Hi:
I have been able to setup a D-Rats ratflector for local use.? I even created a guide that I have shared with some friends who are testing D-Rats.?

I use HamPI in a PI 4 (Python2).? ?However, I would like to run a d-rats repeater in a Ubuntu 22.04 production server I have in Dallas. That server runs Apache2 along some apps.

Before messing with the production server and to be sure how to do, have been trying to install latest D-Rats tar (4.01) first in a Ubuntu 22.04 laptop but have faced several difficulties related with some libraries and some dependencies. At this moment I am not looking for compile D-Rats but to first be able to run from the tar files.?

1- Anyway to have specific instruction for a repeater only install that can be managed via command line even not need for a GUI???
2- The?msys2 requirement is only for Windows?

Maybe a more specific and simpler instruction for those who want to only the repeater app would result in more ratflectors online.? I am not a programmer but have some basic knowledge.??

Thanks John and Maurizio and other developers.??

73'

Edfel, KP4AJ

On 6/21/2023 11:33 PM, Glen Strecker wrote:

Thanks, John,
As I said earlier, I appreciate what you are trying to do. Most of
us only have so much time and so many resources to put toward this
HOBBY. Unfortunately, I am not a programmer.

The D-Rats development work can use help of of non-programmers.

Example of non-programming tasks:

Updating and organizing the Wiki for end users.

Testing pull requests for fixes.

Status of some tickets:

*
Position reports being interpreted wrong on the map

A fix in in progress.

It was discovered that D-Rats has been
sending the wrong position for outgoing reports. I do not
remember changing that code from the 0.3 version.

The map positions being plotted wrong is a harder problem
to solve and we are collecting some data to see if we can
find why the plotted latitude of some points are wrong.

*
GPS device not being read correctly.

On hold waiting for more information from you or others.

Need a manual for the GPS or some description of the
messages that it sends to the computer.
With out that, there is no way to fix.

*
GMAIL integration for e-mail.

This may just be a documentation issue.
Instead of a password, you need to configure a token in Gmail
to use instead, and be able to validate its use through two-factor
authentication.


*
Printed e-mails not formatted correctly.

Need some info:

Is this an issue also on the 0.3 version as nothing should
have changed in this section of the code.

Not sure what can be done to "fix" this so that it does not
break what someone else expects.

When these messages are sent over a real SMTP e-mail, they
get MIME encoded for sending and various e-mail clients may
preserve or mangle the lines depending on which bugs they have.

For D-Rats to D-Rats processing, what you type in is what
you get on the other end. If there are no hard line breaks
when the message is composed, then there are none when
it is displayed in a web browser for printing.

*
Form save/send/print has errors.

Fix is in review. In a few places that only showed up
for some forms the conversion to lxml was missed.


73,
-John

Thanks, John,
As I said earlier, I appreciate what you are trying to do.? Most of us only have so much time and so many resources to put toward this HOBBY.? Unfortunately, I am not a programmer.? I just wanted to document what is working so far and what is not.? The StTammany ratflector, my Windows laptop and my iMac running Parallels for Windows 11 are all still running on version 0.3.9 so no problems there.? I also installed 0.3.9 on an older Windows machine that was going south.? I put an X-tra PC dongle on and started running Linux on it.? It is now running a version of Ubuntu.? It is a shame that every time developers push to "upgrade" the OS on these devices they end up breaking a large number of home-brewed software packages.? I will make sure that I have LZHUF on the device and see where that takes me.? I have copies of that program on the older machines.? I will go back to get the current version.

On 6/21/2023 7:28 PM, Glen Strecker wrote:

I am testing out the latest build of D-Rats version 0.4.1 on a
Raspberry Pi 4 and a 400 and have run into a number of bugs. I wonder
if anyone else has experienced these problems and may have a fix. As
you may already know, we can no longer install fresh instances of
version 0.3.9 on a machine that never had it before because they
have now obsoleted a number of dependencies for Python 2 that were
required to run the older version. I tried and was unsuccessful.
Anyway, these are some of the things I have found are either not
working correctly or at all:
1. Maps not rendering properly - The maps load fine but do not
display the proper positions of other stations. When positions are
requested, the other stations are responding with their decimal
positions. However, the new D-Rats is reading and converting them
to degrees, minutes, & seconds throwing all of the positions off by miles.
It shows my StTammany Ratflector out in the swamp instead of at the
same location. This is not good if you are trying to track your
assets during an Emcomm event For example KG5CEN-1 sends a position
report of 30.366000, -89.77620, but when the version 0.4.1 receives
it, it gets changed to 30.2260, -89.4670 and displays it on the map
approx. 20 miles out of position.

