Packet BBSes on ax25d

Packet BBSes on ax25d

[Stuart Longland VK4MSL]

Hi all,

Well, I'm in the midst of setting up an experimental packet station.
Amongst other things, I've set up ax25d with Unode and uucico.

Those work fine.  I can "dial in" using ax25_call to the UUCP service to
exchange files, news and mail.  I can also call in to the node service.

I'm looking around for something that can act as a BBS to work with
software like Outpost PM (http://www.outpostpm.org) so we can evaluate
it.

Among the packet BBSes it talks to is F6FBB BBS.  Well, I managed to
find sources, compile those, install them.

Then comes the fun bit of configuring.  So far as much as I get is a
telnet interface that tells me my callsign isn't registered no matter
what callsign I put in, and a AX.25 SSID that beautifully emulates
/bin/cat.

Utterly useless.  I've clearly done something wrong, but it's going to
require some digging to find out what.

So since ax25d works, I'm on the look-out for some BBS software that
could possibly work within ax25d.

I recognise this has been asked before: back in 1998.  I ask now
in case things have changed.

Has anyone seen such software?
Regards,
Stuart Longland

Re: Packet BBSes on ax25d

[Gordon JC Pearce]

On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 06:02:58PM +1000, Stuart Longland VK4MSL wrote:
> 
> So since ax25d works, I'm on the look-out for some BBS software that
> could possibly work within ax25d.
> 
> I recognise this has been asked before: back in 1998.  I ask now
> in case things have changed.
> 
> Has anyone seen such software?
> Regards,
> Stuart Longland

I was looking for some too, but couldn't find any and couldn't even get the old software working well enough to try and characterise how it worked.

Maybe it's time to start from scratch.  What should a packet BBS do?

-- 
Gordonjcp MM0YEQ

Re: Packet BBSes on ax25d

[Ray Wells]

On 23/03/14 19:08, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 06:02:58PM +1000, Stuart Longland VK4MSL wrote:
>> So since ax25d works, I'm on the look-out for some BBS software that
>> could possibly work within ax25d.
>>
>> I recognise this has been asked before: back in 1998.  I ask now
>> in case things have changed.
>>
>> Has anyone seen such software?
>> Regards,
>> Stuart Longland
> I was looking for some too, but couldn't find any and couldn't even get the old software working well enough to try and characterise how it worked.
>
> Maybe it's time to start from scratch.  What should a packet BBS do?
>
The xfbb mailing list is still active and might be a good place to ask 
questions. The maintainer of xfbb is Bernard, F6BVP, who frequents this 
list, but many xfbb users do not.

Reflecting back to when I ran xfbb the only configuration for ax25d was 
for Netrom calls to connect to fpacnode. xfbb did it's own listening for 
ax25 traffic via kernel ax25 ports.

Ray vk2tv

Re: Packet BBSes on ax25d

[Stuart Longland]

On Sun, 23 Mar 2014 21:13:22 +1100, Ray Wells wrote:

>> I was looking for some too, but couldn't find any and couldn't even 
>> get the old software working well enough to try and characterise how 
>> it worked.
>>
>> Maybe it's time to start from scratch.  What should a packet BBS do?
>
> The xfbb mailing list is still active and might be a good place to ask 
> questions. The maintainer of xfbb is Bernard, F6BVP, who frequents this 
> list, but many xfbb users do not.

Interesting, I've tried again but last time I submitted my email address 
via their subscribe form (Mailman) nothing arrived.

I've tried again, maybe this time it'll work.

> Reflecting back to when I ran xfbb the only configuration for ax25d was 
> for Netrom calls to connect to fpacnode. xfbb did it's own listening 
> for ax25 traffic via kernel ax25 ports.

That's what I figured, but could never get to work.  I could at best get 
it to answer, but then typing commands did absolutely nothing.

xfbbC -c, as per the instructions, just did a poor emulation of /bin/cat, 
and I couldn't figure out how to kill it.  Telnet would talk to me: it'd 
tell me my callsign wasn't registered.

(Not registered with whom I wonder, did it check the ACMA or its own 
password file?)

Re: Packet BBSes on ax25d

[Brian]

> Well, I'm in the midst of setting up an experimental packet station.
> Amongst other things, I've set up ax25d with Unode and uucico.

