Linux in the Ham Shack

Introduction:

Announcements:

LHS had planned on attending the Ohio LinuxFest on September 9-11 in Columbus,OH, and the Huntsville, AL hamfest Aug 21-22, but it’s just too expensive. To address that, LHS has started the LHS Ambassadors program where listeners of the show act as representatives for LHS at events. If you’re interested, please contact us at [email protected]

When you make a donation to LHS, you can choose to appear on the Sponsors page on the LHS website.

Linux Format magazine, the producers of the Tux Radar podcast, recently reviewed various Linux-related podcasts, and LHS wasn’t even mentioned! Ouch!

Richard announces the demise of Resonant Frequency: The Amateur Radio Podcast. Richard is looking for a place to post the articles and other content. The podcast episodes are saved at the Internet Archive, and the videos will remain on YouTube.

Topics:

WinLink and AX.25

Richard describes his trials and tribulations getting a WinLink packet gateway working under Ubuntu Linux.

For the most part, Richard followed the instructions provided by Charles, K4GBB: How to install RMS Gate.

Richard and Russ describe the steps in the Howto and possible pitfalls. Richard notes that you’ll probably want to run the commands as the root user, either by logging in as root or using sudo.

(Note, near the end of Section 4 of the Howto, it appears the author left out the “wget” in the command to retrieve the script. On the page it reads:

I think that command should be:

Note that I’ve shortened the lines with ellipses here. -Ed.)

Other useful links:

AX.25 HowTo

HowTo:AX.25 - Ubuntu/Debian

How to set up an RMS Gate on Linux

Feedback:

Andy, KB1OIQ, tells us of his Ham Radio Linux CD, based on Ubuntu Linux 10.10, and includes many ham radio programs.

Rich, KD0BJT, of the LowSWR podcast, is working on a ham radio-related Linux distribution, too.

Contact Info:

Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].

Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.

Leave us a voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.

Sign up for the LHS mailing list.

Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.

LHS merchandise is available at the Merch link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!

Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music:

“Mendes” by Assembly Line Gods from the album “Control: Volume 1.”

“Pound of Flesh” by Assembly Line Gods from the album “Control: Volume 1.”

Please note that the music in this episode is neither Creative Commons nor podsafe. To support the artist, please visit Assembly Line Gods on Facebook, iTunes or at https://www.assemblylinegods.com.

Promo:

Ohio LinuxFest will be held September 9-11, 2011 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, OH.

Linux in the Ham Shack promo from the Low SWR guys. Thanks!

Announcements:

Our best wishes for a speedy recovery to MadamMoo!

Our regular hosts are joined by Torsten, XE2/K5TOR.

Topics:

Firefox 4 has been out a while, and version 5 beta is available at the time of recording. Our hosts discuss. The first thing Russ noted, was the increase in speed! Look for versions 6 and 7 before the end of the year. (As I write this, version 6 has been released. -Ed.)

Kudos to The Linux Link Tech Show (TLLTS) and their interest in amateur radio. One of the hosts, Joel, aka “gorkon”, W3RAZ, has recorded a couple podcasts for Hacker Public Radio: Episode #738 is an introduction to amateur radio, and Episode #756 explains the basics of radio. Another TLLTS host, Allan, is N3MAW.

Leo LaPorte of This Week in Tech has started a podcast about amateur radio. (It’s Ham Nation with Bob Heil, K9EID, and Gordon West, WB6NOA, under the TWiT banner and with Leo’s support and occasional participation. By the time you read this, Leo has his license and is now W6TWT. -Ed.)

Russ describes the Linux from Scratch project that provides instructions for building your own custom Linux system, entirely from source code. Russ plans on providing more details of his experience with Linux from Scratch on a future episode of the QSK Netcast.

Our hosts tried Ubuntu 11.04, Natty Narwhal, and discuss it, good and bad.

Russ also tried Fedora 15, and liked the default desktop environment.

Richard likes PCLinuxOS, and SUSE Linux.

Linux Mint gets a mention, too.

In future LHS episodes, look for information about svxlink, an EchoLink client for Linux, and codec2, an Open Source and patent-free audio codec.

Torsten has had problems installing CQRLog on a 64-bit machine. Russ recommends installing the ia32-libs package to provide the needed 32-bit libraries. In Debian-based distributions, you can install that package with the command “apt-get install ia32-libs”. More information about running 32-bit programs on a 64-bit machine with Debian-based Linux is here.

