon reading the GNSS receiver
111           without waiting for a client use -o="-n" (equivalent to the -n)
112           which passes -n to the gpsd daemon. The option -o="-D 4" passes a
113           -D 4 to the daemon, equivalent to the using -D 4.
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115       -p, --pipe
116           Sets watcher mode and dump the NMEA and GPSD notifications
117           generated by the log to standard output. This is useful for
118           regression testing.
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120       -p PORT, --port PORT
121           Sets the daemon’s listening port to PORT.
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123       -q, --quiet
124           Tell gpsfake to suppress normal progress output and thus act in a
125           quiet manner.
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127       -r STR, --clientinit STR
128           Specify an initialization command to use in pipe mode. The default
129           is ?WATCH={"enable":true,"json":true}.
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131       -s SPEED, --speed SPEED
132           Sets the baud rate for the slave tty. The default is 4800.
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134       -S, --slow
135           Tells gpsfake to insert realistic delays in the test input rather
136           than trying to stuff it through the daemon as fast as possible.
137           This will make the test(s) run much slower, but avoids flaky
138           failures due to machine load and possible race conditions in the
139           pty layer.
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141       -t, --tcp
142           Forces the test framework to use TCP rather than pty devices.
143           Besides being a test of TCP source handling, this may be useful for
144           testing from within chroot jails where access to pty devices is
145           locked out.
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147       -T, --sysinfo
148           Makes gpsfake print some system information and then exit.
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150       -u, --udp
151           Forces the test framework to use UDP rather than pty devices.
152           Besides being a test of UDP source handling, this may be useful for
153           testing from within chroot jails where access to pty devices is
154           locked out.
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156       -v, --verbose
157           Enable verbose progress reports to stderr. Use multiple times to
158           increase verbosity. It is mainly useful for debugging gpsfake
159           itself.
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161       -w SEC, --wait SEC
162           Set the timeout on daemon inactivity, in seconds. The default
163           timeout is 60 seconds, and a value of 0 suppresses the timeout
164           altogether. Note that the actual timeout is longer due to internal
165           delays, typically by about 20 seconds.
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167       -x, --predump
168           Dump packets as gpsfake gathers them. It is mainly useful for
169           debugging gpsfake itself.
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171       The last argument(s) must be the name of a file or files containing the
172       data to be cycled at the device. gpsfake will print a notification each
173       time it cycles.
174
175       Normally, gpsfake creates a pty for each logfile and passes the slave
176       side of the device to the daemon. If the header comment in the logfile
177       contains the string "UDP", packets are instead shipped via UDP port
178       5000 to the address 192.168.0.1.255. You can monitor the packet with
179       tcpdump this way:
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181           tcpdump -s0 -n -A -i lo udp and port 5000
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MAGIC COMMENTS

184       Certain magic comments in test load headers can change the conditions
185       of the test. These are:
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187       Serial
188           May contain a serial-port setting such as 4800 7N2 - baud rate
189           followed by 7 or 8 for byte length, N or O or E for parity and 1 or
190           2 for stop bits. The test is run with those settings on the slave
191           port that the daemon sees.
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193       Transport
194           Values 'TCP' and 'UDP' force the use of TCP and UDP feeds
195           respectively (the default is a pty).
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197       Delay-Cookie
198           Must be followed by two whitespace-separated fields, a delimiter
199           character and a numeric delay in seconds. Instead of being broken
200           up by packet boundaries, the test load is split on the delimiters.
201           The delay is performed after each feed. Can be useful for imposing
202           write boundaries in the middle of packets.
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CUSTOM TESTS

205       gpsfake is a trivial wrapper around a Python module, also named
206       gpsfake, that can be used to fully script sessions involving a gpsd
207       instance, any number of client sessions, and any number of fake GPSes
208       feeding the daemon instance with data from specified sentence logs.
209
210       Source and embedded documentation for this module is shipped with the
211       gpsd development tools. You can use it to torture test either gpsd
212       itself or any gpsd-aware client application.
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214       Logfiles for the use with gpsfake can be retrieved using gpspipe,
215       gpscat, or cgps from the gpsd distribution, or any other application
216       which is able to create a compatible output.
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ENVIRONMENT

219   WRITE_PAD
220       For unknown reasons gpsfake may sometimes time out and fail. Set the
221       WRITE_PAD environment value to a larger value to avoid this issue. A
222       starting point might be "WRITE_PAD = 0.005". Values as large os 0.200
223       may be required.
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225   GPSD_HOME
226       If gpsfake exits with "Cannot execute gpsd: executable not found." the
227       environment variable GPSD_HOME can be set to the path where gpsd can be
228       found. (instead of adding that folder to the PATH environment variable
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RETURN VALUES

231       0
232           on success.
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234       1
235           on failure
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SEE ALSO

238       gpsd(8), gps(1), gpspipe(1), gpscat(1), cgps(1), tcpdump(1), gdb(1),
239       lldb(1), valgrind(1)
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RESOURCES

242       Project web site: https://gpsd.io/
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COPYING

245       This file is Copyright 2013 by the GPSD project
246       SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-2-clause
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AUTHOR

249       Eric S. Raymond
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253GPSD, Version 3.25                2023-01-10                        GPSFAKE(1)
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