Linux Amateur Radio AX.25 HOWTO
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# 3. The AX.25/NET/ROM/ROSE software components

The AX.25 software is comprised of three components: the kernel source, the network configuration tools and the utility programs.

AX.25 support in the Linux kernel has been fairly stable since the 2.2 series of kernel versions. This document assumes you are using the most recent kernel, which as the time of writing was 2.4.9.

| Software versions listed in this document were the latest at the time of writing, but are subject to change. Check for newer versions when downloading them.

## 3.1. Finding the kernel, tools and utility packages

### 3.1.1. The kernel source

The kernel source can be found at `www.kernel.org` and `ftp.kernel.org`. For the 2.4.9 kernel it would be downloaded from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux-2.4.9.tar.gz.

### 3.1.2. The network tools

The latest release of the standard Linux network tools support AX.25 and NET/ROM and can be found at http://www.tazenda.demon.co.uk/phil/net-tools.

The latest ipchains package can be found at http://netfilter.filewatcher.org/ipchains.

| It is usually not necessary to download and install these as any recent Linux distribution should include them.

### 3.1.3. The AX.25 utilities

The old ax25-utils used with the 2.0 and 2.1 kernels is now obsolete and has been replaced with new packages hosted on SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/hams.

The software is distributed as three packages: the AX.25 library, tools, and applications. At the time of writing the most recent versions were the following:

- ftp://hams.sourceforge.net/pub/hams/ax25/libax25-0.0.7.tar.gz

- ftp://hams.sourceforge.net/pub/hams/ax25/ax25-tools-0.0.6.tar.gz

- ftp://hams.sourceforge.net/pub/hams/ax25/ax25-apps-0.0.4.tar.gz

### 3.1.4. The APRS utilities

If you want to use APRS you can download aprsd and aprsdigi:

- http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/aprsd/aprsd-2.1.4.tar.gz

- http://www.users.cloud9.net/~alan/ham/aprs/aprsdigi-2.0-pre3.tar.gz

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The Packet Radio Protocols and Linux |  | Installing the AX.25/NET/ROM/ROSE software