[Dxspider-support] Distro Selection

[Bob Nielsen]

On Mon, Sep 13, 2004 at 06:26:11PM -0400, Steven H Sawyers (na0ia) wrote:
> I have been following this mailing list for a year before attempting to put 
> dxspider on one of my machines. I am a Linux newbie and only an occasional 
> Unix user. I have done a couple of Redhat installs about 3 years ago, and 
> played around but nothing serious.
> 
> I would like to replace the Win2K on a 133 MHz Pentium I am running as a 
> internet portal to RF link for the local dxpacket cluster group. I am using 
> BPQ to link to a cluster machine running AK1A. I have been running this for 
> over 2 years and have kept the Win2K up for up to 9 months at a time, but 
> it is just a portal and I would like to offer some other options which I 
> see in dxspider.
> 
> I am interested in setting up a dedicated machine for dxspider. I have 
> several 600 MHz machines that would work for hardware and hot backup, but 
> we have tried several times to get something going and always run into 
> something on the AX-25, or spider that does not work. We have tried old 
> RedHat versions, Knoppix, Debian, and looked at others, but never got 
> anything to be fully functional.
> 
> I have corresponded with some on the list about Linux Distros for dxspider. 
> One of the big problems is not having the right packages or a dedicated 
> HOWTO to set up Linux and dxspider on a blank hard drive.
> 
> Dirk's comments prompt me to ask for input from the masters.
> 
> Where do I begin and what do I need?
> 
> I am inclined towards fedora, but don't really care. I would like to do 
> something everyone else is doing so I can ask stupid questions and get good 
> answers. I would like to get this running sometime this winter.
> 

You should be able to use just about any distribution, but some of them 
do not come with ax25, mkiss, etc., included in their kernels.  With
Debian, for instance, you should not stick with the installation kernel, 
but install one of the downloadable kernel packages, which do include 
the necessary modules.  I believe a few of the other distros also have 
kernels with these included.  Otherwise, you will need to compile your 
own kernel (in the past, everyone had to do this so it is not really a 
big deal).  

In some distributions (such as Debian), you can get the perl modules
pre-compiled as packages, but with others you will need to get the CPAN
files and configure them.

The spider installation manual is pretty complete about what you need to
do, much better than the AX25-HOWTO.  

73,
Bob, N7XY