On Sat, 5 Apr 2014 20:27:09 -0400
Ronny Julian <k4rjjradio@...> wrote:
While I get through this install list of issues can someone share
what this looks like in runtime and any control differences? Is
there a GUI?
Ronny,
Good to hear you are making progress.
I'll describe 3 use cases I have to give you an idea of what
paclink-unix 'looks' like. They all use different mail clients but the
transport mechanism is the same. All Winlink mail
clients have the same 2 step operation. On the send side you compose a
message and deposit it to a directory then you invoke a transport
mechanism to send messages. For paclink-unix the transport mechanisms
are telnet (wl2ktelnet) for sending over the Internet, radio
(wlk2kax25) for sending via the AX.25 protocol stack & TNC to your radio
and serial (wl2kserial) for sending via a Pactor modem to your radio.
The receive process is just the reverse, invoke the transport mechanism
then view your messages.
Use Case 1: I run a number of RMS Gateways & I would like to know if
they are up & working on a daily basis. Once a day around midnight a
cron job runs a script that parses the RMS Gateway log file and
pulls out the call signs of everyone that successfully connected to that
gateway. The script takes that information and Winlink mails it to my
SMTP e-mail address.
For this case, since I am using a script, everything runs from a
command line. Linux offers a number of choices of composing e-mail via
the command line ie. mail & mutt.
Use Case 2: I am at my workstation & I need to send a message out to
the group. In this case I have a choice of e-mail clients but they
have a requirement of being able to handle Unix movemail. Thunderbird,
dtmail, the webmail client Neomail and console based clients pine, elm
& mutt all satisfy that requirement. In this case you can use any mail
client that supports movemail to compose & receive messages, the
transport mechanism remains the same.
Use Case 3: I am in the living room controlling my MythTV box with my
Android pad and I want to use a mail client on that pad to send a
winlink mail message. In this case the mail client does not support
movemail but it does support IMAP or POP3. You need to install &
configure a Mail Transfer Agent or "mail server" on the same machine
that hosts AX.25 and paclink-unix. I use the Android K-9 mail program
to compose the messge on my pad and a very simple web app to invoke
either wl2ktelnet, wl2kax25 or wl2kserial on the remote machine. The
way I have this set up I could be in my living room or in a hotel room
in another city.
If others have use cases they care to share please post.
/Basil n7nix
Basil Gunn