[Xastir] KISS, Xastir and processing data

[Dean Groe]

John, I have been meaning to send you an E-mail regarding this, but I just had not made the time yet.  
I noticed the corrupted frames here locally and determined late last week that they were coming from your station.  
I am one of the guys involved in the daily care and feeding of the local W4MCO-* DigiNed Digipeaters in the Orlando area, and I also have a Xastir based I-Gate / Wx Station here at the house, so I was initially concerned that maybe one of these systems was tossing bad data out there.  That is what led me to start investigating what the source was of the problem was, and ultimately how I determined that it was coming from your station.  

I will try to keep an eye on things here, time permitting, and hopefully we will see fewer corrupted frames here locally now that Passall is off. 

 

Dean  KD4TWJ 


Message: 7
>Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2011 22:08:09 -0400
>From: John Wilson <kc4lzn at gmail.com>
>To: russo at bogodyn.org,    Xastir - APRS client software discussion
>    <xastir at lists.xastir.org>
>Subject: Re: [Xastir] KISS, Xastir and processing data
>Message-ID: <1318990089.1964.85.camel at john-hpmini>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
>On Tue, 2011-10-18 at 14:52 -0600, Tom Russo wrote:
>
>
>> Pending more info, I'd suspect that Xastir is probably not doing the munging 
>> of data that you're seeing.  It is more likely an issue between your machine 
>> and the TNC, or in the TNC itself.  Check cabling, baud rates, etc.  That would 
>> be my first guess as to where it's going wrong, unless you can watch your 
>> "View->Incoming Data" and see that Xastir is in fact putting the wrong data 
>> out to the TNC or sending something different to APRS-IS than it is receiving
>> from the TNC.
>> 
>> What is your TNC?  How are you cabling it?  What speed is the serial port
>> to your TNC running?  
>
>
>As stated in my initial email, the TNC is a PK232 at 4800 baud and
>chokes were put on the ins and outs between the computer, radio and TNC
>and then tested again for about six hours only to see the same problem
>being sent to the server.
>
>I changed the PASSALL from on to off and will see if that changes
>anything in the next day or so...
>
>
>> Is there any common digi that these corrupted 
>> stations are going through before you hear them and gate them?  Are there
>> other Igates nearby who are getting the same station without corruption?
>> Having another set of ears would probably be very beneficial in diagnosing
>> this.
>
>I agree. I will contact a station nearby and follow up with that in a
>couple of days. I will also investigate logging with my station and look
>for anomalies.
>
>
>> 
>> I have run KISS with Xastir and other software on Linux, and never seen 
>> this sort of data scrambling.  So whatever your problem is, it's not a
>> full-blown, generic bug with KISS.  There could be some limited issue with
>> your set-up, but it's not one we've heard of before.
>> 
>
>Gomenasai, Mi dispiaci, (full bow), my apologies...did not push the
>fault with KISS and/or Xastir. Just wanted to know if anyone else had
>experienced anything like this. I did what I could with my bag of
>knowledge, hence I threw it out to the group. I respect the sweat, time
>and efforts it has taken with the group to put Xastir where it is now. I
>hope my problem helps others that may experience the same thing.
>
>
>> There was some discussion recently here where a user was seeing his objects
>> being scrambled with random characters garbled, too, and that he would start
>> beaconing these scrambled objects as well as his intended objects. I don't 
>> recall what the resolution of that was.  
>> 
>> My guess then was that a local digi was transmitting corrupted data (possibly 
>> due to a PASSALL setting) and that his Xastir station was adopting the 
>> corrupted objects (since it still  had his "from" call in it), and then 
>> retransmitting them on schedule.  But I don't thing we ever heard back from 
>> him with a resolution or more data.  This doesn't sound like the same thing 
>> that you're seing, though.
>> 
>
>Whatever I find with this, I will provide that for others to reference
>for their notebooks. I don't like being the last one with the
>information. Where's the fun in that?
>
>I've got a lot to digest, give me a couple of days and I will reply with
>my results.
>
>73 John
>
>------------------------------
>
>