Contact Info:

Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].

Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.

Leave us a voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.

Sign up for the LHS mailing list.

Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.

LHS merchandise is available at the Merch link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!

Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music:

“Vacancy” by Assembly Line Gods, from their album Control (Volume 1).

The music in Episode #063 is provided with kind permission by Assembly Line Gods from their recent EP release, Control (Volume 1). The track is called “Vacancy.” Follow ALG on Twitter and Facebook and buy their new tracks at iTunes. Thanks, guys!

Introduction:

Introductions, chit chat, a bit about the Dayton Hamvention, Texas Linuxfest, and the Belton hamfest.

LHS will be at several events this summer:

SouthEast LinuxFest (SELF), June 10-12 in Spartanburg, SC. (Yes, I know, by the time you hear this episode, it’s come and gone.)

Huntsville Hamfest August 20-21 in Huntsville, AL.

Ohio Linuxfest September 9-11 in Columbus, OH.

Stop by and say hello to Russ and Cheryl!

Richard may be attending the Texoma Hamarama October 21-22 in Ardmore, OK.

Russ tells us about the sewer failure at Dayton. Only two restrooms in Hara were working Saturday afternoon. Apparently it was fixed by Saturday evening.

PulseAudioTopic:

Richard’s son is trying to start his own computer repair business and recently he received a call from Misha who wanted him to fix a sound issue on her Sony Vaio, which dual-boots Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.04. Sound worked fine in Windows, but not in Ubuntu, and she preferred using Ubuntu. After working with the machine for a while, he figured out that PulseAudio was the problem, and replacing it with ALSA fixed it.

While researching the problem, Richard discovered PulseAudio problems exist on more than just the Sony Vaio. He also found PulseAudio problems with Ubuntu, Fedora, Open Suse 11 or higher, Arch Linux, Zen, and Sabayon, and with both Gnome and KDE desktops.

Two sites in particular were helpful:

[SOLVED] sony vaio sound problem

Fix Ubuntu Audio Problem in Sony Vaio

Russ and Richard discuss Linux audio problems, and the current state of PulseAudio, particularly with WINE. Russ notes that he’s had no sound problems under Linux Mint.

Russ describes various ways to troubleshoot PulseAudio issues on Linux.

In Gnome, right-click on the speaker icon and select sound preferences. From here you can examine the hardware, choose a sound profile, configure your inputs and outputs, and see which applications are using PulseAudio.

There are a variety of utilities useful for debugging PulseAudio problems:

paman (PulseAudio Manager Utility). Install it with the command “apt-get install paman”. It tells you a lot of information about PulseAudio, including “sinks” and “sources”. You can also use it to set volume levels with greater control than with the desktop audio manager.

paprefs (PulseAudio Preferences Panel) Install it with the command “apt-get install paprefs”. Allows you to perform advanced functions such as connecting PulseAudio servers together, send sound from one server to another, create virtual sound devices, etc.

pavucontrol (PulseAudio Volume Control) Install it with the command “apt-get install pavucontrol”. Allows you to see every application that accesses PulseAudio, set volume levels per channel, and other configuration settings.

pavumeter (PulseAudio VU Meter) Install it with the command “apt-get install pavumeter”. Creates a VU Meter window that displays your audio levels.

padsp, pamon Install with the command “apt-get install pulseaudio-utils”. pamon will allow you to capture the bytes of audio data. padsp allows you to pipe the audio from an application that does not normally support PulseAudio, into PulseAudio.

Remember, you can use the “man” command for help on any of these commands. For example, in a terminal type “man padsp” for help on the padsp utility.

Check out Ted’s sound card programs for ham radio. They are all now PulseAudio compatible.

Contact Info:

Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].

Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.

Leave us a voice mail at 417-200-4811, or record an introduction to the podcast.

Sign up for the LHS mailing list.

Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.

LHS merchandise is available at the SHOP! link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!

Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Promo:

Announcements:

LHS will be at the Dayton Hamvention, May 20-22, 2011, booth 131 in the North Hall. Russ and Cheryl will be there. Stop and say hello.

