Hello David et al.
Thanks for all the replies and info. I know this topic is only marginally dealing with Direwolf, but I thought most people hanging out here are would be most knowledgeable about packet radio, so I hope you don't mind. I have more packet radio setup related questions, but I'll post them on groups.io/linuxham (unless you don't mind off topic questions here on this board).
I was aware of the APRS SSID recommendations, but I'll stick with this list for now. And I will not use -10 again, promise :-)
??????????? SSID :: Description
??????????? -----::--------------------------------------------
????????????? -0 :: (aka.. no SSID) direct human to human / keyboard to keyboard chat
????????????? -1 :: PBBS mailboxes
????????????? -2 :: not specifically used
????????????? -3 :: not specifically used
????????????? -4 :: not specifically used
????????????? -5 :: netrom nodes and digipeaters
????????????? -6 :: not specifically used
????????????? -7 :: netrom nodes and digipeters (alternate)
????????????? -8 :: not specifically used
????????????? -9 :: not specifically used
???????????? -10 :: for Winlink nodes
?
The base callsign+ssid shown via "ifconfig" which comes from the kernel ax25 stack is just a base layer.? It's recommended to keep it unique from say a used SSID used by say Linpac or ax25d but it technically doesn't have to be.? I have seen some strange collisions when they were the same but I forget what the behavior is here.? The behavior also might be different between using say the VE7FET AX.25 tools vs. the official AX.25 tools (the old versions say in the distro repo or the newer ones via git).
Do I need to see SSIDs as an ID related to a system or a service? From what you wrote above the latter. But how does that work then? If on a system the ax.25 stack has SSID-1 and Linpac SSID-2 then how does a connecting station get routed to Linpac? All packets have to go through the ax.25 stack, so SSID-1, so towards the outside world there is no SSID-2. You could make SSID-2 visible to the outside world if you create a new port in axports, or am I not correct with that assumption.
Still it works: just configured LinPac on my RPi (BX2ABT-1) with BX2ABT-2, -3 and -4 in init.mac, and had no problem connecting from my other machine (BX2ABT-10), creating 4 different sessions with BX2ABT-1, -2, -3 and -4 respectively.
Then thinking ahead: what if I want to add a mailbox, BBS, etc. Do these also come with their own configurations and choice of SSID?
>>Correct though it depends on which BBS.? If you use FBB, it's listening AX.25 port going to get configured via /etc/ax25/ax25d.conf but if you're running something like JNOS or BPQ32, they have their own AX25 stack and can care less about Linux's internal stack (unless you connect the two stacks together).
You mean FBB uses ax0 and JNOS ax1, etc... Why would you do that? You can create different ports in axports and use those, not?
Excuses for my lack of insight, I hope you do not too vexed about it. I'm not familiar at all with (computer) networking and right now I see a lot of pieces of a puzzle without an idea on how to connect them together. It's complicated stuff to me.
BTW, I still don't know what my next step should be: I guess it's setting up node with ax25-node or uronode and then FBB. Or should I go straight to JNOS or BPQ32? What I wrote before, my aim is to understand this whole packet radio stuff and prefer KISS. Any ideas? Cheers!
Hans
BX2ABT
