Setup support for ICOM RP2C

[TG9AOR]

Hello to the forum. I installed pi-star version 3.4.17, to be used on a hilltop repeater with internet access. The LAN for the system is 192.168.15.0/24, pi-star is located on 192.168.15.88, and the RP2C is located on 192.168.15.81. I had to access the pi with a computer connected to the LAN and using anydesk, as the inbound TCP connection for web GUI was not turned on. Even if turned on, it did not connect. After configuring via expert settings the B and C modules, the gateway did work briefly. Then, I ran an update to update the DSTAR hosts. It did not work after that. The people supporting me at the hill had to leave, and fortunately SSH access does work. I have edited dhcpcd.conf to leave the IP address static on the pi. I did notice that after the update the file /etc/network/interfaces changed, and inserted some lines like for eht1 and eht0:1, these were not there before I updated the system with the update hyperlink on the dashboard.

I will appreciate all guidance available on this matter. Thank you.

[KA0ZRW]

Hello to you!

I've found some unstated assumptions and challenges to getting the Icom RP2C support set up. Frankly, I'm still working on it. Getting another post together now. I'm not sure if this will help you or not.

Assumptions:
1) The Pi-Star is going onto a network with DHCP, for the physical eth0 interface. Using DHCP, eth0 IP assignment/lease sets your gateway/DNS for the Pi-Star to use for everything else. Of course, you can disable DHCPd and set everything manually, but that isn't the assumption given most people's use cases for these boxes.
2) The pi-star physical interface eth0 should not be on a 172.16.0.x network because it gets confused with the static IP address set as a virtual adapter at eth0:1. The default route of the local network gets messed up and you can't send traffic off your local network.
3) based on #2, they don't assume you're going to reconfigure the RP2C IP address, since the Icom default for the RP2C is 172.16.0.1 (dumb address to choose as a default), and is what's defaulted in ircDDBGateway for repeater1 IP. Pi-Star does assume you're going to reconfigure the UDP port it uses to 20000 on both sides...the Pi-Star and the RP2C.

Other thing to point out is that the Icom RP2C can *only* be configured with a Windows utility app you get from Icom, as I understand it. (Although, documentation is also sparse on what "Local Server" means on the RP2C configuration utility.) That means, if you've never configured the RP2C, it's going to be on 172.16.0.1, AND the eth0:1 virtutal interface on the Pi-Star is statically mapped to 172.16.0.20 in order to be able to talk to it...since the RP2C will have no idea who or what to talk to otherwise.

Maybe you can post the relevant interfaces and dhcpd.conf config info and that might help, as well as some of the ping testing you've done. Assuming you can ping the RP2C?

[TG9AOR]

Thank you so very much for your reply. I am not able to share at the moment any parameters because the people on the hill removed the SD card that contained pi-star and reinserted the previous card that contained the G4KLX programs.

I confirm with your notes that the firewall was expecting the 172.16.x.x address and was not giving access to the RP2C's address of 192.168.x.x(this address was configured via windows prior to deployment and thus works with the non pi-star SD card)

The site does not have DHCP, I had to edit dhcpcd.conf and give it a static profile on eth0, I did not know about giving it a profile to eth0:1, I did see eth0:1 on /etc/network/interfaces and changed it to the appropiate LAN address but the firewall did not change.

The end result is that another colleague will test same equipment at another location with the image, and when and if he makes it work, we will resend the card back to the hill.

I really appreciate your reply.

73