[FADCA] More toys for fpac linux

[Chuck Hast]

FPAC Linux is sort of like lego toys, you can add things to it, all it takes is
a bit of time and learn a few commands that are used at the Linux command
line.

Here is on that I use (actually it is part of a group of them) in
order to monitor
the state of the timers on a link to a neighbor. This is the command line as I
have it in my fpac.conf file:
  RS_N    = /bin/cat /proc/net/rose_neigh
This command causes the linux tool "cat" to print the file rose_neigh to
the screen. If you link to my switch you will see it.
Cat is a command which is used to conCATenate files, but you can also
use it to dump a file to your screen or to another file.
The file /proc/net/rose_neigh is part of a group of seudo files and directories
these directories and files actually contain the active kernel
activities, indeed
when you load the ax25 configuration files these files write data into some
of these files. In this case each time we do a cat /proc/net/rose_neigh we
take a peek at the latest state of the different timers, one of which is the
link timer for a expired link. Here is a sample print out:
KP4DJT-8 (Commands = ?) : rs_n
addr  callsign  dev  count use mode restart  t0  tf digipeaters
00041 KC5QCN-9  sp0     10   0  DTE     yes   0   0
00040 W4MIN-9   ax0      1   0  DTE     yes   0   0
00039 K4GBB-9   ax0      3   0  DTE     yes   0   0
00038 N4PLZ-9   ax0      5   1  DTE     yes   0   0
00037 N3PPC-9   ax0      1   0  DTE      no   0   0
00036 F5KBW-9   ax0      9   1  DTE     yes   0   0
00035 F6BVP-11  ax0     12   0  DCE     yes   0   0
00034 VK2TV-2   ax0      1   0  DTE      no   0 112
00001 RSLOOP-0  ???      5   0  DCE     yes   0   0

You may or may not see these columns lined up depending on how your
browser renders the font. As you can see the link to vk2tv-2 has timed out
and there are 112 seconds remaining before the link can retry again.
(Ray, something is wrong, I am getting these all of the time, from you,
seems something is getting lost somewhere, but not sure where)

As you can see this can be a handy tool to look at link timers for the
neighbor connections.


-- 
Chuck Hast  -- KP4DJT --
To paraphrase my flight instructor;
"the only dumb question is the one you DID NOT ask resulting in my going
out and having to identify your bits and pieces in the midst of torn
and twisted metal."