No package matching 'ax25-node' is available

[M0LTE]

ansible-playbook local.yml results in:

...
TASK [ax25 : install ax25 packages] ************************************************************************************
fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "msg": "No package matching 'ax25-node' is available"}

Debian Bookworm on Pi 2b.

[maxlock]

Hi, The problem is that the package has been removed from Debian which effectively kills this project. ARDC made a grant to have the ax25 kernel code fixed and brought up to date (https://www.ampr.org/grants/2021-grants/grant-fixing-the-linux-kernel-ax-25/) but the homepage for the project has now gone dark (https://www.linux-ax25.org/wiki/Main_Page).

This code could be re-engineered to provision another node daemon, all pull requests welcome.

[Hibby]

Hey there, Debian hamradio team here - @M0LTE messaged me asking about this package!

ax25-node was removed because of https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=777013 a few years back, but it has been replaced and superceded by uronode which I look after! If my memory serves right, Uronode is a fork of ax25-node that was actively developed until N1URO died earlier this year.

As the nodes are only a frontend binary spawned by ax25d through ax25d.conf, they're not critical to functioning of the packet stack, as you can just spawn other binaries - there's a one that'll drop you straight to bash, for example.

Regarding linux-ax25.org, it's been under discussion on the linux-hams mailing list here - Ralph who owned the website and maintained everything kind of disappeared and there's been a little back and forth about ownership, but we're seeing bugfixes in every major kernel release now and things are much better since 5.17, with stuff introduced in the 3.x series finally being fixed!

I have ownership or sight on a lot of the userland ax25 stuff in Debian and the ability to change/patch/modify based on feedback that I get, and I can talk to kernel team about getting stuff enabled changed as need be too - feel free to reach out and we can talk :)

[maxlock]

Hi @Hibby, Thanks for the info, that's really good to hear! There were some shortcomings in the original ax25-node software that did concern me a bit, but could be mitigated with something like apparmor or selinux etc. I'll jump onto the linux-hams list and have a read.
@M0LTE I'll have a play with uronode and see if I can spin it up here and get a basic ansible role setup for it. Watch this space :) no promises on how long it'll take me though.

[M0LTE]

Cool stuff. For now I’m playing with FBB.

…

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[Hibby]

@maxlock no worries. If there's any issues, give me a shout here, I'm also reliably on twitter discord and many other places!
While I play with the stack, I don't have many locals to engage with so I can't gauge properly what works and doesn't - more eyes and feedback is better for me, even if it means patching stuff!
Uronode looks to use the same config format as ax25-node, so hopefully migration isn't too difficult.