Document that CALLING_AE_TITLE / RECEIVER_AE_TITLE must also be whitelisted in the Orthanc test server configs

[medihack]

Problem

The bundled Orthanc test servers only accept DIMSE requests from the AE title ADIT1DEV, which is the example.env default:

"DicomModalities": {
  "ORTHANC2": ["ORTHANC2", "orthanc2", 7502],
  "ADIT": ["ADIT1DEV", "receiver", 11112]
}

Every real deployment changes CALLING_AE_TITLE (the hospital PACS has to know ADIT's AE title). Nothing in example.env or the admin guide says that orthanc/orthanc1.json and orthanc/orthanc2.json must follow, so the Orthanc test servers silently stop working in such a deployment:

• Orthanc accepts the association (C-ECHO works, the admin proxy to the Orthanc UI works) but aborts every C-FIND / C-GET / C-MOVE from the unknown AE title.
• In ADIT this surfaces as RetriableDicomError("Connection timed out, was aborted or received invalid response.") after ~80 s of retries (Selective Transfer, DICOMweb API, adit-client). That reads like a network problem and sends people debugging Docker networking.
• The real cause is only visible in the Orthanc log:

  DICOM authorization rejected for AET ADIT1 on IP ...: This AET is not listed in configuration option "DicomModalities"
  Rejected Find request from remote DICOM modality with AET "ADIT1" and hostname "..."
  

Reproduced with jodogne/orthanc-plugins:1.13.0 and the config from this repo:

Calling AE title	Result
ADIT1DEV	association established, C-FIND 0x0000
ADIT1	association established, C-FIND immediately aborted (empty status)

The same coupling exists for RECEIVER_AE_TITLE: the ADIT entry doubles as the C-MOVE destination, so a changed receiver AE title breaks C-MOVE from the test servers as well.

On a Swarm deployment fixing it is not just an edit: the JSON files are Swarm configs, which are immutable, so the two Orthanc services and their configs have to be removed and the stack redeployed.

Suggestion

At minimum, a hint in the docs:

• In example.env next to CALLING_AE_TITLE / RECEIVER_AE_TITLE: "The Orthanc test servers only accept the AE titles listed in orthanc/orthanc*.json (DicomModalities). Update them when you change these values."
• In the admin guide (Environment Variables / DICOM section), including how to apply it on Swarm (remove <stack>_orthanc1/_orthanc2 services and their *_config objects, then stack-deploy).

Alternatives that would remove the trap entirely

1. Derive the Orthanc config from .env. Render orthanc*.json from a template in cli compose-up / cli stack-deploy, substituting CALLING_AE_TITLE and RECEIVER_AE_TITLE. Or switch the test servers to the orthancteam/orthanc image, which supports configuration through environment variables (ORTHANC__DICOM_MODALITIES=...), so the compose file can inject ${CALLING_AE_TITLE} directly.
2. Relax the test servers. They are test-only, so "DicomAlwaysAllowFind": true, "DicomAlwaysAllowGet": true, "DicomAlwaysAllowMove": true, "DicomAlwaysAllowStore": true would accept any calling AE title. The DicomModalities entry would then only matter as C-MOVE destination (host/port of the receiver), keyed by RECEIVER_AE_TITLE.
3. Preflight check in the CLI, like the existing check for quoted .env values: warn in compose-up / stack-deploy when CALLING_AE_TITLE or RECEIVER_AE_TITLE does not appear in orthanc/orthanc*.json.
4. Better error message. In DimseConnector.send_c_find (and the retrieve/store counterparts), an empty status right after a successful association almost always means the peer refused the calling AE title. Adding a hint such as "the DICOM server may not accept the calling AE title settings.CALLING_AE_TITLE; check its modality configuration" would have pointed straight at the cause.

Workaround without redeploying

Orthanc accepts new modalities at runtime via its REST API, e.g. from the web container:

PUT http://orthanc1.local:6501/modalities/ADITPROD  {"AET": "ADIT1", "Host": "receiver", "Port": 11112}
PUT http://orthanc2.local:6502/modalities/ADITPROD  {"AET": "ADIT1", "Host": "receiver", "Port": 11112}

This takes effect immediately but is lost on the next Orthanc restart, because DicomModalitiesInDatabase is left at its default false.