There should be no changes to the code that interprets GPS messages in that section of D-Rats, but there may be some differences in how python is interpreting some numbers and strings. Unfortunately the unit test code for those parsing the messages samples was non-functional in the python2 version.

The MAP display software had to be pretty much completely re-written for Python 3. All the APIs had changed.

2. The program is not connecting with or reading an attached GPS
dongle properly. It sometimes says it is unable to open the GPS
port and other times says it cannot get a GPS lock even though the
position is able to be obtained on the same computer using a
different program, such as YAAC APRS client.

I am unable to test GPS devices at this time. Python3 reads the GPS data as a stream of bytes that must be converted to UTF-8. If one of those conversions are missing, sometimes the parsing of a string fails.

I am assuming that the GPS dongle appears to be a serial port to applications. What I need to diagnose is a sample of the exact bytes that the GPS device sends out the serial line so that I can see how to parse it. If there is some documentation for using that device from a program, that would be helpful.

3. The Winlink feature over Telnet is not working.

Something else I am unable to test. As I understand it, Winlink needs a program named lzhuf to be installed. For Raspberry Pi it must be built as I currently an unable to build Debian packages for that platform.

Until recently lzhuf compression was not legal to use with out a license from Unisys pretty much world wide, so the compression package is not available from linux distributions.

Since the Unisys patents have expired, we can now offer it. However platform specific binary executable programs do not belong in a source code repository, so it was moved into its own repository and repaired so that it will work on all systems, not just little endian systems.



The instructions that could be used to build Debian packages are present in that repository, I just have not been able to setup a development environment for that platform.

4. Not a problem for the program, but we used to tell everyone to
set up a Gmail account to be able to forward outgoing emails
addressed to a regular Internet email account. This no longer works
as Google has decided that D-Rats is an insecure method of handling
emails and will no longer accept mail from D-rats. I am using an
outlook.com address available for free from Microsoft. If you are
having problems in this regard, you might look into outlook mail
accounts or some other email account that has not locked out D-Rats
due to security concerns.

It may be possible to find a SMTP package for linux that can relay between D-Rats and external e-mail providers such as G-Mail as a work around.

5. When trying to print emails - On simple text emails, the message does not word-wrap on the printed page. The message can be read on the computer, but when trying to print using the Print button, the
rendered message gets truncated at the end of the page instead of
rolling over to the following line. Unless you write very short
paragraphs, some of your text will be dropped off the right side of
the printed page.

There are RFCs that specify how an e-mail message should be formatted for transmission. I suspect that D-Rats is just creating a text buffer and filling it as typed with out doing any processing to ensure RFC compliance.

6. Attempting to save, send, or print an ARRL radiogram, an NHC
Hurricane Report, a Skywarn Report or the hics260 form causes an
error, but calls to print the ICS forms are rendered correctly and
can be saved, sent, or printed in Firefox. Trying to fill out the
above forms and the program will not allow the message to be saved or
sent. It always gives an error message that can be ignored. The
forms are presently unusable.

Form processing is done with xml libraries. The one used by python2 had been discontinued and the replacements use a completely different API.

I did test sending forms between d-rats stations, but do not recall if I tested relaying them to an e-mail client. The laptop that I did the e-mail testing on had a motherboard failure, and I have not had time to setup the replacement laptop with a local SMTP/POP3 server for testing D-Rats.

