[Xastir] Installing Xastir on Mint

[wa7skg]

I wondered about the chmod command. I have changed it back to its 
previous setting. The user is me for both Xastir and minicom, and I 
belong to the 'dialout' group. I would have thought that if minicom 
could access the serial port, then Xastir should also.

I agree that making it world readable/writeable is not a good plan, 
however, that is what got it working. I would love to change that, I 
just don't know what to change.

Michael WA7SKG


Tom Russo wrote on 10/24/19 11:32 AM:
> 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).
>>>
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>