Packet connection script

[Scott Currie]

So, I have asked this before, but don't see that is was ever really answered. Does Pat support packet connections that require multiple hops through network nodes?

In Winlink Express we call this connection scripts, and it is trivial to do. It is virtually impossible to connect to our local gateways here without going through a network node, so you must first connect to the node, then tell the node to connect to the gateway (and specifically on a different port on the node). A typical script would be:

c W6SLO-1  <--connect to the node

CONNECTED  <--the expected response text

C 2 AE6EQ-7 <--tell the node to connect to AE6EQ-7 on port 2

CONNECTED <--the expected response from the node when the connection is made

Once the second "CONNECTED" is received, the script ends and the connection continues as though it was a direct connection to the gateway.

If I can't figure out a way to do this, we really can't deploy Pat here.

-Scott, NS7C

[Ben Kuhn]

There is an open bug report requesting this and it's set as a milestone for version 1.1

https://github.com/la5nta/pat/issues/114

If you have a Github account, maybe a note there regarding the proposed options and your use case would help.

You can use a digipeater in pat, but that has it's own issues, and doesn't work at all if you need to connect to the Winlink gateway on a different port/frequency and the node isn't configured to digipeat between ports.

73,

Ben KU0HN

[Scott Currie]

Hmm, almost 6 years ago, that's discouraging. Network nodes have been in use on packet for over 35 years now, seems like this would be an issue for a lot of people. Or maybe they are all using Winlink Express if their local network includes these resources.

-Scott, NS7C

[Jon Jacox]

This is a feature I am waiting for as well. I use PAT at my QTH but I can't use it at our EOC because of this issue. 

[Scott Currie]

Yes, I can't recommend moving forward with Pat in our region. Without scripting it is impossible to connect to any of our RMS stations on V/UHF. That leaves Linux and Mac users with few options.

-Scott, NS7C

[Benjamin Seidenberg]

I'd like to remind folks that Pat is open source. If it's missing a feature that's important to you, you can just build that feature yourself, or find someone in your region to do so.

As someone who needed features to build a monitoring node for my own EmComm group, I can tell you I did just that (learned Go just for this), and the development team was incredibly helpful and friendly and supportive with taking my initial efforts and polishing and including them into Pat.

So don't just wait...help!

73,

Benjamin, WY2K

[Brian Hendrix]

So I’d like to try that. I’m Senior Linux Engineer — mostly scripting — what’s the toolset to start to help? You mentioned Go. Is that the place to start?

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 17, 2023, at 9:46 AM, Benjamin Seidenberg <astr...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'd like to remind folks that Pat is open source. If it's missing a feature that's important to you, you can just build that feature yourself, or find someone in your region to do so.

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[LA5NTA]

That's excellent! Thanks for volunteering Brian :D And thanks for pitching in with the encouragement, Benjamin :)

Yes, this is a much needed feature. I'd be happy to help in anyway I can. I don't have access to any packet nodes configured in such a way, so I won't be able to help with testing unfortunately.

Brian - Yes, Go is the language of choice in this project. It's a language with a relatively small footprint, designed to be easy to get started with. If you have any experience with more traditional languages like C or Java you'll pick this up quick I believe. I'd recommend starting by building Pat from source. And please also read CONTRIBUTING.md.

As for the actual implementation details, let's keep discussing this in https://github.com/la5nta/pat/issues/114.

Thanks!

-- 

73 de LA5NTA / Martin

[Corey Minyard]

If you want something right now, I have a fork of Pat called
Pat-gensio at https://github.com/cminyard/pat (look under the
"Releases" section for binaries). It has a script capability, and I
believe others have used it for this capability. It uses the gensio
library, which has a bunch of capabilities.

If you are interested, I can help you set it up.

You probably still want to plan on getting mainline Pat to do this, as
this is really just my experimental playground, but I'm happy for
other people to use it. Then you can switch back when someone gets
scripts working in Pat.

