[Dxspider-support] adding an RF connection

[Bob Nielsen]

On Sep 21, 2007, at 1:33 PM, Alan D. Snyder wrote:

> Hi
>
> We are migrating a Windows/AGW node to Linux  and are having  
> trouble with the RF side.  Telnet works great.
>
> The three hour job of adding AX.25 to the kernel took about  
> thirty.  Not a shock, I guess, but we now have a nice script for  
> rolling a decent kernel on an i686 box with Fedora 7.   Happy to  
> share if interest.

Many distros have stock kernels with the necessary modules included.   
I haven't had to compile a kernel in several years.

>
> This note is really about everything else to make an RF link work.
>
> My concept is to use 'kermit' for terminal control, i.e. build a  
> text file that serves as an initialization script for the TNC and  
> takes it to where it needs to be just prior to putting it into KISS  
> mode.   Haven't used kermit in years so wondering if you current  
> guys can suggest an alternative to kermit.  Perhaps someone can  
> provide a half decent gereric tnc command script (if such a thing  
> is possible)?

I switched to using a KISS-only EPROM (available from TAPR and  
elsewhere) several years ago, but for TNC-2 clones you basically just  
need to send:

KISS ON
RESTART

>
> Then was hoping that someone could point me to the latest/greatest  
> tutorial of how to configure the needed files in /etc/ax25  ---  
> along with explanation of what the parameters mean.  A "cook-book"  
> probably won't help so a bit of understanding would be most  
> appreciated.  When I read the on-line spider documentation, some of  
> the URL's referenced aren't there and I didn't want to guess which  
> of the many alternatives were definitive.
>

The AX25-HOWTO at <http://tldp.org/HOWTO/AX25-HOWTO/> is a bit  
outdated, but is the definitive document and is still pretty  
relevant.  The installation_en.txt file which comes with DX Spider  
condenses the needed parts down to something more manageable, however.

73, Bob N7XY