Linux nodes instead of BPQ32 nodes in the LAN

Miroslav Skoric
2011-07-06T19:08:22Z

Hi all!

I have been experimenting with 3 computers as AX.25 nodes in a home LAN,
as follows:

_____________ ___________________ __________________
VHF |MS DOS 5 comp| |MS Windows XP comp| |MS Windows XP comp|
TRX--TNC2--| BPQ 4.09d | -- | BPQ32 4.10f |--| BPQ32 4.10f |
ant ------------- ------------------ ------------------

(1) (2) (3)

In the situation above all 3 nodes talk to each other without problems.
What I wanted to do was to replace comps (2) and (3) with Linux nodes.
Both of those comps are dual-boot: (2) is Debian 6.0.1a, and (3) is
Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS.

Ok so I installed libax, ax25tools and ax25apps, as well as node on both
(2) and (3) by using Synaptic but am not able to activate the nodes
properly. In fact, I have edited the main files in /etc/ax25 on both
machines according to the ancient AX.25-howto and then tried the
following commands in Ubuntu terminal (in Debian root terminal of course
without 'sudo'):

sudo modprobe bpqether (did not complain anything)
sudo /sbin/ifconfig bpq0 hw ax25 yt7mpb-15 up (did not complain either)
sudo ifconfig responded with:
bpq0 Link encap:AMPR AX.25 HWaddr YT7MPB-15
UP RUNNING MTU:256 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:25:22:3d:9f:22
inet addr:192.168.0.4 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::225:22ff:fe3d:9f22/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:116 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:125 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:1
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:12824 (12.8 KB) TX bytes:11360 (11.3 KB)
Interrupt:27

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:15 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:15 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:957 (957.0 B) TX bytes:957 (957.0 B)

sudo modprobe netrom (did not complain)
sudo nrattach netrom responded with:
NET/ROM port netrom bound to device nr0
sudo nrattach netnod responded with:
NET/ROM port netnod bound to device nr1
sudo ax25d responded with:
axconfig: port bpq0 not active
ax25d: no AX.25 port data configured
sudo netromd
axconfig: port bpq0 not active
netromd: no AX.25 ports defined

I suppose that I mis-configured and/or forgotten some important steps
and would like to contact somebody with more experience with Linux nodes
running over Ethernet. Btw, at the moment I do not plan to run any RF
ports on those Linux machines - just to have netrom nodes on them so
that those nodes should be able to talk with the dos computer (1), and
probably later I will add LinFBB to replace the WinFBB's that run over
BPQ32 nodes when (2) and (3) are booted as Win XP.

Regards,

Misko YT7MPB