On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 5:11 PM, Alan Crosswell <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 5:06 PM, Lee Bengston <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Fyi, there's a PSR article on DIXPRS,which is the IGate software I >> like to run using Linux AX25 networking and thus share the TNC/Radio >> with Xastir and other applications. >> >> http://www.tapr.org/psr/psr119.pdf - (page 16) >> --- <snip> --- > Lee, > > Just curious, how's this compare to aprsd? > > 73 de Alan N2YGK Alan, Below is a message from back in April regarding my experience with aprsd. From purely an IGate perspective, I much prefer DIXPRS (or APRX) over aprsd because I could not get my instance of aprsd to gate a message from IS to RF. By the way, I can add DIXPRS to the list of applications that has passed my little Tx IGate test where I send a message from either my phone or an internet-only APRS client to either my THD7A HT or my netbook that is connected only to RF in the car. One thing I did not mention previously is that DIXPRS does not run natively as a daemon, but I was able daemonize it using the software at the following location: http://software.clapper.org/daemonize/ I am not running DIXPRS on a headless machine, however, so I prefer to run it in an open terminal, i.e. not as a daemon, in my current setup. Regards, Lee - K5DAT ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Lee Bengston <[email protected]> Date: Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 12:11 AM Subject: revisiting aprsd To: Xastir - APRS client software discussion <[email protected]> Off and on over the past few years there have been inquiries on this list about both Igating and digipeating using Xastir, and generally the response has been something to this effect: "Xastir can do some of that, but we recommend using something else that specializes in that function, and that fits better anyway with the Linux philosophy of using different building blocks as opposed to one monolithic piece of software". In some of those conversations aprsd was brought up, and usually someone chimed in with something like "I don't think you want to use that". The main problem that's been brought up with aprsd is a mangling of mic-e packets evidently due to stripping unprintable characters when Igating from RF to Internet. Another issue that's been discussed is that some versions don't support Linux ax25 sockets. After researching a somewhat confusing array of documentation, I was able to determine the following: - There is evidence in the changelog for the current Debian/Ubuntu binary package that the mic-e issue is fixed. - There some evidence in the docs for both the Debian/Ubuntu version and the sourceforge version that ax25 sockets are supported. - There is no evidence in the changelog for the tarball available from sourceforge that the mic-e issue is fixed. - Some of the documentation submitted with the packages above along with other docs indicate that aprsd follows the current rules for Igating, including gating messages from IS to RF and even sending the 'courtesy posit' of the sender when applicable. Based on the above, I decided to try the current aprsd binary in the repositories for Debian Squeeze. It is version 2.2.5-13-5.1 according to the changelog. What I found in the trial was as follows: 1) It does support ax25 networking. 2) It does seem to gate from RF to IS properly 3) However, I was disappointed to find that it did not gate a message originated from my phone (Internet) to my D7A on RF. Xastir, APRSIS32, and aprx have all passed that test. I suppose that given I am new to aprsd, perhaps I missed something in the configuration that is preventing the gating of messages from IS to RF. I also noticed that if I enabled beaconing in aprsd toward the internet, the raw packets showing up on Findu.com and aprs.fi looked very strange. I should have copied one while they were still there, but they are gone now. Beaconing on RF looked normal. So in conclusion I can see why many people 'in the know' have landed on javAPRSIGate as the software of choice when the OS is Linux. It can share a TNC with other applications like Xastir via AX25 networking, and it supports 'all the rules'. The aprx application is pretty good, but to the best of my knowledge it does not support the courtesy posit when gating messages from IS to RF. That's probably not that big of a deal, but it would be nice if it did. I also conclude that Xastir should beef up it's Igating functionality simply because there are so few Linux apps that actually support it completely. :-) Lee - K5DAT _______________________________________________ Xastir mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
