[Xastir] Fwd: help

[Tom Russo]

On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 06:37:46PM -0500, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <lee.bengston at gmail.com> flavor, containing:
> Based on Tom's input that Xastir will gate messages from IS to RF,
> which is the desired behavior, I'm not sure why in previous posts the
> developers seem to discourage using Xastir as an IGate.  Below is a
> quote from that message.
> 
>   > INET->RF only gates to RF messages that are directed from a station heard
>   > by your igate only on APRS-IS to a station that your igate has heard on RF.

There are a couple of reasons that I no longer use Xastir for my igates.

  -- Does not transmit a "courtesy posit" along with a gated message.
     javAPRSSrvr does this --- when it gates a message from a station that
     has not been heard on RF to one that has, it also gates the most recent
     posit for that station, so you get your sending station on the map.
  -- The "nws-stations.txt" trick does not quite offer the full 
     flexibility I want.  At some point, I found that it wasn't even gating
     reliably the stations I had listed there, and I never could figure out
     why not (it wasn't a matter of interface settings, because it gated
     normal messages Just Fine).
  -- Xastir requires a GUI display.  javAPRSSrvr will run on my headless 
     Sheevaplug, and I can use that plug computer as the 24/7 APRS hub in the 
     shack (it shares its AX25 port across my LAN with ldsped, where other 
     computers run Xastir and APRSISCE/32).  My second igate (KM5VY-11), run 
     for a local club, runs on an ancient panasonic "toughbook" laptop that is 
     such a dog it can barely run an X server, and given that it's in a locked 
     room at a repeater site, an X-based solution makes no sense.

Xastir is great as an APRS client, and certainly can do better at igating than 
some of the stuff that's out there, but if all you want is an IGate there are 
better choices, especially for remote igate sites.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236        http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
 "One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide
 stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork." - Edward Abbey