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Hi Daryl,

It has been a while! The original work was written in older versions of Python 2 with libraries that are no longer supported. There has been an enormous amount of work needed and much has been done by John Malmberg, WB8TYW and Maurizio Andreotti IZ2LXI .?

While in your "absence", D-RATS has undergone some major changes - much of the v0.4 development code was written to run under Msys2 or MobaXterm (emulation application) in the Python 3 environment (IIRC) so that the primary maintainers could continue work on fixing the Python code and making things current.

Here is a quote from the github repository which has me a bit confused on a brief reading. It is from :

Microsoft Windows

The installation is now primarily done from inside the MobaXterm application using.

This generally requires installing the msys2 package from , which is what is currently used for testing.

Other alternatives Windows Subsystem for Linux with a Linux installed or Cygwin . At the present time those are not being tested. Windows Subsystem for linux may have issues accessing serial devices.

Since I last used the system there is now a version of Python 3 for 64 bit Win 11 that may or may not have the needed support. Also for a while (maybe still), a separate piece of the code for LZHUF was required that was critical for certain functions of D-RATS to run. I don't know if that is still the case. So the Python interpreter plus the LZHUF issue maybe where your attempt to install D-RATS went south. (The old version did not need the interpreter because it had been compiled to work in Windows).

I had been loading and testing John's new versions, then got derailed by life demands. The old versions (v3) still will load and run OK on my old 2015 Dell Windows 10 based desktop (which just has been replaced by a Win 11 box). I have yet to install any version of Python or D-RATS on the new computer, so you and I will likely go on this journey together.?

I do think I have the new code running on my Win 11 laptop - but it has been a while since I did much with it.

If I have the time (has been scarce lately) to install, I will. I will share with you what the "secret sauce" steps that I discover on the way. Hope that makes it easier.

Jack - KD4IZ

I previously was running D-Rats 0.3.9 under Windows 10 32-bit on a desktop and Windows 11 64-bit on a Lenovo Laptop...and it still works on the desktop computer. I had to stop using the Lenovo Laptop, as the screen started going bad...but I also received an early Christmas/birthday present, with a new Windows 11 Pro Desktop, with 16 GB of RAM, and 1 TB of hard drive space...which has made doing much of my ham radio nets much easier, with the SharkRF OpenSpot 4 Pro.

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However, I tried to get D-Rats 0.3.9 to work on the new computer, and it would not. Is there an additional file I need to download to make it work?? I took a look at D-Rats 0.4.2, but I wasn't sure what I needed to do to activate it, or get it working.

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Any help would be appreciated.

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Daryl, N5VLZ

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On 9/17/2024 7:35 AM, Daryl Stout wrote:

Jack,
The "fix" was so simple, and these are the ones that can cause a lot
of aggravation, and the most problems. It's like having one line off
in some programming code, that will mess everything up.
<snip>
I looked at the path, and it hit me...the "username" under C:\Users\username (usually only 5 characters) was DIFFERENT. Next, I
took a look at the configuration file from the D-Rats setup on the
Windows 10 32-bit machine, and sure enough...that was the issue!!

Yes, that issue has been reported here before. If you use the Microsoft default for Windows 10/11 and create your default login account to use a Microsoft account, it creates a different directory structure.

And that is fixed in the current 0.40 D-Rats, the problem was that D-Rats was assuming that directories in the config file already existed and failing if they are missing.

For 0.40 the default is still the older directory structure. I do not want my main PC account to be tied to a Microsoft account, so I do not have any systems with that configuration to test.

One very important thing with Windows to avoid getting your box turned into a brick is to make sure that you have at least two accounts.

A Non-privileged account for your normal use, and also an administrator account. The administrator account should only used for maintenance and repair.

There is a nasty virus that I have seen get by several big name antivirus scanners that appears to be delivered somehow from legitimate websites, assuming from banner advertisement.

When it hits, you may or may not see a DOS box pop up, but the next thing you see is an extortion page and the mouse/keyboard no longer work.

The free Malware Bytes scanner can repair it, but you need to run it from a different account.

If you normally use a computer from an Administrator account, and one of these viruses gets in, you will need to reformat the drive and you may need to have the firmware re-flashed on the BIOS.

I went into the Mode Overview file (available at the hyperlink off of
my QRZ bio), and added that tidbit of info. So, I've got D-Rats 0.39
working on the Windows 11 setup.

And if you hook up a radio on a USB serial port, you will eventually find that it will drop received packets. This tends to show up more newer faster computers. That is just one of the many fixes you are missing by staying with the 0.39.

Now, if I could just keep power and internet during my ham radio nets.

I use a number of UPS systems on all networking and desktop computers.

73,
-John
wb8tyw

On 9/16/2024 12:56 PM, Jack Spitznagel (KD4IZ) wrote:
<snip>

Since I last used the system there is now a version of Python 3 for 64 bit Win 11 that may or may not have the needed support.

It still does not the last time I checked and it does not appear that anyone maintaining the needed packages is doing anything to make them run on Microsoft Windows, so I do not expect that to change anytime soon.

(maybe still), a separate piece of the code for LZHUF was required that was critical for certain functions of D-RATS to run. I don't know if that is still the case.

Lzhuf is in is own repository separated from d-rats as it needs to be built for the specific platform. Prebuilt lzhuf packages for some Debian based distributions including Raspbian and also Microsoft Windows distributions. I have not had time to working out building RPM packages for Lzhuf yet.

LZHUF is needed for Winlink communications. Somehow Winlink continued to use LZHUF compression after the patent holder for LZHUF started requiring paid licenses for using LZHUF and suing anyone they found distributing LZHUF compression that did not pay.

As a result, all the Linux distros removed lzhuf compression from their packages.

Because of that, there are no independent suppliers of LZHUF compression libraries.

But now the patents have expired on LZHUF world wide, it is now legal for LZHUF compression to be used with out a paid patent license. And at least in the U.S. it is past the statute of limitations for suing anyone that used it with out a license before the patent expired.

The major Linux distros may not be interested in providing a full feature lzhuf package again since because of past lawsuits, there no longer is much use of lzhuf.

(The old version did not need the interpreter because it had been compiled to work in Windows).

The old version on windows was created independently of Dan Smith's efforts by a windows programmer that bundled the Python 2 package and a pre-built GTK2 package built for windows.

It is python, and you can actually edit it in place and try to maintain it. But the tools needed to recreate the distribution package are gone.

Currently the cross platform projects that are python based with a single package installer are actually installing the Msys2 environment with a shortcut to launch the application.

I have not done that with D-Rats simply because not have time to reverse engineer what the others have done, and the Msys2 does not have documentation for that type of deployment.

The other problem is that every time there is a CVE issued against a component in Msys2, a complete new D-Rats package would have to be built and everyone must upgrade to get it. These other projects have a pool of developers and do nightly package builds.

If you have an old computer that used to run Windows XP or later, it can probably have Anti-X Linux installed on it instead, and D-Rats 0.40 runs very well on Anti-X Linux even on the older hardware.

73,
-John

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