[Allstar Digital] Allstar-Digital Digest, Vol 2, Issue 25

[Steve Zingman]

I'll take my PC hat off her. That's Politically Correct.
Some people want you to think that it's a magic trick to run AllStar 
Asterisk on a specific board. It's not true. AllStar Asterisk has a few 
requirements that the underlying Linux must provide. DAHDI needs to be 
compiled as a kernel module, so the kernel headers are required. For 
most sound hardware, OSS (Open Sound System) is required. That's about 
it. I too have been around AllStar for quite a while and it was a 
problem compiling app_rpt on Debian early on. Since ACID was the 
official distribution, I had to go it alone if I wanted Debian. I 
started building my scripts and patches so I could run AllStar Asterisk 
on Debian. Someone called the scripts and patches just a collection of 
files. That's quite true. Just as AllStar is just a collection of files.

We decided to run AllStar on a RPI1 as a test. For me, it was fun to try 
to shoehorn AllStar in a limited resource machine like the Pi1. It 
worked. It's not great but it works. At the same time, more and more 
people were running into problem with ACID on newer hardware. ACID was 
built on a older version of Centos. Either it would not run, or there 
were no drivers for needed hardware. Since I ran my nodes on current 
Debian, I already had the scripts and patches to run AllStar on current 
hardware under Debian. I decided To take those scripts and build a 
complete installer. It took someone from "Bare Metal" to a up and 
running node.

Jim WB6NIL asked me if the Bare Metal installer I built could be used to 
replace the aging ACID distribution. I said sure since it would reduce 
the pain people were running into. Jim published the installer as DIAL. 
As they say, what's in a name. Jim knew we had already built AllStar on 
a RPi so he asked if I would create a image for the RPI2. I really don't 
like images because they can get bloated with unneeded fluff. But people 
prefer to download a disk image and burn it to a card. So I built DIAL 
for the RPi2 and Jim published it.

DIAL on the X86 or DIAL on the ARM are just AllStar Asterisk. No more no 
less. All the apps, functions and channel drivers from the SVN 
repository are included. I do disable what I consider unneeded modules 
in modules.conf, simple to turn on when needed by editing modules.conf. 
ALL the code is compiled and installed, just not enabled for run time. 
This reduces the CPU load, the memory footprint and keeps asterisk form 
logging complaints about missing unneeded configuration files. Lean and 
mean is the motto. I continue to build version of DIAL on machines like 
the BBB and OrangePi. X86 uses a very slightly tweaked version of the 
Debian Net installer. It's pretty lean. For the RPi2 I did not like the 
bloat included with the stock Raspbian images. So we built a stripped 
down distribution based on stock Debian. The idea was not to strip out 
what was not needed, the idea was to never include the fluff in the 
first place. This is one of the reasons people are reporting good 
success running 2 active nodes on a RPi2 with the chan_USB drivers. The 
only added post install scripts were updated scripts from ACID. Jim 
wanted these for new people, so they were includes. There are no weather 
scripts, no talking clocks, no "hold you hand" junk. There is room to 
add that stuff if you want.

DMRGateway uses exactly nothing out of AllStar. Huh? DMRGateway feeds 
audio to and receives audio from AllStar through the stock USRP channel 
driver. The USRP channel drivers job is simple, take in PCM on a UDP 
port and send it into Asterisk. It sends Asterisk audio out via UDP. It 
also handles the PTT and COR signals app_rpt expects. The same way you 
add Echolink (yuck) to AllStar, you add USRP to AllStar. From there 
DMRGateway, DV3000 and DMRLink make up everything needed to connect 
AllStar to a IPSC network.

Bottom line, All of the meat and none of the fat. DMRGateway will work 
with any version of AllStar that has the stock USRP channel driver.

For INAD, 73, Steve N4IRS.

On 11/27/2015 02:40 PM, Bryan D. Boyle wrote:
> OK, I realize that I'm a little late coming to the party here...but, 
> is there a BOM (bill of materials) aside from a DMR repeater and a 
> working allstar (been doing it for 6 years...so, I think I can spin up 
> another node...) node?
>
> Reason I'm asking is that I've come into the ability to get onto a 
> 500' tower that already has a 440 stick near the top.  Now, I'll have 
> to get a 5.8 gig link back to my central net access point (about 8 air 
> miles...Ubnt equipment is your friend), but, also have a moto UHF DMR 
> repeater sitting in a box ready to go, and my local coord body is 
> going to hunt for a pair on narrowband spacing to assign to me.
>
> So, assuming I have the repeater (and amp), duplexer, Pi2B, net 
> connection...I think I'll need some dongle (AMBE?) to do the 
> transcoding, another channel driver for allstar...a legit node number 
> (though, I don't see this ever showing up on DMR-MARC like my other 
> machine in Fairless Hills); I only plan on using this as a DMR link 
> into my existing allstar network...)
>
> Thinking that the Pi uses the DIAL release?  Or is Compton's version 
> workable?  saw something about a different channel driver...so, that's 
> on the list to acquire and gen into the system (haven't looked to see 
> if it is part of the distro).
>
> Am I missing something?  I'll offer to collect FAQ information and 
> re-post as need be (I know what it's like cranking on code and then 
> facing doing the dox...) if that would be a help.
>
> And if I'm off base, I'm ok with that and will go back to lurking...
>
> 73 all
> Bryan WB0YLE
>
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-- 
"Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about."
1st Law of Logic