Tag: linux

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Winlink amateur radio email via paclink-unix on the Raspberry Pi

This is my second attempt to get a Winlink client (see here for a high level overview of Winlink) working on the Raspberry Pi. I first tried Pat /wl2k-go but it crashed (I created a ticket on github to followup), so for my second attempt I took a look at paclink-unix.

This site has a very detailed step by step install and config steps – follow exactly and pay attention to any errors 🙂 : http://bazaudi.com/plu/doku.php?id=plu:install_plu

A few additional notes:

  • wl2kax25 did not compile for me with the ax25 version that I previously had installed, possibly from apt-get from the default repos. Once I noticed this was missing I went back to the steps in the doc above and downloaded the ax25 packages from source, compiled, installed, rebuilt paclink and now I had the wl2kax25 app
  • Editing the /usr/local/etc/wl2k.conf file: the email= value is your local user email address on your local device, in this case on the Pi (e.g. for me, pi@localhost). This is used when wl2ktelnet/wl2kax25 retrieves incoming messages and it sends them to this user. If you see the wl2k app downloading messages but they’re not showing up in your inbox, check this.
  • Checking /var/log/mail.log is very useful to see what’s happening to your outbound and inbound messages!

The usage sequence is:

  • send outbound message with mail client, e.g. alpine
  • run wl2ktelnet to send over an internet connection if you have one
  • or, run wl2kax25 to send over your configured ax25 stack

The setup I got working is:

  • Raspberry Pi, with alpine (regular email client), direwolf (packet soundcard modem) and ax25 (to link paclink to direwolf)
  • Rigblaster Advantage USB soundcard, connected to an Icom 880

To send over vhf to my nearest Winlink gateway, I used:

  • wl2kax25 -a 1 -c KG6SJT-10 via KBERR

Where

-a 1 is port 1 defined in my /etc/ax25/axports

-c is the call of the Winlink gateway I’m connecting to, and I’m connecting via a packet digipeater, KBERR.

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mdm crashing after upgrade from Mint 17.3 to Mint 18 (and solution)

I recently upgraded my Mint 17.3 to Mint 18 using mintupgrade and following the instructions here, and unluckily had a powercut while in the middle of the upgrade. When I rebooted, some things had changed, like the logon screen had new background images, and the grub menu now said ‘Mint 18’, but as soon as I logged on, mdm crashed and there was a dialog saying that XWindows had crashed within seconds of starting. The popup dialog said to check ~/.xsession-errors, which contained this error:

initctl: Unable to connect to Upstart: Failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused
syndaemon: no process found

A quick Google found this question with the same error message, and following the suggestion to run ‘sudo apt-get install cinnamon’ fixed my issues. I restarted mdm with ‘sudo service mdm restart’, logged on and eveything was good.

I’m not entirely sure how much of the upgrade completed, so re-running ‘mintupgrade upgrade’ again still prompted for a number of packages to be deleted or upgraded. Completed the upgrade, rebooted, and now everything looks good.

This could have been a lot worse, but luckily was able to recover with no noticeable issues so far. And Mint 18 looks great! (I like the new window animations!)

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Installing kernel headers for Oracle Linux 6 on VirtualBox

The usual reason for Guest Additions failing to install on a Linux guest on Virtual Box is that the kernel headers are missing. How you install these or where they come from varies from distro to distro, although they’re usually available via the package manager on that distro.

I had an Oracle Linux 6 guest installed, Guest Additions (for video drivers, shared folder, clipboard sharing) was all working, and then at some point I started it up again and it was no longer working and wouldn’t re-install either. Seems like I’d picked up an update, and I needed to update the kernel headers too.

This post covers the steps needed. On OE6 before installing the Guest Additions, just run ‘yum install kernel-uek-devel’ and you should be good to go (assuming you’re booting with the ‘unbreakable kernel’ and not the RHEL compatible kernel)

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Configuring a static IP on HypriotOS for the Raspberry Pi

How you configure a static IP on the Pi changed between Wheezy and Jessie, and it seems on Hypriot’s prebuilt images for running Docker on the Pi, it’s a slight variation.

Edit /etc/network/interfaces.d/eth0, comment out the DHCP line:

iface eth0 inet dhcp

and add:

iface eth0 inet static
address your-static-ip
gateway your-gateway-ip
#google dns servers
domain_name_servers=8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4

Done!

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