URONode, to which Unode was thought to be the predicessor there of, is
still very much in development. For the Raspberry Pi, and native Debian
(pc), I have an installer script at
ftp://ftp.n1uro.net/packet/uronode-pi.tgz available. This also includes
installing axMail-FAX.

-- 
73 de Brian Rogers - N1URO
email: <n1uro@n1uro.ampr.org>
Web: http://www.n1uro.net/
Ampr1: http://n1uro.ampr.org/
Ampr2: http://nos.n1uro.ampr.org
Linux Amateur Radio Services
axMail-Fax & URONode
AmprNet coordinator for:
Connecticut, Delaware, Maine,
Maryland, Massachusetts, 
New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, 
Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Re: Packet BBSes on ax25d

[Stuart Longland]

On Sun, 23 Mar 2014 08:40:21 -0400, Brian wrote:

>> Well, I'm in the midst of setting up an experimental packet station.
>> Amongst other things, I've set up ax25d with Unode and uucico.
> 
> URONode, to which Unode was thought to be the predicessor there of, is
> still very much in development.

Ahh okay... I grabbed Unode via git:

git://github.com/rthoelen/Unode.git

Not sure if that's the same software.

> For the Raspberry Pi, and native Debian
> (pc), I have an installer script at
> ftp://ftp.n1uro.net/packet/uronode-pi.tgz available. This also includes
> installing axMail-FAX.

No worries, I'll have a look.  Thanks.

Re: Packet BBSes on ax25d

[Brian]

Stuart;

On Mon, 2014-03-24 at 21:29 +1000, Stuart Longland wrote:
> Ahh okay... I grabbed Unode via git:
> 
> git://github.com/rthoelen/Unode.git
> 
> Not sure if that's the same software.

URONode is at: http://radio.linux.org.au
               http://freecode.com/projects/uronode
               ftp://ftp.n1uro.net/packet
not on git.
-- 
73 de Brian Rogers - N1URO
email: <n1uro@n1uro.ampr.org>
Web: http://www.n1uro.net/
Ampr1: http://n1uro.ampr.org/
Ampr2: http://nos.n1uro.ampr.org
Linux Amateur Radio Services
axMail-Fax & URONode
AmprNet coordinator for:
Connecticut, Delaware, Maine,
Maryland, Massachusetts, 
New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, 
Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Re: Packet BBSes on ax25d

[David Ranch]

Hello Stuart,

FBB does get some attention now and then but I wouldn't call it active 
development.  I would make sure you're running the newer version to void 
known issues:

     "xd705f" is the newest as of 6/2013 is the newest  - 
http://f6bvp.free.fr/logiciels/BBS-f6fbb/xd705f-src.tar.bz2


There is also Jnos which is probably under more development than FBB:

http://www.langelaar.net/projects/jnos2/about.html


Speaking of BBSes and Outpost, the local ARES/RACES team here in Silicon 
Valley (Santa Clara) have done a bang up job at building a multi-node 
packet system using JNOS supporting multi-port RF and Internet backups 
for full local messaging, BBS forwarding, and SMTP forwarding.  This 
system was co-developed by Jim Oberhofer KN6PE (Outpost developer) and 
many other local HAMs.  You can learn more about this system and maybe 
save yourself a LOT of time and headaches by contacting that group:

http://www.scc-ares-races.org/packet.html

That team has developed some installer scripts that take a lot of the 
pain out of configuring the JNOS, various forwarding rules, etc. to 
support tactical callsigns, backup relays, etc.

--David

Re: Packet BBSes on ax25d

[Stuart Longland]

On Sun, 23 Mar 2014 11:00:59 -0700, David Ranch wrote:

> There is also Jnos which is probably under more development than FBB:
> 
> http://www.langelaar.net/projects/jnos2/about.html
> 
> 
> Speaking of BBSes and Outpost, the local ARES/RACES team here in Silicon
> Valley (Santa Clara) have done a bang up job at building a multi-node
> packet system using JNOS supporting multi-port RF and Internet backups
> for full local messaging, BBS forwarding, and SMTP forwarding.  This
> system was co-developed by Jim Oberhofer KN6PE (Outpost developer) and
> many other local HAMs.  You can learn more about this system and maybe
> save yourself a LOT of time and headaches by contacting that group:

Ahh, that sounds like a good one to look at too.  Thanks for the heads up.