AX.25 Utilities 030.2

These are the support utilities for the Linux kernel AX.25 and NET/ROM, in
order to fully exploit these facilities you will also need a set of the
net-tools that understand AX.25 and NET/ROM. Unlike the previous releases of
these tools, the utilities, man pages, and configuration files are now
located in /usr/local/{sbin,bin}, /usr/local/man/man* and /usr/local/etc
respectively.

For those familiar with the older ax25 utilities, not much has changed,
hopefully a few bugs have been fixed and some extra functionality has been
added. There is one incompatible change that may affect you, when setting up
an AX.25 port to use virtual circuit IP instead of the default datagram, the
-v flag was used with axattach(8), this is no longer the case. Axattach is
used without the flag, and the mode of operation of the port is now changed
with the axparms(8) program. In line with the previous paragraph, the
location of the configuration files has changed, but not the format. But
please note that the name of the AX.25 configuration file which was simply
called ``ports'' is now named ``axports''.

Almost everything in this distribution is supplied with a man page, this
applies to the file formats as well. These are not enough to replace a good
tutorial on configuring a Linux machine for AX.25 and NET/ROM but I have
supplied my startup shell script which is to be found in the etc
sub-directory. This contains configurations for most things but is not an
exhaustive guide.

The programs can be broken down into three categories:

System Level
------------
axattach		Connect an AX.25 interface to a serial port
axparms			Configure AX.25 ports
kissparms		Configure KISS TNCs
netromd			NET/ROM routing
nodesave		Save a copy of the NET/ROM routing table
noderest		Restore a copy of the NET/ROM routing table
nrparms			Configure the NET/ROM interface
rip98d			RIP98 IP routing

User Level
----------
beacon			Send periodic broadcasts
call			Connect via AX.25 or NET/ROM to other stations
listen			Monitor traffic
mheard			Display the heard list

Examples
--------
axl			Listens for incoming conections
pms			A simple PMS

No binaries are supplied with this distribution because of the move to ELF,
my machine is still in a.out land and it doesn't take long to compile them
anyway.

If you do use the Linux kernel AX.25/NET/ROM code, consider subscribing to
the linux-hams mailing list at vger.rutgers.edu, this list superceedes the
HAMS mailing list.

Jonathan G4KLX
