[App_rpt-users] the endless (I hope) possibilities..

[Geoff]

I wrote this, originally as a response to Steve to recognize his effort 
and work that he has put into his project, but it grew and I think the 
discussion and answers could benefit a few of us, here.
First off, let me thank Jim Duuuude for first getting allstar up and 
running.  Tim for his effort with Drupal and Steve for what you do with 
DIAL.


On 09/14/2016 10:53 AM, Steve Zingman wrote:

[...]
> DIAL relies on the official Asterisk source for the SVN. No more no 
> less. I do not believe in fluff being part of a official distribution. 
> Sure, it can be added. I just don't want people to have to remove 
> things. There are quite a few great add on features and programs 
> available for AllStar. I'll continue to make sure they work, but I 
> don't think they should be part of the distribution. All of my work 
> for building DIAL and scripts to support more platforms is kept in a 
> GIT repository along with links to the "release candidate" for amd64, 
> i386
> and the RPi. <https://github.com/N4IRS/AllStar>
>

[...]

> The reason for this romp down memory lane is just to point out that 
> DIAL is independent of the official source. I don't care is it is in a 
> SVN or GIT repository. As long as I can get to the current source, 
> DIAL is good.

Quite the romp, Steve.  Thanks for that input and reminder.

I've been out of dealing with and running a node for a little over a 
year, now.  I've kept up, kinda sorta in a round about way, you might 
say, maybe, with the happenings in this list.  I -do- plan on getting 
something back up and running again.  The problems from before, the 
mysterious 'hangs', the software being (in my opinion) "unstable", 
(coupled with the fact that where we moved to, while gorgeous, is 
heavily laden with awesome natural HF antenna supports) kinda kept me 
away from getting an allstar node up.
The trees are nice and while they're good for hauling a wire in the air 
for lower frequencies, they are absolutely relentless in their pursuit 
of sucking dry every available watt of RF they can find, above about 
60MHz.  Having the gen-pole 'break' while going up with the last section 
of tower and the antenna on it, and no time/money/break-in-the-weather 
just... I dunno... kinda kicked the air outta my sails.

  I've got too many trees around me to do any good for V/UHF, unless I 
put up a 100' tower and the landlord ain't gonna go for -that-.

So... now steering away from whining about RF restrictions, (and with 
deep respect and thanks to 'The Duuude') I am deeply curious about 
"DIAL".  I've been a Linux user for about 15 years.  I'm as comfortable 
at the command line as I am chasing an pointer shaped icon across a 
gui.  That doesn't mean I'm some sort of programmer or heretofor 
knowledgeable about the intricate details of slamming scripts together, 
or creating chron events.  Seems like every time I try to do these 
(seemingly Linux 'noobie') tasks, I've got to stop and research.  So, 
that's my experience in Linux.  You'd think that after 15 years 
something -more- would have stuck, but I'm a creature of habit.  I've 
always gone back to 'dance with the one that brung ya' and SuSE and I 
have been together all of this time. A long way of saying I know .rpm 
platforms, best.

Now, with all of THAT said, since DIAL was ported and made installable 
for the Debian flavor of Linux,
your claim seems to be that the software is more stable than ever. I 
agree with trimming the code, and modulizing more components and the 
time and effort put into such and endeavor is, at least by me, 
appreciated.  Thank you.

Bottom line, I didn't want to just come out and ask a question without 
giving proper acknowledgment and appreciation ahead of my asking, so 
having done that (I hope) I'll ask...

if there ever going to be an .rpm version of app_rpt that would be put 
together like so that the program could be installed onto an 
already-existing instance of Linux, instead of my previous experience 
where a dedicated machine was needed running CentOS?

something as simple as
$~> rpm -qvih allstar

then having the script go out, create the directories it needed, put the 
files where they were supposed to go, update the libraries, set the 
environment, connect to the radio, use the current internet connection 
(if needed) and run by itself as "yalp" (yet another linux program) 
without the need of dedicating hardware to do so?

It's always been a thought in my mind, that "if Linux is multi-user, 
multi-funtion capable, why is an entire machine required to be dedicated 
to running allstar?"

Thanks for reading.

73 = Best Regards,
-Geoff/W5OMR