Xfce Forum

papaneuf

Member

Registered: 2015-02-11

Posts: 2

[Solved] Panel Weather

I am running Linux Mint 17.1 xfce on an ancient Dell C840 laptop. I do not have the optional mici PCI wi-fi card in the unit.

Ok...here is the mystery.. I added the weather applet to the panel. I noticed that when I was not hard wired with an ethernet connection the weather would still update, temps would change, wind speed, clouds, etc. ?????  I thought that the app must be picking up info by wifi, but I have no wifi. WTF?

Perhaps the weather program picks up an hourly forecast then maintains it even without an internet connection? Doesn't seem probable.

If anyone has any insight into what is going on I would like to hear it.

Thanks,

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,023

Re: [Solved] Panel Weather

Caching.
From http://git.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4 … ree/README (bold, italics are mine)

CACHING
==========================================================================
As of 0.8.3, xfce4-weather-plugin caches downloaded weather and
astronomical data. Per plugin instance, one file containing that
cached data is created in the user cache directory, typically in
$HOME/.cache/xfce4/weather. This file will be generated or overwritten
on every weather data download and read before any location data
change. Cached data has a certain expiry date and will not be used if
it is older than that. There is an option not exposed by the UI to
change the maximum age; This parameter is called "cache_file_max_age"
and can be found in the plugin configuration file usually located in
~/.config/xfce4/panel. It is set to the maximum age in seconds and
defaults to 48 hours (172800 seconds).

By using caching, some deficiencies of data provided by met.no can be
worked around:

First, their location forecast service wasn't really meant to provide
data for the current weather, which the plugin tries to convey.
However, the forecasts for the next few hours (typically the next 3
hours or sometimes even the next hour for cities, in any case at max 6
hours for all locations) are in most cases good enough to fake current
conditions using interpolation. Note that other weather providers
often present values for current weather that have been measured half
an hour or even more ago, so in most cases it won't make a big
difference.

Second, caching reduces network traffic. Data will only be downloaded
after the download interval time has expired. Information about
download times can be seen in the details page of the summary window.

Third, caching data enables the plugin to work without internet
connection for some time (see the previous paragraph about
cache_file_max_age for information about configuring this expiry
time).

Note that refreshing data by middle-clicking the icon or by clicking
on the appropriate context menu entry does not clear the cache.
However, data that has been downloaded will always overwrite any
existing data.

---

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papaneuf

Member

Registered: 2015-02-11

Posts: 2

Re: [Solved] Panel Weather

ToZ!

Thank you so much for taking the time to solve the mystery! Well done!