[Xastir] how do I?

[Curt Mills, WE7U]

On Mon, 14 Jul 2003 wes at johnston.net wrote:

> We've been talking in this area about running remote TNCs for receiving
> packets, tunneling them thru the net to a WIDE we're about to install.  AGWPE
> first came to mind... to have the WIDE seek out a connection with two or more
> TNCs in the area and just use them as remote ears.  They would not transmit.
> The wide node would run xastir.
>
> Is there a better way to do this?  A way which would not depend on a windows
> box?

How about running aprsd on some Linux/Unix minimum box.  I'd suggest
perhaps the ZipSlack stuff out of Slackware, which is small enough
to fit on a 100mb zip disk (but doesn't have to be installed on that
media).

Install zipslack on a small hard drive, install aprsd, and get
networking up and running.

You could perhaps install a switch in the serial cable going to the
TNC so that the TXD line is disconnected.  That way you could assure
that they wouldn't transmit.  I'd suggest going with KISS-mode
TNC's, perhaps with just KISS ROM's in them instead of the normal
ROM's.  If you don't go KISS, you might have to leave the TXD line
connected through so that aprsd can set up the TNC properly.

Oh wait, unless you burn defaults for the KISS parameters into the
ROM that work well for you, you'll need the AX.25 stuff to set up
the proper KISS parameters by talking to the TNC, so you still need
TXD connected through in that case as well.

If you got real creative, the entire Linux/aprsd stuff could be put
onto a bootable CDROM, and the hard-drive and floppy ommitted from
the box altogether.  If you had a touch-tone decoder hooked to a
relay on that channel, you could even remotely power-cycle the box
in order to get it to reboot off of CD again.

Since the source to aprsd is readily available, you should be able
to tweak it to send config stuff across to the TNC, but then to not
send any packets to it.  Just receive only.  Might be a setup
parameter or command-line switch to do that as well.

-- 
Curt Mills, WE7U                    hacker_NO_SPAM_ at tc.fluke.com
Senior Methods Engineer/SysAdmin
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