NETROMD(8)

💌 NETROMD — the netromd(8) manual page, bestie edition ✨

okay so. you're on a Linux system, you're doing NET/ROM things, and you need to know about netromd. buckle up, this one's a baddie 🫶

🌸 NAME 🌸

netromd — send and receive NET/ROM routing messages 💌📡

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

netromd [-c] [-d] [-i] [-l] [-p pause] [-q quality] [-t interval] [-v]

that's it. that's the whole vibe. 💅

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

okay so for a NET/ROM based network to actually work correctly, you need a periodic broadcast of routing information happening. typically this goes out once every hour on every port that's expected to carry NET/ROM traffic. and the whole point of netromd is to send and receive those NET/ROM routing broadcasts. ✨

to operate correctly, a set of parameters corresponding to each AX.25 port needs to be passed to the program. that info lives in a config file — by default it's /etc/ax25/nrbroadcast, and each line represents one port. see the manual page for nrbroadcast(5) for the deets. 🎀

now, to cut down the length of these routing broadcasts, only the info about the highest quality neighbour for a particular node gets transmitted. the transmission is also limited to those nodes that have a certain minimum value in their obsolesence count — this value is decremented every time a routing broadcast is transmitted, and it gets refreshed by receiving a routing broadcast that contains that particular node. it's giving ✨self-maintaining✨

the value of the default quality is traditionally assigned a value that represents the quality of the radio links on that port. a higher number = better radio links, with 255 (the maximum) reserved for wire connections. 🔥

the practise in the UK is to set the default quality to a low value, typically 10, and manually set up the trusted neighbouring nodes in the neighbour list manually. and the worst quality for auto-updates value is a way to filter out low quality (ie distant) nodes. no cap. 🧚

the verbose flag may be either 0 or 1, representing no and yes. by specifying no, the program will only generate a routing message containing info about the node on which it is running. by specifying the yes option, all the info in the nodes routing tables will be transmitted. and the quality advertised for the other node callsigns on this machine may be set using the -q option. 👑

between each transmission netromd pauses for five seconds (default) in order to avoid flooding the channels that it must broadcast on. that delay value is settable with the -p option. don't flood the channels bestie, that's not the move 😭

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -c — forces strict compliance to Software 2000 specifications. at present this only determines how node mnemonics with lower case characters will be handled. with compliance enabled, mixed case node mnemonics will be ignored. the default is to accept node mnemonics of mixed case. 🎀
• -d — switches on debugging messages, the default is off. logging must be enabled for them to be output. 🐛
• -i — transmit a routing broadcast immediately. the default is to wait for the time interval to elapse before transmitting the first routing broadcast. ⚡
• -l — enables logging of errors and debug messages to the system log. the default is off. 📝
• -p pause — sets the delay between transmissions of individual routing broadcast packets. the default is five seconds. ⏸️
• -q quality — sets the quality of the subsidiary nodes relative to the main node. the default is 255. 💯
• -t interval — the time interval between routing broadcasts, in minutes. the default is 60 minutes. ⏰
• -v — display the version. 🏷️

🗂️ FILES 🗂️

• /proc/net/nr_neigh
• /proc/net/nr_nodes
• /etc/ax25/axports
• /etc/ax25/nrbroadcast

these are the spots it pokes at. 📂✨

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

ax25(4), axports(5), nrbroadcast(5), netrom(4), nrparms(8).

go read those too, bestie, iykyk 📚💖

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Jonathan Naylor G4KLX <g4klx@g4klx.demon.co.uk> — the icon who wrote this fr fr 🫶

💜 and that's the whole page!! this came from the Linux manual, dated 20 August 1996, filed under NETROMD(8). slay, periodt. 💅✨🌸