W0ANM IRLP Node Information

shack

Welcome to the W0ANM irlp node 3106 website. This site was created to provide reference material for this nodes usage and operation. I may also include some useful irlp scripts for other node owners. Basic information about Node 3106:

IRLP Node IN SERVICE:	February 4, 2006
Location:	Saint Michael, MN (next to the Crow River)
Frequency:	446.050 MHz 131.8 Hz CTCSS Tone
Node 3106:	Pentium 4 (3Ghz), node running as a virtual system using VMware
RF Equipment:	· Motorola GM300 ~30W · Node simplex link antenna, home made 5/8 wave vertical.
Coverage:	Mobile coverage is limited due to the stations location and antenna height. The coverage for typical mobile operation is approximately 10-15 miles.

This node is open to all. Please check the status of the node by using DTMF tones and enter "*0" . The node will respond if the node is connected to a reflector, cleared, disabled. Please review the node guidelines before using this node.

April 30, 2008

IRLP Virtualization

This project started out as a need to consolidate computers and services. Since the IRLP computer is on 27/7 and I had another computer that was used for backups, nfs mounts, web services, I thought why not consolidate the irlp system and the newer system. Virtualization of the irlp system was fairly easy and straight forward using VMware Server 2.0. The only issue found was setting up the parallel port. The VMware documentation was very helpful and indicated that the server should not have the "lp" module installed. Once removed, and proper permissions were setup on the parallel port, the system worked as it should.

The old irlp system was finally retired and now the shack is using less power. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Weather Scripts

I have a set of weather scripts that will get weather forecast, current conditions, and weather alerts. These scripts required festival, xml, and wget packages. Download and install the RPM after the rpm dependencies are met. The dependencies are listed below.

Weather Scripts:                WxScripts-0.9.4.noarch.rpm

Here are the RPM's needed for installation (versions may vary):

FC3:
festival-1.4.2-25.i386.rpm
wget-1.10.2-0.fc3.i386.rpm
xmlstarlet-1.0.1-1.i586.rpm
perl-DateManip-5.42a-3.noarch.rpm

FC5:
    wget-1.10.2-3.2.1.i386.rpm
  festival- 1.95-5.2.i386.rpm
    xmlstarlet-1.0.1-3.fc5.i386.rpm
    perl-DateManip-5.44-1.2.noarch.rpm

CentOS 4.4:
        wget - wget-1.10.2-0.40E.i386.rpm
    festival - festival-1.4.2-25.i386.rpm
         xml - xmlstarlet-1.0.1-1.i386.rpm
    manip.pm - perl-DateManip-5.42a-3.noarch.rpm

If yum is configured correctly, you can automatically download some of the required RPM's and install the required packages by entering the following command as root:

# yum install festival.i386
# yum install wget.i386
# yum install perl-DateManip

The xmlstarlet-1.0.1 rpm can be found at sourceforge.net.

Note - For FC5, you can install all of the required rpm's via yum. One final note, you can use Cepstral's text to speech utilities. I found that the voices are more natural sounding. For more information, see Cepstral's web site and the WxScript.txt document found in "/home/irlp/docs".

To install the WxScript rpm, move the rpm file to the irlp system. As root, change directories to the location of where the WxScript rpm is located. Then execute the following command:

# rpm -i WxScripts-<version>.noarch.rpm

If you get errors regarding missing dependencies, and you have installed the required packages, then try:

# rpm -i --nodeps WxScripts-<version>.noarch.rpm

If you are upgrading from a previous version, use the following command:

# rpm -U WxScripts-<version>.noarch.rpm

Review the WxScripts script documentation which is found in "/home/irlp/docs" to modify the configuration file for your location.

Bug fix HISTORY

Star 69 Scripts with Cepstral Text to Speech Support

This script is a variation of Randy's, KC6HUR, star69 scripts. It requires Cepstral software to be installed; see Cepstral's web site. I placed the script and documentation in a RPM package for easy installation and removal. The script will report last connections, incoming, outgoing, reflector and waiting. The script can call the last connected or waiting station depending upon how the custom_decode script is configured.

s69 Script: star69irlp_cepstral-0.2.noarch.rpm

To install, download and test Cepstral software. Install rpm package as root:

# rpm -i star69irlp_cepstral-0.2.noarch.rpm

Review the s69 script documentation which is found in "/home/irlp/docs".

Reflector Station Query

This is a simple query utility that is used to query reflectors for connected stations. These scripts provide a list of connected stations to a reflector. There are two versions; one requires Ceptral Text to Speech software and another
that does not required any addtion text to speech software. The advanages for the swift version is that it's more natural sounding and less "choppy". This software also requires "wget". Also note, this script does not necessarily use a public access interface when query the irlp site. This means that if the software maintainers decide to change that part of their software, this will fail to gather the query information. I am in process of finding out if this may change or get a different, more public access point for the reflector queries.

Stn_Query Script: StnQuery-0.2.0.noarch.rpm

To install, download and install the rpm package as root:

rpm -i StnQuery-0.2.0.noarch.rpm

Review the Stn_Query script documentation which is found in "/home/irlp/docs".