LHS will also be at the Southeast Linuxfest, June 10-12, 2011, in Spartanburg, SC. Russ will be giving a talk on Saturday, and Russ and Cheryl will be at the LHS booth.

Feedback

Dan writes in about a Linux discussion he had at his radio club on March 8, and he mentioned LHS. Dan is also recording his own podcast, “Every Day Linux Use”. Good luck with that, Dan, and let us know where to find the podcast when it’s released.

B.B., KC5PIY, writes about an article in the February 2011 issue of Linux Magazine discussing the OpenHatch project. B.B. shares his thoughts about how OpenHatch may apply to the podcast and amateur radio. Russ and Richard respond. Unfortunately, when this was recorded, the OpenHatch website was down. (From the OpenHatch website: “OpenHatch is an open source community aiming to help newcomers find their way into free software projects.”)

Rick, K9AO, sent some detailed instructions for building SVXlink, an open source Echolink client, under Linux, and we’re including it in it’s entirety here. As you may recall from episode 56, Russ had problems with compiling the program.Hi Russ,

I thought I’d send along the method that I have used to successfully build SVXlink under Mandriva 2010.2 and Ubuntu 10.10. I built the source on Ubuntu 10.10 late last year, so don’t have access to that machine at the moment. I built SVXlink from the latest SVN checkout on this Mandriva box, but this method also works fine for the release tarball.

I don’t know if you generally use SVN projects, but I’m thinking that you likely do if you are as interested in helping to shape the development of actively developed projects.

I create a directory called SVN in my home directory, and then do the SVN checkouts from there. Using the SVN checkout command below will create a subdirectory in the folder that you run it in, and then you can do the install from there. You likely are already familiar with this.

Here are the specifics:

Get the source:

svn co https://svxlink.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/svxlink svxlink

cd to the below directory:

Build the source branch in /svxlink/trunk/src

From there:

make realclean

make

su to root

make install

If there are any missing deps, these will show up as the compile progresses. As you already know I am sure, you need the devel packages to match the deps to build from source.

You will see errors, or what looks like errors as the build progresses after a realclean command. But if all of the needed libs and devels are there, the build process will create the necessary configs and then build the app. If you are concerned that the app might not have built correctly, doing another make will have the terminal scroll through the build process rapidly and then complete. If you get that far, do the root install. Then qtel from the terminal will bring up the client.

There are a number of branches of the source code for SVXlink in development. I recommend the above main trunk first.

There haven’t been any changes in the Qtel client for a while, so if all you are after is the client part of SVXlink there is no advantage to using cutting-edge SVN. There has been quite a bit of development going on in the server part, so experimenting with the SVN and joining the SVXlink devel list might be a good idea.

Hope that helps, and keep up the good work.

Rick, K9AO

Contact Info:

Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].

Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.

Leave us a voice mail at 417-200-4811, or record an introduction to the podcast.

Sign up for the LHS mailing list.

Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.

LHS merchandise is available at the SHOP! link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!

Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music:

Promo:

Topic 1: JT65

Richard enjoys the digital modes. Recently, he came across a signal he could not immediately identify, and found it was JT65.

JT65 is one of the suite of programs in the WSJT package written by Joe, K1JT, and was originally developed for weak signal Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) contacts.

It’s easier to install than WSPR (Weak Signal Propagation Reporter); simply download, extract, and go.

Because the software is designed to achieve a weak signal contact, information is sent repeatedly. If everything is working well, a simple contact will take about 7 minutes.

Like WSPR, stations transmit on a two-minute interval, so the computer clock must be accurate.

One station will “transmit on the ones” meaning he is transmitting on the odd number minutes. Each transmission is usually about 50 seconds. Then, the other station sends on the even minutes.

Typical contacts are callsign, signal report, and location.

Signals sound a bit like weather fax, usually a bit above the PSK area on 20m.

Richard was able to make 10 contacts in 15 minutes with 5 watts into his G5RV at 30 feet, on the 10m band, no less. He then made 5 contacts in 30 minutes on 15m, one of which was to South America.

WSJT and WSPR are both developed by Joe, K1JT, a physicist and amateur radio operator.

WSJT and WSPR can be found at https://www.physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/index.html.

One of the best websites Richard found for learning to use JT65 on HF is “The Complete Bozo’s Guide to HF JT65A by Andy, K3UK”. It hasn’t been updated in a while, but is still a good resource.