Please update this ticket with more details:

So far, Chats and File Transfers are working as expected. The
filters are functioning normally. QST's to beacon position and pick
up data from OpenWeather are working.. I have not tried all of the
QST selections yet. I also have not updated the program on my
Windows machines as version 0.3.9 iis still stable on them and I
don't want to mess them up as we are now moving into hurricane
season. As storms move closer to the US I usually try to post the
bulletins from the National Hurricane Center. I download the
bulletins to a file that D-rats can import and display through the
QST feature.
Don't get me wrong. I appreciate all the hard work it must have
taken to port the program over to using Python 3. I am not sure that
I have all the needed GDK-3 dependencies loaded. I picked up all I
could find in the Pi's Add or Remove Software feature in Preferences.
I wanted to mention these bugs because I have not seen them brought
up yet. It has been hard getting more folks interested in using
D-Rats as a serious tool as things keep happening over time that has
continued to break the software to render certain features unusable.

I am developing on Anti-X Linux, which is very similar to what is available on the Raspberry Pi, as both are based on Debian packages.

So generally the README at for Anti-X packages should work for any system that is Debian based.

There is still a lot of work to be done on D-Rats and there is only so much that I can do by myself.

I try to priorities functional bugs over enhancements.

There is still a lot of refactoring needed, and a lot of debugging.

And the Wikis at can use help in their maintenance to help users.

73,
-John

I am testing out the latest build of D-Rats version 0.4.1 on a Raspberry Pi 4 and a 400 and have run into a number of bugs.? I wonder if anyone else has experienced these problems and may have a fix.? As you may already know, we can no longer install fresh instances of version 0.3.9 on a machine that never had it before because they have now obsoleted a number of dependencies for Python 2 that were required to run the older version.? I tried and was unsuccessful.? Anyway, these are some of the things I have found are either not working correctly or at all:

1.? Maps not rendering properly - The maps load fine but do not display the proper positions of other stations.? When positions are requested, the other stations are responding with their decimal positions.? However, the new D-Rats is reading and converting them to degrees, minutes, & seconds throwing all of the positions off by miles.? It shows my StTammany Ratflector out in the swamp instead of at the same location.? This is not good if you are trying to track your assets during an Emcomm event? For example KG5CEN-1 sends a position report of 30.366000, -89.77620, but when the version 0.4.1 receives it, it gets changed to 30.2260, -89.4670 and displays it on the map approx. 20 miles out of position.

2. The program is not connecting with or reading an attached GPS dongle properly.? It sometimes says it is unable to open the GPS port and other times says it cannot get a GPS lock even though the position is able to be obtained on the same computer using a different program, such as YAAC APRS client.

3. The Winlink feature over Telnet is not working.

4. Not a problem for the program, but we used to tell everyone to set up a Gmail account to be able to forward outgoing emails addressed to a regular Internet email account.? This no longer works as Google has decided that D-Rats is an insecure method of handling emails and will no longer accept mail from D-rats.? I am using an outlook.com address available for free from Microsoft.? If you are having problems in this regard, you might look into outlook mail accounts or some other email account that has not locked out D-Rats due to security concerns.

5. When trying to print emails - On simple text emails, the message does not word-wrap on the printed page.? The message can be read on the computer, but when trying to print using the Print button, the rendered message gets truncated at the end of the page instead of rolling over to the following line.? Unless you write very short paragraphs, some of your text will be dropped off the right side of the printed page.

6. Attempting to save, send, or print an ARRL radiogram, an NHC Hurricane Report, a Skywarn Report or the hics260 form causes an error, but calls to print the ICS forms are rendered correctly and can be saved, sent, or printed in Firefox.? Trying to fill out the above forms and the program will not allow the message to be saved or sent.? It always gives an error message that can be ignored.? The forms are presently unusable.

So far, Chats and File Transfers are working as expected.? The filters are functioning normally.? QST's to beacon position and pick up data from OpenWeather are working..? I have not tried all of the QST selections yet.? I also have not updated the program on my Windows machines as version 0.3.9 iis still stable on them and I don't want to mess them up as we are now moving into hurricane season.? As storms move closer to the US I usually try to post the bulletins from the National Hurricane Center.? I download the bulletins to a file that D-rats can import and display through the QST feature.

Don't get me wrong.? I appreciate all the hard work it must have taken to port the program over to using Python 3.? I am not sure that I have all the needed GDK-3 dependencies loaded.? I picked up all I could find in the Pi's Add or Remove Software feature in Preferences.? I wanted to mention these bugs because I have not seen them brought up yet.? It has been hard getting more folks interested in using D-Rats as a serious tool as things keep happening over time that has continued to break the software to render certain features unusable.

