[Xastir] AX 25 networking kernel warnings --- heads up all AX.25 users Re: Error in Syslog

[David Ranch]

Hey Tom, Everyone,

> I would appreciate it if *everyone* on the list who uses AX.25 networking
> routinely would test out this code --- it impacts *everyone* who uses AX.25
> networking in Xastir.

The Ax.25 stack in the Linux kernel is falling apart and there have been 
various discussions about this on the UROnode list and elsewhere.  The 
situation is that other (non-AX25) Linux kernel developers have been 
making changes, updates, deprecations, etc. to keep up with general 
kernel modernization efforts but without testing any of the changes on 
the AX.25 side of things.  It seems that if it compiles, it must be 
working.  Not true!  For various classic packet uses, 3.17.x was the 
last version before things started getting really broken.

Most of these have been reported to the "AX25 kernel maintainers" but 
those people say they *aren't* the maintainers on the kernel side.. just 
the userland side.  Putting it another way, we don't have any Linux 
AX.25 maintainers anymore!  Unless we can find some folk who have the 
technical chops to fix some of these issues (I wish I did), I imagine 
the native AX.25 stack in Linux will become toxic and ultimately 
removed.  If there is anyone who is willing to give this a try, I can 
connect you with a few other people who have a consolidated list of 
issues and some possible fixes.  Some of those fixes were previously 
rejected from the kernel maintainers for various reasons without 
offering solutions.

--David
KI6ZHD