[Xastir] Installing Xastir on Mint

[Tom Russo]

On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 10:51:03AM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <wa7skg at wa7skg.com> flavor, containing:
> Progress is definitely being made. Using the 
> https://xastir.org/index.php/HowTo:Debian_Stretch_or_Jessie went through 
> smoothly.
> 
> My next problem was getting the interface to work. I could access my TNC 
> through minicom without difficulty, however Xastir could not access it. 
> I did the "chmod 4755 /usr/local/bin/xastir" I found recommended in 
> several places with no joy. Finally, in desperation, I did "chmod 777 
> /dev/ttyS0" and Xastir successfully connected to the TNC and I am 
> displaying data. That probably is not the best option, but it is all I 
> could get to work for now.

The best bet is to add your user ID to whatever group owns the /dev/ttyS0
device (probably "dialer" or something like that).

Making the device world readable and writable is not the safest bet.

Changing Xastir to 4755 only helps with accessing the AX.25 kernel networking
stuff and wouldn't help with accessing regular serial ports.  If you're testing
your tnc in minicom you're probably not using AX.25.  

In fact, making Xastir "suid root" is also not the safest approach,
although Xastir is pretty careful do drop its permissions except when it needs
them.  But that's another story (some distros actually handle this in their
xastir and ax25 packages by having an ax25 group that has permission to access
the ax25 interfaces, and making Xastir sgid to that group.  Again, that's
another story).
 
> Tom Russo wrote on 10/24/19 8:15 AM:
> > On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 08:59:41AM -0600, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <russo at bogodyn.org> flavor, containing:
> >> On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 08:57:17AM -0600, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <russo at bogodyn.org> flavor, containing:
> >>>> Can somebody please point me in the right direction for current
> >>>> information on installing Xastir on a Mint system?
> >>>
> >>> Generally speaking, if you look at something like the Ubuntu instructions
> >>> and try to find packages with the same base name as the ones listed (modulo
> >>> version numbers which are very likely outdated), you should be on the right
> >>> path.
> >>
> >> Jason's suggestion of looking at Debian's instructions is a good one, since
> >> Mint is a Debian variant.
> >>
> >> Ignore all reference to GDAL.  Xastir no longer uses it and that section of
> >> that wiki guide didn't get updated.
> > 
> > Well, it is now.  Just went through this one page and cleaned it up.  I also
> > removed a bunch of links to OS versions that are ridiculously old (2009 and
> > thereabouts) and even one that appears no longer to exist (mepis).
> > 
> _______________________________________________
> Xastir mailing list
> Xastir at lists.xastir.org
> http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY
Tijeras, NM  

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