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---
title: "Radar follow-up — TLS, four cities, cross-page nav"
date-created: "2026-06-10"
type: "memoir"
status: "complete"
author:
- "st33v"
- "claude-opus-4-7"
model:
- "claude-opus-4-7"
tldr: "Short follow-up to the radar rollout the day before. Fixed an https→f3rr3t.com cert fall-through with certbot, added Canberra and Cairns, gave each radar page a nav strip with the others plus a Synoptic link, made the image fill mobile width without upscaling on desktop, and added a Radars button on the synoptic page."
chat-url: "https://claude.ai/chat/..."
session-kind: "infrastructure"
side-quests: 0
reader-targets:
- "st33v"
- "claude-code"
related:
entities:
- "cremonde"
- "pestrel.com"
concepts: []
songs: []
tags:
- "bom"
- "radar"
- "nginx"
- "tls"
- "css"
provenance:
- "doc/bom-radar-rollout.md (previous day's memoir)"
- "doc/bom-radar-spec.md (v0.1)"
---
# Radar follow-up — TLS, four cities, cross-page nav
## TL;DR
The radar rollout left a few rough edges: HTTPS-curious browsers got bounced to f3rr3t.com because radar.pestrel.com had no TLS and no 443 default_server; the image was small on phones; only two radars; no easy way to move between them or back to the synoptic. Same-day fixes for all of them.
## Context
Continuing from `bom-radar-rollout.md` (2026-06-09). Sydney and Brisbane were live and looping; the next morning st33v reported the cert weirdness and asked for two more radars (IDR403 Canberra, IDR193 Cairns), mobile width, and inter-page navigation including a "Radars" button on the synoptic chart.
## What was done
### The HTTPS fall-through
Diagnosis was quick once `/etc/nginx/conf.d/` was inspected: `radar.conf` only listened on port 80, and no server block on port 443 was marked `default_server`. So Chrome/Firefox's HTTPS-first upgrade for `radar.pestrel.com` hit 443 and nginx fell through to the alphabetically-first 443 block — `f3rr3t.conf`. User saw f3rr3t.com's cert + content, served from the same cremonde host.
Fix: `sudo certbot --nginx -d radar.pestrel.com`, choosing redirect option 2. Pulled the resulting `radar.conf` back into the repo so the in-tree nginx config matches production.
### Four cities
Trivial extension thanks to the spec's product-code parameterisation: two more `ExecStart=-/opt/radar/radarFetch.sh IDRxxx` lines in `radar.service` and `radar-retry.service`, two more pages, two more dirs in setup.sh. No script changes.
### Mobile sizing
Original CSS used `img { max-width: 100%; max-height: 100vh; }`. `max-width` only constrains — doesn't expand — so on a 390px-wide phone the 512x512 BOM image stayed at 512 native and either overflowed or hit max-width and shrunk. Either way, not "filling width". Switched to:
```css
img { width: 100%; max-width: 512px; max-height: 100%; height: auto; }
```
`width: 100%` makes it fill the container; `max-width: 512px` caps it at native resolution so desktop never upscales. Confirmed working full-width on phone.
### Cross-page nav
Layout shifted from "single-img full-bleed" to column flex: top `<nav>` strip with five buttons (four radars + Synoptic), `<main>` fills below and centres the image. Current page's button gets `.current` styling (white text, brighter border). All four per-radar pages share the same template, varying only the active class and image src — duplicated rather than templated because there's no build step and four files isn't worth introducing one for.
### Radars button on synoptic
Fixed-position link, left edge, `top: 16.6%`, dark-translucent background, dashed-out left border for the "tab" look. Doesn't intrude on the chart; sits just above where the colour legend typically renders.
## Resolutions
- **TLS via certbot, not hand-rolled.** Matches the existing pestrel.com / f3rr3t.com pattern; certbot's renewal cron already runs.
- **Duplicated HTML over templating.** Four near-identical files is cheaper than introducing a build step or server-side includes.
- **`width: 100%; max-width: 512px`** as the canonical "fill to native, no upscale" idiom for these radar pages.
- **Keep the landing page** at `radar.pestrel.com/` even though every per-radar page now has full nav. It's a clean neutral entry point.
## Operational learnings
- **No `default_server` on a TLS port is a routing trap.** If you have any cert-bearing 443 server block on a host, every other domain you point at that host will silently land on the alphabetically-first one until you give it its own cert (or set a `default_server` that returns 444). The radar→f3rr3t bounce was nginx behaving correctly with an incomplete config, not a bug.
- **`max-width: 100%` is shrink-only.** To fill a container you need `width: 100%`. Combined with a `max-width: <native>` cap you get fill-without-upscale.
- **HTTPS-first browser behaviour bites quietly.** Chrome and Firefox now try HTTPS even when the user typed http://. Any plain-HTTP subdomain on a TLS-equipped host is one inscrutable redirect away from looking broken.
## Cheat sheet — when adding a future radar
Now five files to touch instead of four:
1. Add `ExecStart=-/opt/radar/radarFetch.sh IDRxxx` to `systemd/radar.service` and `radar-retry.service`.
2. Write `radar.<city>.html` (copy any existing one, swap apng filename, swap the `.current` class).
3. Add the new button to the nav block in every other `radar.<other>.html` (this scales O(n²) — consider a tiny build step if it hits six radars).
4. Add the new button to `radar.index.html`.
5. Add `install -d /srv/www/radar/<city>` and the html install line to `setup.sh`.
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