I have finally had the opportunity to spend some time with this HamPC distro and evaluate it. Unless you are completely retired , have a couple of cases of ‘807’s, and time of not of the essence, then you might be able to run this off a USB thumb drive.? It is painfully slow, even with USB 3.

I purchased a 120GB SSD drive and wrote that image to that device.? It is a shame that when doing this there is no way to extend that main partition to utilize the remainder of the drive after the 32 GB of data.

Since this will have a full time connection to the internet, I disabled the Automatic login for the hampc user.? Edit etclightdm/lightdm.conf and remove the 2nd line of that file.? I also change the password for the hampc login.? I then created my own user login.? As a personal preference I enable the root user by creating a password for root.? May times it is much easier to su to root than constantly type sudo.?

A good majority of the Hamradio programs either do not work out of the box, or need additional configuration to get them to work correctly.

Fldigi:? Noting under that menu item works.? I tired launching all of those from the command line to see the error trace and they are all aborting, for something haywire with Hamlib.

Voacapgui:? Complains about voacap for Linux not being installed.

CRQLOG:? This is dependent on a properly installed MySQL Server/Client.? The mysql client monitor does activate, but only if your are logged in as root or you sudo into mysql.? I have MySQL and CRQLog running on my other Linux box so? i can do some comparison side by side to figure out what is happening, but I suspect the MySQL configuration is not correct.

Klog:? it aborts with a segmentation fault .? The error is a QT device:write error with file klogdebug.log.? I even created that file in my .klog folder and gave everyone permission to read and write, so I suspect there is a problem with writing to the debug output file in the program, but there is some other error that we know nothing about because it cannot write to that file.

PyQSO:? does run fine but as with most Python GUI’s it is very rudimentary.

TenQSOLogger:? This is an application that I wrote as a contest logger for 10-10 contests and QSO parties.? It will act as a rudimentary general purpose logger.? However, it does not run without installing the Java Runtime Environment.? At a command line:? sudo apt install default-jre.

Xlog: Runs fine, but you may have difficulty getting hamlib to run due to file permissions.? If you do get this running with the radio and you launch the program and forget to turn the radio on, the program will hang forever.

CubicSQR:? Running this at the command line reveals? a VOLK config file not found.? The? rest of the SDR programs are unable to see my RTL2832U.? This may be a permission problem.

Weak Signal:? Both js8call and wsjtx work just fine once you resolve all the permission issues with the sound devices and Hamlib.

HamLib:? many of the programs use HamLib to communicate with the radio.? The communication is handled via a serial port or usb.? All normal Linux installs only allow the root user with access to? those device ports.? The easy way to make that happen is to add each user to the following groups: uucp and dialout.

Grig:? This launches fine, but with the dummy radio as the source.? To launch this with your own radio, you will need to edit the menu item to include the configuration string for the radio you are using.? At the command line type grig -?.? You will get a couple of pages of information on how to construct the configuration string.? You will need to know the ID number of your radio.? Type grid -l (lowercase L) for the list.? It is lengthy!!!? I have a FT920 so this ID is 1014.? Next you will need to know what port you are connected to.? COM1, COM2 does not work in Linux.? At a command line type:

??? sudo dmesg | grep ttyS*

ttyS0 – ttyS15 are standard com ports.? In my case the radio is connected directly to COM1 on the computer, but in Linux this resolves to ttyS4.

So my connection string for grig will be:? -m 1014 -r /dev/ttyS4

The Pat Menu aborts because it? is attached to something in the pi users folder.

--
Jeff K. Steinkamp (N7YG)
Tucson, AZ
Scud Missile Coordinates
N32.2319 W110.8477