ax25-utils

[David L Norris]

On Tue, 2004-02-17 at 14:23, Dave Jones wrote:
> All throughout the development of 2.5, there was very little (if any)
> input from the developers/users of drivers/net/hamradio. As a result
> lots of that code doesn't even compile right now, so isn't enabled in
> FC2 test1.

One reason may be that the most commonly (if you call common at most a
few thousand people) used features have been moved out to user space. 
Recently the need for the kernel modules is often a special case.  (i.e.
if you need multiple connections to a KISS interface or AX.25
networking)  But, it would be a shame to lose the AX.25 networking
because it allows normal TCP/IP services to work over slow, long-haul RF
networks.

I think the main kernel modules that are needed are mkiss and ax25.  I
think the rest can be done in userspace.  A simple KISS interface can be
done entirely in userspace (via soundmodem and /dev/sm0).


As far as lack of input...  I've tried to drum up some interest in
various mailing lists to get this stuff organized.  But its a lot like
talking to a brick.  I'd like to put together patches and a YUM
repository for ham radio stuff.  (Debian has a large set of ham radio
packages, for example.  Except most have not been updated in a decade
and half of them never worked right or at all.  You send a bug report,
the maintainer acknowledges it is a bug, 2 years later its untouched.) 
It's just a total waste of good time if no else one wants to do
anything.

Any progress on that front is going to require a few warm bodies who
know what they're doing and can tackle different aspects of the
problem.  Its really not good enough that the code compiles.  It needs
to be debugged, documented, organized, made usable by normal people, and
it needs to follow the standards and guidelines set forth by whatever
distribution it supports.  Unfortunately, projects to organize/maintain
all the ham radio software seem to fizzle out after a week or two.

There's so much ham radio software "out there" that's almost good enough
but needs to be polished and centrally organized.  If some group wants
to do something about that then let me know.  I'm willing to help with
GUI improvements, packaging, documentation, debugging but I'm just not
able to do _all_ the work.  I don't have much clue how software QPSK,
AFSK, whatever works and I'd really rather someone who does know work on
that code.  But I'd love to unscrew their horrible GUI, create desktop
launchers, and build a nice RPM.  ;-)

-- 
 David Norris
  http://www.webaugur.com/dave/
  ICQ - 412039
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/attachments/20040217/ebfc7bc5/attachment-0001.sig>