The manual included with the program is very good, too.

Richard recommends using the second set of messages provided in the program, rather than the default set, as the default does not include a signal report.

Richard has prepared an “Intro to JT65” video, available at the RF Podcast website.

Topic 2: Codec2

Bruce, VE9QRP, back in January, suggested we talk about Codec2.

From the Codec2 website:

“Codec2 is an Open Source and patent-free audio codec, currently in alpha testing. It provides good voice rendition at 2550 bits per second, and we expect that its bandwidth will be reduced with continuing development. Its voice quality and latency are an improvement over Speex, when Speex is run at a similarly low bandwidth rate. The original motivation for its development was to provide a completely open codec to replace AMBE+, MELP, and other proprietary codecs for use in Amateur (“Ham”) Radio communications. However, the codec is potentially useful for commercial two-way radio, telephony, and other applications.”

Russ plays some audio samples, and our hosts discuss how this might be used in ham radio applications.

The resulting file is in a .wav container and thus can be played by any program that plays .wav files. While the result is adequate for voice, it’s not suitable for music.

More links:

History of the project

More background and some how-to information from the author.

A PowerPoint presentation by the author.

Feedback:

We received donations from Dan W., Matt M., Andrew H., and Paul G. Thank you!

LHS will be at the Dayton Hamvention, in the North Hall, booth 131. We hope to see you there!

Jim, N2ENN, linked to us on his blog site. Thanks, Jim.

The Panhandle ARES group linked to LHS on their website. Thanks, guys.

regexorcist of The Daemon and Penguin Oggcast linked to LHS. Thank you.

Gary, KE2YK, has syndicated the LHS RSS feed on his eHamStore.net site. Thanks, Gary.

Burt, K1OIK, thought the clip art of the foo dog (episode 55) looked like Russ.

B.B., sent a long email, which we’ll discuss in an upcoming episode.

Danny asked about the podcast that Gene has about Apple. That’s the Tech Night Owl Live program with Gene Steinberg.

Dave, KI6ZHD, just found the LHS podcast website. Dave has written some documentation for various Linux topics and is a recent ham. His distro of choice is CentOS. He has been documenting his adventures at his blog and thought our listeners might be interested. He asked if we talked about TrustedQSL on Linux, and we did in episodes 43 and 46.

Leif, KC8RWR, commented about dual-booting a computer with Windows if Linux has already been installed. He suggests using gparted to shrink the Linux partition, creating a Windows partition in the free space, and then installing Windows. Of course, it’s best to just use a spare computer or another hard drive. (We talked about all this in episode 56.)

Richard points out that version 1.0 of CQRLog has been released.

Jim, N2ENN, just installed straight Debianand offers a few hints:

Extra repositories: In the system/administration tab, there’s a package called software sources. Check them all and click close.

Flash vs gnash: don’t worry about gnash. Once the nonfree repositories are selected, open the Synaptic package manager and install flashplugin-nonfree, or from a terminal, type “apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree”.

Regarding codecs: all the codecs are already installed, or should be. If not, again in Synaptic, tick good, bad and ugly plugin modules, along with the base plugin.

Russ received this from a radio club: Steve, N1NXU, wrote that he had a Tripp-Lite power supply that needed repair and he asked them for a schematic. They declined to provide one, so he recommends Astron power supplies, as schematics are included. These are available a most of the ham radio stores.

John, KF6EFG, attended Indiana LinuxFest and asked Russ for a copy of his presentation from that event. Look for that information on the LHS website in the near future.

Announcements:

Some listeners have requested a calendar of upcoming LHS events. So, if you have a calendar program that uses ICS calendar feeds, go to the LHS site and on the right side, look for the ‘Follow Us’ heading. Click at the third icon that looks like a calendar. Or, to see the information in your browser, click this https://zmx.bcef.info/service/user/[email protected]/LHS-Podcast.html.

Again, LHS will be at the Dayton Hamvention on May 20-22. We’ll be giving away a computer, so drop by the booth and say hello. Please donate at the website to help defray the costs. Thanks.

Contact Info:

Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].

Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.

Leave us a voice mail at 417-200-4811, or record an introduction to the podcast.

Sign up for the LHS mailing list.

Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.

LHS merchandise is available at the SHOP! link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!

Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music: