[Xastir] Xastir remote TNC solution

[William McKeehan]

In my setup, I am using an old computer configured with a soundmodem (this box
runs debian).

I have the aprs port setup in my axports file:
  aprs    KI4HDU  9600    255     2       SOUNDMODEM

I have javaprssrvr setup to talk to ax25:
  TNCModule=javAPRSDigi
  digiTNCInterface=ax25Interface
  ax25TNCPortName=aprs

I also have digi_ned talking to ax25
  digi_ned -p aprs
(notice the same port name was used).

Before I startup javaprssrvr and digi_ned, I start ax25d (/usr/sbin/ax25d);
before I startup ax25d, I start my low level interfaces.
For the aprs port defined above:  /usr/sbin/sounmodem -M -s

Now, I run Xastir on a second computer. In the past I've just connected Xastir
to the javaprssrvr instance on the other computer. This worked, but was far
from optimal. I've looked at a few options to let Xastir talk to the
soundmodem directly but until this week had not found a good solution.

Thanks to Bill Vodall, WA7NWP, I began looking at a couple of pieces of
software, specifically, net2kiss and remserial.

Today I added net2kiss on the old computer which talks to ax.25 and creates a
virtual serial port; the virtual serial port looks like a kiss TNC to anything
that attaches.

Then I added the remserial to redirect that virtual serial port to another
machine. I connected Xastir to another virtual serial port created by
remserial.

So here's my setup.

Box 1 (old computer)
Soundmodem/AX.25
net2kiss - net2kiss -a -i ax0 -s /tmp/net2kisslink &
remserial - remserial -d -p 23000 -s "9600 raw" /tmp/net2kisslink &

Box 2 (client computer)
remserial - remserial -d -r 192.168.1.201 -p 23000 -l /dev/remserial1 /dev/ptmx &
Xastir - Serial KISS TNC connected to /dev/remserial1

This was amazingly simple to setup and seems to work well. Posted here in case
someone else is in a similar situation where their TNC is on a box other than
their Xastir.

I also have Xastir running under cygwin and would like to connect it to the
same TNC...I was not able to compile remserial on my windows box, so I'm
searching for other potential solutions there.

Related links:
http://nwp.ampr2.net/jnos/RemoteSerial
http://lpccomp.bc.ca/remserial/

73
William McKeehn
KI4HDU