Command Line¶
Pax25 comes with a command line application that's meant to behave similarly to command line applications found on other TNCs, such as those manufactured by Kantronics.
The command line application has the ability to monitor traffic it hears on its interfaces. It will report frames it hears for any activity which is not directly involved in an active connection with the current station. This data is only shown if the connection is privileged, I.E., if the connection's sudo flag is set, and if the connecting station's callsign matches the station's main callsign with an SSID of 0. In most practical cases, that will be when the file interface is used to connect to the station using the host system's command line.
Command Line as Node¶
Packet stations can be used to connect from one to another in order, chaining connections in a manner that is more robust than the more rudimentary digipeater method of communicating long-distance. The command line application acts both as a node and as an administrative application.
Connecting to other nodes¶
The provided 'connect' command allows you to connect to other systems on any gateway interfaces you have configured. For example, if you wanted to connect to another nearby packet station named boop, you might use:
...to connect to it on the first available gateway. Check help connect on the command line for more details.
Backgrounding Connections¶
While connected to another system, you can background the connection by using ctrl+k. This will return you to the command line app, and allow you to run other commands while the connection continues in the background. It's also helpful to force disconnection-- if you connect directly to some stations, they act as keyboard-to-keyboard communications, which don't include a disconnect command. The only way to close the connection in that case is to use ctrl+k to background the connection, then use the disconnect command to close the active connection.
Once backgrounded, the connection can be brought back into the foreground with the foreground command (aliased to fg). Foregrounded connections will display any data which was received while the connection was backgrounded, and then start accepting input again.
Note
Limitations in FileInterface mean that ctrl+k may not have an obvious effect until the next time you hit the return key. You may wish to hit the return key right after pressing ctrl+k to verify you get the command prompt back.
Commands¶
The primary help for commands exists within the command line application itself, using the help system.