Re: Installing Linux AX25028 Experiences

[ron@chaos.eng.wayne.edu (Ron Atkinson)]

My mailer said Steven R. Bible said this:
>
> I thought I would document my experiences with installing Alan's version 028
> of the AX.25 code into the Linux kernel this weekend.  I had a few problems
> along the way.  Perhaps others have (or will have) the same hic-ups.  Or
[stuff deleted]

> I found that the sock.dif was for sock.h in the /usr/src/linux/net/inet
> directory.  I simply copied sock.dif there and used the command
>
>   patch < sock.dif
>
> to patch the code.
[stuff deleted]

> A new set of utilities since AX25022.  Here I untar'd the file in
> /usr/local.  At this point I cd'd to /usr/local/ax25/src and "make install".
> I got an error when it got to the point of compiling axassociate.  I took
> the easy way out and commented it out in the Makefile and then the "make
> install" went the distance.
[stuff deleted]

> This took an entire Saturday to get this far.  Hopefully this will save
> someone some time.  If you find that I "did it wrong" please tell me.  I am
> sure Alan reads this group and will take note of my adventure.  I'd like to
> get it all straightened out and then I can give it all to Terry to update
> the AX.25 section of the NET-2 HOWTO.

Everything you said about the install is the same as what I've run across.
I'm pretty used to running into these problems so it doesn't take long
at all for me to get it up and running, but I do think that it isn't
exactly 'plug-n-play' just yet.

How it's released might be handled a bit differently to make it easier.
One gzip file with everything, including a simple readme file saying
what directory you need to put the files in when untarring them, where
to put a patch file, etc...  A lot of kernel patch programs are done
from /usr/src and some are done from /usr/src/linux,  you just never
know. That's why you should always untar everything in a temporary
directory first to figure out how the person tarred it.   It also
would be very easy to just make a single patch file too that will
install the source code and also patch the sock.h file too.

Besides that, it works, you just have to play the "What directory did
he tar this from?" game that you have to do with almost every program
that people release. One thing I'd like to see included is a program
to set the parameters in a KISS tnc while the interface is attached.
I sometimes change tnc's or work on a tnc while the program is running
and to set the desired parameters in a tnc you have to detach your
interface to send the commands out the serial port (unless I'm missing
something obvious here Alan?).  I use the AX.25 kernel code on and off
and it works fine and Alan did a good job on it. Plus it's nice to have
multiple windows on the screen when running X, including running the
listen program in it's own window so you don't flip consoles to see
a trace.

> I am still curious as to the proper order to do things.  Do I download the
> kernel source, compile it, then update net-tools?  Or does it matter.

Doesn't always matter, but I'd recommend to compile the kernel first, the
main thing is to have the proper kernel source code tree installed. Plus
if you ever untar a new /usr/src/linux directory from scratch, just a
simple compile without setting up the links for the asm files will work
and you won't get the errors about the asm filles when you compile other
programs (a make clean is safe to do also). If you don't compile the
kernel then you have to manually make the links to fix the problems with
the errors.

--

Ron Atkinson  N8FOW

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