This afternoon I put the time in to get a ratflector running on the WA7FW gateway. This is something I should have done a while ago, but just never got around to it. This ratflector replaces the one that was being used at drats.myhamcall.com. Now that it is on the gateway, it is permanent and it uses the same address as the gateway–wa7fw.dstargateway.org.
There were a couple of modifications I made to the installation to make it more amenable to running as a daemon on a Linux machine. I added a –background switch to daemonize the process and also created an init.d script to control the process. I have sent Dan Smith a patch file for the new switch with the hope that this will be incorporated into the 0.3.4 version of D-Rats. If you wish a copy of the patch and init.d script for your installation, give me a yell.
73 de WTØF
Update 12/28/2011: I have packaged up the files necessary to add the –background switch and the init.d script. You can download the collection of files with the following link: drats-patch.tar.gz.
I assume that the port is 9000? Thank you for posting this information….it has been some what dificult to find Rat-flectors in the past. More and more people refering to Rat-flector have made it easier to search Google using that term.
Yes, the ratflector is using the standard port of 9000.
I have been recommending to repeater owners to run a ratflector on the repeater for their users. If you have any influence with any repeater owners, feel free to put them in touch with me about getting a ratflector running on their gateway.
73
I noticed your article on August 1st about launching the d-rats_repeater as a daemon under Linux via init.d. I have been running the repeater under Windows and am going to move it over to Ubutnu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx). You mentioned that you have the init.d script and some other patches that sound very interesting. I would appreciate if you could forward that information to me as it would certainly save me a lot of time creating my own startup script.
I’m currently running 0.3.3.
Best regards,
Craig Gunther, KE7YLZ
Gerard,
Ratflector Operation Info request:
So using D-Rats, how would I specify which node i want to broadcast my d-rats packets?
Within the preferences of D-Rats, there is a selection for setting up a radio or network connection. To talk to the ratflectors running on wa7fw.dstargateway.org or ref035.dstartgateway.org, just enter one of those hostnames as a net connection. Pretty straight forward.