Naaulu Live

Real-time rainfall estimation pipeline for countries. Runs in a Podman container, generates 5-minute, hourly, and daily rainfall plots, and deploys them to a web server.

Architecture

Host cron → podman run (ephemeral container)
  ├── estimate  (*/5 min)  → 5-min rainfall from radar
  ├── combine   (hourly/daily) → hourly/daily accumulations
  ├── plot      (*/5 min + hourly + daily) → PNG maps
  └── deploy    (every run) → SFTP to naaulu-org

Web viewer (index.html)
  └── Select country/duration → view latest image → arrow key navigation

Prerequisites

• A Debian 13 (Trixie) server
• SFTP credentials for the hosting server

Install

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y podman
sudo loginctl enable-linger $(whoami)
podman volume create naaulu-archive-bel
podman volume create naaulu-data-bel
podman pull git.naaulu.org/naaulu/naaulu-live:latest

Note: loginctl enable-linger is required so Podman can access the container runtime directory from cron jobs. Without it, cron runs without your user session and the storage paths are not available.

Run

Test a one-off run:

podman run --rm --name naaulu-bel \
  -v naaulu-archive-bel:/root/.cache/naaulu \
  -v naaulu-data-bel:/root/.local/share/naaulu \
  -e WEB_USER=<sftp-username> \
  -e WEB_HOST=<sftp-host> \
  -e WEB_PASS=<sftp-password> \
  -e NAAULU_COUNTRY=bel \
  -e NAAULU_NETWORK=bel \
  git.naaulu.org/naaulu/naaulu-live:latest /opt/naaulu-live/run.sh

Add a cron job (crontab -e):

*/5 * * * * podman run --rm --name naaulu-bel -v naaulu-archive-bel:/root/.cache/naaulu -v naaulu-data-bel:/root/.local/share/naaulu -e WEB_USER=<sftp-username> -e WEB_HOST=<sftp-host> -e WEB_PASS=<sftp-password> -e NAAULU_COUNTRY=bel -e NAAULU_NETWORK=bel git.naaulu.org/naaulu/naaulu-live:latest /opt/naaulu-live/run.sh >> ~/.local/share/naaulu-live.log 2>&1

Configuration

Variable	Default	Description
NAAULU_COUNTRY	est	Country code
NAAULU_NETWORK	est	Gauge network for plot overlay
NAAULU_PRODUCT	dove	Estimation method
NAAULU_RESOLUTION_BASE	1km	5-min resolution
NAAULU_RESOLUTION_COMBINED	2km	Hourly/daily resolution
NAAULU_LOG_LEVEL	info	Log verbosity
WEB_USER	(required)	SFTP username
WEB_HOST	(required)	SFTP host
WEB_PASS	(required)	SFTP password, passed via -e
REMOTE_DIR	www	Remote SFTP directory
RETENTION_5MIN_HOURS	3	Hours to keep 5-min images
RETENTION_HOURLY_DAYS	1	Days to keep hourly images
RETENTION_DAILY_DAYS	20	Days to keep daily images

Troubleshooting

tail -50 ~/.local/share/naaulu-live.log

License

This project is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0).