MATE weather applet on Ubuntu 18.04 not working. This is how to fix it.

The MATE weather applet on Ubuntu 18.04 was not working on my Ubuntu 18.04 installation. This is how I fixed it with a simple patch.

sudo sed -i 's|https://www.aviationweather.gov/adds/dataserver_current/httpparam|https://www.aviationweather.gov/adds/dataserver1_3/httpparam\x0\x0\x0\x0\x0|' /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmateweather.so.1

The patch above will fix the libmateweather library. Then the applet will work. Log out and back into the MATE desktop and the weather should start working again. This is a very easy fix.

Another way to get weather information is using the weather command line app, this returns good weather information.

4.4 Thu Jun 11 jason@Yog-Sothoth 0: $ weather "Wagga Airport, Australia"
Searching via name...
[using result Wagga Airport, Australia]
Current conditions at Wagga Airport, Australia (YSWG) 35-09S 147-27E 213M
Last updated Jun 10, 2020 - 09:00 PM EDT / 2020.06.11 0100 UTC
   Temperature: 53 F (12 C)
   Relative Humidity: 87%
   Wind: from the ENE (070 degrees) at 1 MPH (1 KT)
   Sky conditions: mostly clear

This very long command line I show on this page: https://securitronlinux.com/bejiitaswrath/get-weather-information-from-the-command-line-in-linux/, will print a nice table with a lot of very useful weather information on it.

Weather report: Wagga Wagga

    \  /       Partly cloudy
  _ /"".-.     12 °C          
    \_(   ).   ↙ 2 km/h       
    /(___(__)  10 km          
               0.0 mm         
                                                       ┌─────────────┐                                                       
┌──────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────┤  Thu 11 Jun ├───────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┐
│            Morning           │             Noon      └──────┬──────┘     Evening           │             Night            │
├──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│               Mist           │    \  /       Partly cloudy  │  _`/"".-.     Patchy rain po…│    \  /       Partly cloudy  │
│  _ - _ - _ -  10..11 °C      │  _ /"".-.     15 °C          │   ,\_(   ).   14 °C          │  _ /"".-.     10 °C          │
│   _ - _ - _   ↖ 4-6 km/h     │    \_(   ).   ↑ 6-8 km/h     │    /(___(__)  ↑ 8-15 km/h    │    \_(   ).   ↖ 6-12 km/h    │
│  _ - _ - _ -  7 km           │    /(___(__)  10 km          │      ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘  10 km          │    /(___(__)  10 km          │
│               0.0 mm | 0%    │               0.1 mm | 43%   │     ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘   0.0 mm | 21%   │               0.0 mm | 0%    │
└──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┘
                                                       ┌─────────────┐                                                       
┌──────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────┤  Fri 12 Jun ├───────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┐
│            Morning           │             Noon      └──────┬──────┘     Evening           │             Night            │
├──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│    \  /       Partly cloudy  │    \  /       Partly cloudy  │  _`/"".-.     Patchy rain po…│  _`/"".-.     Patchy rain po…│
│  _ /"".-.     8..10 °C       │  _ /"".-.     15 °C          │   ,\_(   ).   13 °C          │   ,\_(   ).   9..10 °C       │
│    \_(   ).   ← 12-16 km/h   │    \_(   ).   ↙ 13-15 km/h   │    /(___(__)  ↙ 7-13 km/h    │    /(___(__)  ← 9-19 km/h    │
│    /(___(__)  10 km          │    /(___(__)  10 km          │      ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘  10 km          │      ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘  10 km          │
│               0.0 mm | 0%    │               0.0 mm | 0%    │     ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘   0.1 mm | 67%   │     ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘   0.0 mm | 23%   │
└──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┘
                                                       ┌─────────────┐                                                       
┌──────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────┤  Sat 13 Jun ├───────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┐
│            Morning           │             Noon      └──────┬──────┘     Evening           │             Night            │
├──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│    \  /       Partly cloudy  │    \  /       Partly cloudy  │    \  /       Partly cloudy  │  _`/"".-.     Light rain sho…│
│  _ /"".-.     10..12 °C      │  _ /"".-.     15..16 °C      │  _ /"".-.     13 °C          │   ,\_(   ).   8..9 °C        │
│    \_(   ).   ↙ 14-19 km/h   │    \_(   ).   ↓ 18-21 km/h   │    \_(   ).   ↙ 11-20 km/h   │    /(___(__)  ↓ 15-29 km/h   │
│    /(___(__)  10 km          │    /(___(__)  10 km          │    /(___(__)  10 km          │      ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘  10 km          │
│               0.0 mm | 0%    │               0.0 mm | 0%    │               0.2 mm | 48%   │     ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘   1.8 mm | 81%   │
└──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┘
Ceantar: Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia [-35.115,147.3677778]

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So it is very easy to get information about your local weather on a Linux machine. This shows how flexible Linux is.