-corey

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[Martin Hebnes Pedersen]

https://github.com/la5nta/pat/pull/432

Getting really close to finalizing the lower level functionality :) The PR adds a prehook by executing a script/program and proxies data through stdio. The script is expected to do the node traversal.

Need testers soon. Anyone up for it?

Please read the PR description and my recent posts in the referenced issue.

Thanks!

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73 de LA5NTA / Martin

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[MJ Inabnit]

Hello Martin,

Is this going to use the serial port/kiss to connect with TNC or the
ax25 stack? I'm all for a direct serial/kiss testing.

Tnx & 73
Jaye

On 12/6/23 10:38 PM, Martin Hebnes Pedersen wrote:
> https://github.com/la5nta/pat/pull/432
>
> Getting really close to finalizing the lower level functionality :) The
> PR adds a prehook by executing a script/program and proxies data through
> stdio. The script is expected to do the node traversal.
>
> Need testers soon. Anyone up for it?
>
> Please read the PR description and my recent posts in the referenced issue.
>
> Thanks!
>
> -- 
> 73 de LA5NTA / Martin
>
> lør. 18. nov. 2023, 12:12 skrev LA5NTA <martin.h...@gmail.com

> <mailto:martin.h...@gmail.com>>:

>
> That's excellent! Thanks for volunteering Brian :D And thanks for
> pitching in with the encouragement, Benjamin :)
>
> Yes, this is a much needed feature. I'd be happy to help in anyway I
> can. I don't have access to any packet nodes configured in such a
> way, so I won't be able to help with testing unfortunately.
>
> Brian - Yes, Go is the language of choice in this project. It's a
> language with a relatively small footprint, designed to be easy to
> get started with. If you have any experience with more traditional
> languages like C or Java you'll pick this up quick I believe. I'd
> recommend starting by building Pat from source

> <https://github.com/la5nta/pat/wiki/Building-from-source>. And
> please also read CONTRIBUTING.md
> <https://github.com/la5nta/pat/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md>.

>
> As for the actual implementation details, let's keep discussing this
> in https://github.com/la5nta/pat/issues/114.
>
> Thanks!
>
> -- 
> 73 de LA5NTA / Martin
> fredag 17. november 2023 kl. 17:19:18 UTC+1 skrev

> dbrian...@gmail.com <mailto:dbrian...@gmail.com>:

>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pat-users/e00654df-1ad8-45ca-9315-0471ea057869n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

>
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wishing you well
Jaye, ke6sls--via the toshiba w/thunderchicken

[Chris Keller]

In theory there's enough packet infra in Denver for me to help test. I've never tried hopping through nodes this way, though.

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[Herbert Crosby]

Happy to test.

Herbert Crosby KD5PQJ 

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[LA5NTA]

Hi Jaye,

The implementation will support all transports available in Pat :)

-- 

73 de LA5NTA / Martin

[LA5NTA]

Chris, Herbert - Thanks, that would be very nice!

The branch should be usable now, and my latest comment in the PR provides an example script as a starting point.

* PR: https://github.com/la5nta/pat/pull/432

* Intro to building from source: https://github.com/la5nta/pat/wiki/Building-from-source

    ("fast route" will suffice for agwpe and serial-tnc)

Herbert - If you're not comfortable building from source, then please let us know and we'll send you a pre-built binary.

Thanks!

-- 

73 de LA5NTA / Martin

[Scott Currie]

I'm trying to follow the "fast route" build, but I'm not sure what to version to pull to test this. Can someone give me the correct version here: go install github.com/la5nta/pat@latest ??

I'll probably need a lot more hand-holding....

-Scott, NS7C

[Martin Hebnes Pedersen]

Try `go install github.com/la5nta/pat@3b2a25453659c2b59b3f3f7f6e89241f1532b45b`

That's the commit sha of the latest commit of the prehook-branch :)

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