Glen - KG5CEN

StTammany is back up. ?An Internet outage caused the router to pick up a new IP address that I had trouble dealing with as I was away from the house babysitting grandkids for the day. ?I also heard about some possible hacking attacks that occurred against some government offices today. ?We have been getting power outages and glitches due to thunderstorms too. ?I was able to reset everything by removing in with my iPad.

开云体育

The St. Tammany ratflector was online last night, when I did The Arklatex D-Star Net. However, there has been widespread severe thunderstorms in the region, with intense lightning, and very large hail (some baseball size). It's possible that the Slidell Louisiana area, where the ratflector is located, maybe without power from the lightning.

Daryl, WX4QZ

开云体育

That would be great, thank you.


Sent from Proton Mail mobile

开云体育

Will the talks be available online for those of us not able to attend?


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Friday Night D-STAR is back at Hamvention! ?Join your D-STAR friends at the Drury Inn Ballroom on Friday evening of Hamvention for a Dayton tradition. Guest speakers will be discussing the new Icom IC-905 and ID-50A radios, the new generation of Icom D-STAR repeaters and much more. An Icom ID-52A D-STAR handheld radio will be given away, too.

After your first day at Hamvention on Friday May 19th, come over to the Drury Inn Ballroom at 6:30pm for Friday Night D-STAR. No registration is needed.

Friday, May 19^th @ 6:30pm
Drury Inn
6616 Miller Lane
Dayton, OH 45414

Hello All,

This fixes a number of reported issues in the previous release which should make upgrades and new installs easier.








I will be at the Dayton Hamvention,

Regards,
-John

The following files and folders have been uploaded to the Files area of the [email protected] group.

• /D-Rats/D-Rats Releases/D_Rats-0.4.1-py3-none-any.whl
• /D-Rats/D-Rats Releases/D-Rats-0.4.1.tar.gz

By: John E. Malmberg <wb8tyw@...>

Description:
Bugfix release for cofiguration files and installation issues

The following files and folders have been uploaded to the Files area of the [email protected] group.

• /D-Rats/D-RATS pre-release/D-Rats-0.4.0.dev4.tar.gz

By: John E. Malmberg <wb8tyw@...>

Description:
Test build for https://github.com/ham-radio-software/D-Rats/pull/181 for bug fixes reported in the 0.4.0 tarball

The following files and folders have been uploaded to the Files area of the [email protected] group.

• /D-Rats/D-RATS pre-release/D-Rats-0.4.0.dev1.tar.gz

By: John E. Malmberg <wb8tyw@...>

Description:
Test build for https://github.com/ham-radio-software/D-Rats/pull/181 for bug fixes reported in the 0.4.0 tarball.

D-STAR InfoCon is back at Dayton Hamvention for 2023?to provide an introduction to D-STAR for new users and more advanced topics for more experienced D-STAR users. The 2 ? hour class will be held on Friday, May 19th beginning at 8:30am local time. It will be held at the Drury Inn Ballroom at 6616 Miller Lane in the heart of hotel row in Dayton. This year’s topics will include getting on-the-air with D-STAR, how to connect around the world, programming for all models of D-STAR radios, using DR Mode, easy updating your radio memories and using hotspots and other D-STAR devices.

• D-STAR basics
• Getting started with your D-STAR radio
• The D-STAR user registration process explained
• Programming your D-STAR radios
• Linking to repeaters and reflectors
• Helpful hints and tips to get the most from D-STAR
• D-STAR Data (D-RATS) and DD Mode

Registration for the class at?

I found the issue, I was trying to connect to the TNC using the 127.0.0.1 network address but the program wanted me to configure as an AGWPE connection.? I have it working now.??

I tried connecting to VARA FM & HF KISS as well.? The log shows it connected but VARA won't transmit because it says invalid KISS command.? I would love for this to work but VARA developer would have to do some work, probably not going to happen.? I'm going to shelf this aspect.

I also tried connecting to FLDIGI KISS.? The log shows it's connected but it doesn't transmit.? I'll keep playing around with this, hopefully it can work.??